skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Every few months I try to use Siri. And every single time I reach the same conclusion: Unusable and worthless to me. I don't have a weird accent, a lisp or a speech impediment of any kind. Just plain "clean" adult (as opposed to "like" bubblegum teenager) California English. I have never gotten anything useful out of the technology from the day it was introduced.

Just one data point of course. Yet, I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of iOS users don't use Siri but for the speech recognition version of fart jokes here and there.
Before addressing eliminating meetings based on content and goal, how about looking at the structure of the organization and management teams (in startups) that require useless meetings?

One startup I was an early engineer for had a management team that developed a need to have daily all hands yet still planned on weekends in the schedule. It wasn't obvious at the start, but it crept up over time.

Miss an arbitrary deadline? Meeting. Someone in management forgot to tie their shoe? Meeting.

Sometimes there are just some people that require meetings to justify themselves.

This particular startup eventually had an ok exit (sub 4x multiple) with only four of the original twenty people still there. One of the main needy meeting culprits was not one of them.
I'm the co-founder of The Tech Block http://thetechblock.com and we sort of built something similar to Medium (before Medium existed) except it's focused on Technology and we pick and choose the pieces that go on our site.

Though it has similarities, the big difference is that our site is not a place where you'd actually type out your article. Instead, if it's housed on your site already, you can choose to cross publish to our audience of tech enthusiasts.

If you haven't heard of it, give it a look.
Sure: surf[1], uzbl[2] and luakit[3], among others. Or my favorite: Firefox + NoScript + Vimperator.

[1]: http://surf.suckless.org/

[2]: http://uzbl.org/

[3]: http://mason-larobina.github.io/luakit/
Which again goes back to one of the article's points of cross-economy borrowing on crack that was started a few decades back and will eventually get someone to pay for it.
Future generations are probably going to be wealthier than us, as long as we can get past our nuclear squeamishness and global warming doesn't destroy everything. Why not finance?
Thanks for highlighting the reasons for "stick to the agenda no matter what". A good reason that I was not really aware of.

These are the little details I learn from HN every day. Adds up over time. :)
I am writing something similar for a client. He needs data in tables extracted from the PDF.
Which language are you using?
I wrote two scripts, one using python and pdftotext and another using ruby pdf-reader, the ruby one gives each line of the PDF one by one which is good for extraction.
Oh, just as I was randomly catching up on last week's news, I missed this new feature of Google Now: http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/26/google-nows-new-tv-info...

So they're already implementing uPnP or some sort of MAC address identification to make a mental map of the devices and media devices in your home and can already make recommendations for your actions/tasks/behaviors based on that. Nuts, that code is in place, waiting to be leveraged in cool ways.

Yeah, I'm sure Google's fucked.

>What is it you don't understand?

Actually, any of what that garbled mess was at the beginning of that reply? Custom app/searchbox, wtf does that even mean? The article actually goes out of it's way to talk about how Siri sucked when it was used as a standalone app. >_<
This is exactly what one of those UDP "weird hole punching tricks" does. Except of course without connections, it not being TCP. nat-traverse (http://m19s28.dyndns.org/iblech/nat-traverse/) works this way as I understand it.
ShowHN: Realtime Social Newspaper (events in Egypt)
Oh the dread that phone support brings back to me... The number of "tricks" we had to use to get users to tell us what they actually saw, and do what we actually told them, rather then what they thought they were looking at or thought they should do...

Anyone interested in psychology should do phone support for a few weeks...
If you can instruct a small child on how to build a birdhouse, you can program a computer.

And the computer won't even scream at you.
Which is why NoScript is great: you can load the main site functionality without having to enable Analytics. The global enable/disable JS switch is just terrible for this kind of browsing, in my opinion.
I was looking for such a tool! But unfortunately, its only for Mac! When will we get TumblrThemr on windows?
Because it's spending money you don't have, in hope that you will get them. That will lead to problems sooner or later.
I have to say that this article is actually quite terrible, as is the opinion that any option that might ever be confusing to a user is an option that shouldn't ship with the product. The thesis of the article is:

"Well, we have met the enemy, and he is us.* In the currently shipping version, Firefox ships with many options that will render the browser unusable to most people, right in the main settings ui."

The solutions offered? Kill it all with fire. I'm paraphrasing, of course.

Problem: People today change some feature then have a "broken" browser (basically, they forgot to turn it back to the default, or they didn't realize they changed it in the first place).

Solution: reset button, also notification to the user that "this page might not work correctly", some sort of an extension of how Chrome shows you that a popup and/or a cookie was blocked, based on your settings. Don't treat your users like idiots, just provide information that clears up certain odd states by explicitly informing them of something like:

"The webpage you are viewing may not work correctly because the following options differ from their default values:

1. Enable automatic loading of images.
2. Enable JavaScript.

These features of Firefox are essential for most webpages to run properly. If the webpage you are trying to access is behaving strangely or appears to be working incorrectly, <click here> to load the page with the default browser configuration."

Done, and done. No removing useful features from the browser, no treating users like morons, but now I have a new, useful, awesome, self-debugging feature which is user friendly, and doesn't require a pesky IT guru's assistance navigating the sea of 10 trillion options.
Ask HN: I want to learn how to code. Can anyone tell me how to start learning?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2699965

Learn Python The Hard Way: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/
Ghost was a good idea but seems to be dead. Last post I can find is from last year. It's design inspired my own service however which was a nice silver lining.
Because the ones loaded with the debt have no say in the matter? You might as well say to your kids; welcome to involuntary indentured servitude (hint: this has another name).
Upvote for dinosaur lasers alone.
It was eye-opening for me too. The relevant chapter in the novel is great.

Up until then I'd been taught to keep meetings on agenda for a different reason: it keeps things moving along at a decent clip. Without an agenda, most discussions wander off into irrelevancies. With an agenda the Chair can say "that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing X which is in the agenda. Consider submitting it for the next meeting". Bam, you've just saved 20 minutes of chatter.

The first meeting I ever chaired lasted for about 4 or 5 hours. It was, in practice, a social get together. The minutes reflected that we decided basically nothing. By the end of my time in a chairman role I aimed for all meetings to conclude in 45 minutes and I was a maniac about sticking to the agenda. And you know what? It worked. It really worked.
Linux 3.10 - Linux Kernel Newbies [released]
How would you have Firefox "handle" this, exactly?
It just isn't innovative. It has a special font and layout, but it's still just paragraphs of text. Neocities is guilty of this as well. They did add a promise of privacy and commitment, but giving someone a textbox to write in just can't really be improved any further.
Good point. I guess to be perfectly relevant to me, it would be a mix of technology entrepreneurship and stuff related to that (languages, tools, platforms, etc.) as well as some mind-expanding CS stuff, and finally the kinds of maker projects that one might find on hackaday.

I think what I'd really like though, is not so much the hard-core tech content (audio is not good for that), but just to get good portraits of technically creative minds, their ideas, and their stories.

Hackers focus on the the "how" and "what" of technology, but rarely the "why". The story of the idea itself, and its relation to the creator's life, is left untold. Non-hackers trying to write about technology struggle to find the human story, because they don't really grok what the technology is or what that person's contribution has really been. There's got to be some way to tell these stories.
Implementation isn't the only cost of features. You need to test them so they don't break. Features can be a burden for the codebase and removal can lead to many edge cases becoming unnecessary. A magnitude of features can overwhelm users, especially occasional users. They steal attention from other features that you may find more important.

And the most important point here: This feature really is broken as of today. Nobody can persuade me that they use it on their main browsers. I don't believe them.
It seems that everyone says yes. On the other hand, programming requires a pretty special way of thinking. Given that brain tends to be less malleable at 35 that it is at 18 it may be harder to catch up. Not undoable though.
Could you be talked into Apache or Modified BSD?

Comedy answer: WTFPL (though nobody likes that guy).
"Note that we are not using Ruby 1.9.x due to its reliance on threads, which cannot be ported directly using Emscripten." - https://github.com/replit/emscripted-ruby
I totally agree with this statement. 100%.
I did it and so can you! At age 33, I switched to technology (not programming) from a totally unrelated field (with three degrees in this unrelated field). Late last year I learnt PHP and SQL on my own and with Twitter Bootstrap, I launched a data analytics heavy web service that is being used by about 1,000 users.

My suggestion, start and keep it simple. If you are interested in web development, pick up the simplest and easiest languages and learn the basics. Pickup a Sitepoint or Head First book in that language.

Find problems in your unrelated career that could be solved by web service and create solution. Launch it, introduce your workplace to it, use it as your portfolio. If not, solve a personal itch, launch it and find users who have the same itch.

In any case, you will have a site for your personal portfolio to go out and get some freelance work or looks for job.
This is a great idea, but should probably be simpler for the average user. Eg "You have JS off, which will break some websites. Click here to turn it on. The simple option you used in the past to toggle this has gone. Click here to find out how to toggle it now"
Yes, this is perfectly viable and reasonable. Best of luck to you!

Consider this blog for example:
http://grannycoder.blogspot.com.au/
It needed a war in the US, man, not elsewhere...
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I honestly don't perceive many mental effects from caffeine at all, besides jitters if I have too much, so I much prefer to use alcohol as the example.

The majority of people have felt the effects of alcohol, and most of those have been properly drunk at some point - so they know what it's like to take something which profoundly and very noticeably affects their consciousness.

If a drinker says "I just don't understand the appeal in taking drugs", the implication is that there's some property common to illegal drugs that alcohol doesn't share. There's not; the only characteristic common to all illegal drugs is that they alter consciousness, and they absolutely share that characteristic with legal substances like alcohol, caffeine, etc.

The argument is not meant to equate LSD with caffeine; just to demonstrate that taking illegal drugs is not some categorically different thing to taking legal drugs. Once you break down that distinction, what's left to argue about is the pros and cons of each individual substance, which is IMO a Good Thing.
Agreed. I prefer all my content at a URL and server that I control. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/YourWordsAreWasted.aspx
Err... I just opened up Excel (2002 since that is all I have at work), selected a cell, clicked on the SUM button (sure it uses the mathematical symbol for sum but if you hover over it, it says SUM), and then was able to click and drag (or CRTL + click for nonconsecutive cells) to select cells for the sum. This is all via the GUI. I'm not sure how this is hidden. Heck, I did this in a Japanese version of Office which I can't read.

Is this different in Office 2010 or any of the newer versions of Office? I mostly use LibreOffice and even there it has the same "all GUI" functionality.
i find that theory to be unlikely to be true, because its usually not the smart guys but the buff guy that gets the prettiest girls (at least, that is the cultural belief).
You sound like you have depression.

Depression is treatable. See a doctor as soon as possible.

Pick up the phone.

Right now.

Pick up the phone and call a doctor. Make an appointment. For today if possible.

Right now.

Once you've done that, call a help line. Immediately.

Depression is treatable. You are not alone. It can and does get better. There is no need to suffer.
I belong to a non-profit carshare, and that shit adds up fast, especially if you want a car for a whole day.
Ghost just had a successful Kickstarter last month that raised ~200k. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-.... Not sure how you missed that. It's on the first page of Google results.
I am not the same boat as your, couple of years younger and recently started with php. Well I am not there yet, one month in to my serious attempt (I have tried several time not-too-seriously), I can say and feel that its definitely possible to learn to code in a single language in a reasonable time.

I think it boils down to your attitude towards it and how much you are motivated to learning. I spend only about 1-2 hours every other day. One of the mistakes I made was trying to decide which language to learn first, I would say it matter very little; the reason I decided to try PHP (despite having many naysayers), because of huge size of its community, easy access to free materials on the web and get any kind of help I want to and also because how relatively easy it is to learn PHP. I also looked in to other programming languages a bit (code snippets) and general impression I get is that once you have a good understanding of one programming language its very easy to pick up other programming language (yes, even with php), because despite its differences the general idea behind most programming language is the same.

I would also spend a week or so to learn git/github even if your are coding by yourself and learning very rudimentary stuff.

I would say go for it, stop wasting time deciding which language to learn, pick one and jump to it.
2014 year of smartphone camera disruption
I'm 32 this month. Similar situation, but about a year into studying part-time.

I'm looking very seriously at the Immersive Tech Schools that claim "12 weeks to being employable". No idea how well it can work out for me... but here's where I started:

http://www.quora.com/Hacker-School
I've never taken LSD, but as I understand it:

1) It may impair your ability to operate a boat

2) It may impair your ability to swim

3) In many/most Asian countries, getting caught with drugs is taken about as seriously as gunning down a convent full of nuns and five-year-old orphans would be treated here in the US

4) It may impair your ability to talk your way out of situation (3) above after the authorities rescue you from situations (1) and/or (2)

Clearly Harris wasn't afraid of any of these consequences, so that makes him either much braver than I am, or much dumber. He doesn't seem dumber.
Weak Dependencies
My big issue with Medium is branding. With Svbtle, you could atleast use your own domain name to link to your articles. With Medium, you always see the same medium.com domain and the same black-on-beige background.

There's no sense of identity. How often do people read articles by the same author on Medium? How often do people remember who wrote an article?
>You think the German intelligence bugs embassies of other countries (and the UNO ??) and has secret deals wiht Google, Apple etc.??

Yes, I do. Further, I think friendly intelligence agencies have data sharing agreements to get around laws against domestic spying.
Design Trend: Long Shadow Design
Thanks. Interesting concept, I'll check it out.
here's an excellent paper on hole punching/nat traversal http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/p2pnat/
$450 Apple MacBook Pro (5,5) Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz 13" 128GB SSD (2009)
Selling my Macbook Pro - very good condition, Apple MacBook Pro (5,5) Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz 13" 128GB SSD (2009) $450, includes working everything, iLife, laptop case, charger and a smile! Located in NYC, will also be in LA + SF shortly if anyone in those cities is interested and wants to see before purchase. Msg me if interested.
This looks very relevant to what I'm looking for. Thanks!
Snowden didn't 'make up' these slides. These are government slides. I would trust them over what the government is telling you now if only because the government decided to outright tell you nothing prior to Snowden revealing this information.

Whenever you want to know the truth, just go to original sources instead of someone's 'interpretation' of it.
Yes, you can. Just go for it!

I got it when I was 30 years old and you know what? I use the programming skills I have now plus the knowledge aquired in my previous job. The result is a programmer who also is a specialist in X or a X specialist who can develop software in this field.
Really nice post indeed, I am myself looking forward to try this approach in a few months when I get back to Brazil.
Yes, but for any such reference frame if you know the distance between the observer and A and B, then after observing both A and B you can still deduct the true chronological order.
But I get the parent's point now, for our purpose of observation there is no point figuring out this "true chronological" order anyway since a civilization could have achieved space flight 100,000 years after Big Bang but is at a distance so far away from us that the information may NEVER reach us due to universe expanding.
Actually, it's called coding them myself, but even then I'd rather do that in C than with several layers of abstraction (coding in javascript for a XUL interface or whatever that is -- let me know how startup and runtime performance works out for you when you have 50 of them and 50 tabs open).
Another real & interesting source: "The Language of the Third Reich," by Victor Klemperer (philologist, brother of the renowned conductor, he flew away from Nazi Germany). This is more relevant than 1984 because it is the real thing.
This will obviously receive a lot of hate from the tech community.

Fortunately they are the 1%. For everyone else in the world, this is a welcomed change. Most people don't even know what JavaScript is.
Yeah, strafing and walking backwards at least you can do. How would you crouch and go prone for example?
And I wonder how good you would be able to aim with Omni, that's gonna be a deciding factor.
Didn't gnome3 taught us a valuable lesson on dumbing things down on the expectation that users are dumb/can't read?
Firefox v25 completely breaks plugins.clickToPlay option
Or get a few more Pis and run Tahoe or Ceph ...
I really wish Paul had not used that word. "Bitch" is a deeply sexist word, even when it is applied to males. I realize its use has gained a certain currency and there is a corresponding desensitization to it, and I think this is highly regrettable. To me it's as offensive as "nigger".
If everyone believes in different rights, what's the point?

Anyway, what's the purpose of rights? Is it to give a sanction for violence to yourself when you think you deserve it? If you are not using violence, but do a conversation, then it is only reason that you use, not particular rights.
FreeBSD begins process to support secure boot
Knowledge >>>>>..n Degree
Well, my place of work uses google drive exclusively. That's 60.000 people less paying office licenses for Microsoft...
> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues?

Maybe because most people can see, that while governments are not perfect, they are a net benefit?

I pay some sum of money into a pot, and in return someone comes and takes away my rubbish every week, and gets rid of it some correct way that I don't have to worry about (and that is incidentally also not the cheapest way). When I go to the shop to buy milk, I don't have to worry that its been watered down, or that its not really the same brand as on the label, because some authority has taken care of that for me already. There must be dozens of more examples of things that are beneficial for everyone, and are just never ever going to get accomplished any other way, apart from some central authority using money from a common fund.
STUN[1] does a very similar thing, including some trickery to get through all kinds of plastic boxes messing with your packets.

AeroFS[2] is another, interesting approach. It's basically a dropbox clone where all data remains on the user's computer. Transfers are encrypted with TLS and tunneled through the company's servers.

Another interesting thing might be Opera Unite[3]. It's an in-browser web server that can be souped up using various extensions like photo sharing, games or chat. As far as I know its NAT traversal is somewhat limited, though.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Traversal_Utilities_for...
[2] https://aerofs.com/
[3] http://unite.opera.com/applications/
The types of posts on Medium coincidentally and conveniently match the interests of the typical HNer. (fighting adversity, never giving up your dreams, changing flawed systems, etc.)
As a Firefox user, I feel like most of the people complaining are Chrome users just looking to pick a fight.

Hey, Chrome folks, Firefox has this great thing called NoScript. I realize Chrome doesn't have that, so you have to manually disable/enable JavaScript. We just use NoScript, as we have for years, which does a lot more. Firefox users don't rely on the "Disable JavaScript" option, nor ever did.

This is a nonissue, but continue to make it more than it is.