skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They should also be suggesting straight up data validation before sticking anything in the db. No reason to let things get that far if you're expecting a number and they give you garbage.
you have been behaviour-tracked!
Ask HN: How many cigarettes do you smoke per day?
If any smoker-hacker is out there, please let other smoker-hacker know who many cigarettes you smoke per day
Not to be a grammar/spelling nazi, but "scarse" should be spelled "scarce". (I suppose you could say it's just another wordoid though.)

The results are nice.
As a musician you get this all the time as well... the songs you're most proud of play to deafening silence while the songs that could never be said to have been inspired leave the house on their feet, shedding tears and yodeling.

People in groups may feel warm&fuzzy&nice but until we can get the same kind of bandwidth between our respective heads as we can inside our heads all group consciousness will remain anathema for excellence.

For intelligence I go to be by myself or seek out the company of other specialists.
Works for me (in the india).
I agree with you 100% there - utter clap-trap

I've never been more appalled by the utter disregard for journalistic competence that a quick browse through this sites archives shows. Mutant dogs are among the more plausible of the articles, a quick list of the shite I managed to find:

Tunguska meteor was effectively T-boned out of the way of high population densities by Alien do-gooders

Direct and two-way communication with the "netherworld" has been established and preceeded information such as the recent "terrorist bombings" of planes in Russia

A child prodigy began reading/painting/storytelling at the age of two, and enters shamanic dreamtime to preach to crowds about his days as a Martian....

Many more unidentified and bizarre animals

The "untold" history of WW2 including much unpublished data suggesting the persecution of the Russian state and it's citizens at the hands of the Allies, including an alternative theory suggesting Poland instigated concentration camps for German civilians and were a Fascist state that deserved invasion by Hitler's army

A piece titled "Hot Chocolate" which was just a dozen or so pictures of scantily clad black women who are vaguely well known in western culture ("hollywood starlets" or some such)

.... seriously the list goes on! I'm not saying ALL of this is untrue, but I'm willing to say I wouldn't wipe my arse with anything this (obvious) propaganda whore /could/ put in print.
Also, if someone's entering something in the text input, "random wordoids" is not the choice they want. You should probably have a radio list of choices, and select another one when they type something in the box.

And I'll point out that it's spelled "scarce". It's not obvious what that column means even without having to decipher bad spelling.
Welcome to the Real World (Of Large Corporations), Dustin...
Update a Record with Animation effect using JSP and jQuery.
ECMAScript 5 Strict Mode, JSON, and More
Userfly: Every Click You Make, I'll Be Watching You
I like it. It wasn't immediately obvious to me what some of the features did though - the search button and the unique/common graph next to it for example. I'm also a little disapointed it won't generate names in Klingon - after all, it offers to! :)
great work you have done
"The reason most large companies have bad design is because they are run poorly from the top, with philosophies that force the entire company to behave like its lowest common denominator."

Quite a leap, Dustin, from a company that lost $2 billion last year to "most large companies". Many large companies are in fact run very well.

The biggest difference between small and large companies in getting excellent work done? (Broad generalization, of course...) In small companies, problems are more technical; in large companies, problems are more people. As your emailer pointed out, a team of 200 can tackle almost any technical problem, getting it done with all the people and politics is another story.

That's why I've always preferred small companies. It's a lot easier to focus on the task at hand.
Very nice, I've been looking for something like this that actually works and isn't trivial. I got some really nice results.

First (nitpick point): You've got a misspelling in the page: scarse instead of "scarce" underneath the bars that show frequency.

The UI on the right is a bit confusing and busy. I suggest removing all the text around each of the options. I might then put them at the top of the screen with the "go" button. Move the descriptive text to a little popup (more info/?/help/whatever) link next to each of the options and shove all the text in there. Something like:

Languagae (more info): []English []Spanish []French []Italian

is going to be nice and clean.

My gut feeling is that most people are not going to read the text right away and they are just going to play with it and see what happens. This is why I suggest a clean UI so they can easily play, and give them ways to discover what the options do. You don't want to put speed bumps in front of users and force them to comprehend everything out of the gate.

Another usability point: I got stuck once I typed a pattern in. I tried to delete the pattern (to go back to random mode), but the site kept using the pattern. I then realized that instead of deleting the pattern, I had to change the dropdown menu to be "Create random wordroids". This leaves the text in the pattern box but does revert to the random setting. I would re-work this with some ajax or something so that it's not so confusing.
Another interesting demonstration of the fact that behind a lot of crappy companies are teams of talented individuals.

I've had the personal displeasure of booking tickets on AA.com many times in the past year or so. It was so bad, in fact, that every time, I had to call the company to change some details here and there. And uniformly, the people they have working the phones are fantastic. Friendly, helpful in a going-out-of-their-way-to-be-helpful sort of way, and clearly a lot better than the system they're a part of. This letter that Dustin got gives me more confidence that there's something to that observation.
Without the good weather, either, I think..? That's a bit of a downside, no?

I like warm weather... I'd hate to live somewhere where it goes down to -20C in the winter... and a 25C maximum in the summer isn't exactly thrilling.

I guess you just can't have it all!...
Haskerl = Haskell + Perl
First Facebook Verified Marketing App for Fan Pages
This is a really nice naming app. I've looked at a lot of them and this has produced some of the best names I've ever seen. Congrats!
I think it depends on what you want to do. If you want to work at a company there is no better way to get an in, then to do an internship that that company and show that you are really good and add value. This applies to both young startups and large companies.

At the same time there are some nice advantages to interning at a large company with an established internship program. 1) You'll meet other interns who are really good developers from all over the country, so if you want to launch a startup in the future you'll have a good talent pool. 2) You'll learn more about the corporate culture and procedures of larger companies, which will give you insight into the types of things to look out for when your young startup becomes a larger company. 3) You'll have a better idea for sure whether you want to do startups or corporate jobs in the future.

It doesn't sound like you interned at a company with an established internship program, as most companies with good internship programs use them as a recruiting and pre-screening process for hiring full time employees, so they try to give you something engaging to do.

Of course on the other hand interning at a small startup might give you more of an opportunity to release code to the world really early in the process. But you'll definitely have less potential other interns to hang out with, and may have to work as hard as the founders to be respected.
You're right of course. Except perhaps that quite a few people won't bother with a yearly support contract, if the software is so polished that it doesn't need vendor support.

I;d just like to clarify one thing. I don't think that open source software sucks, I think much of it is excellent, I just think that there is an inherent tension that tends to pull it towards suckage in a purely commercial market.
I had an over the phone experience with an AA rep recently, and I totally agree. Very helpful, smart and courteous.
A feature I would like is to be able to filter out words according to whether they're scarce, rare, unique or common.
Lying at work can be good for your business
"Finally, a note on version numbers: we're referring to this as Chrome 2, but that's mainly a metric to help us keep track of changes internally. We don't give too much weight to version numbers and will continue to roll out useful updates as often as possible."

A note on common sense: Give a little more weight to version numbers - this should be a new minor version number, given the changes. Sigh
You might want to kill that typo in your second line of text: "If this is of interested, please join us at our next event or in one of the online communities listed."(Assuming someone with access to the site will come here.)
Don't wait to express your inner entrepreneur
At the AA annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Mr. Arpey said the company is "taking efforts to improve customer service". I think this is a shortsighted goal. AA should take efforts to improve the whole customer experience.

Yes yes yes yes yes. "Customer service" is the backstop to the rest of the customer experience; when a customer has to go to "customer service" to get something done, every other department should see it as their failure.

My father recently took a trip on United, and when he was checking in at the airport, the check-in system asked him if he wanted to change his seat. So he did. And after it was too late for him to change back, he discovered that because he had changed into a first-class seat, he was being charged an additional $150.

Now, to United's credit, someone at the airport told him who he could email to ask for the charge to be reversed, and when he sent that email he got a prompt response along the lines of "since you did sit in that first-class seat you're not eligible for a refund, but we'll give you your money back anyway". But wouldn't it have been better for everyone concerned if United had designed the workflow on those kiosks so that even a sleep-deprived 70-year-old man in the world's second-busiest airport would not have made that mistake in the first place?
Like you mention, I cannot understand how a problem like this that has been solved gets such a bad solution.

For those, like me, who are slaves to mysql for one reason or another, this is what I do.

1) mysql_real_escape_string
2) sprintf

I usually mix the two. Here's an example.

$format = "UPDATE `Users` SET `user_password` = '%s' WHERE `user_id` = %d";

$query = sprintf($format, mysql_real_escape_string($password), mysql_real_escape_string($user_id) );

Techincally, I don't have to do mysql_real_escape_string on the $user_id variable, since it is not based on user input and sprintf will automatically convert it to 0 if it isn't a number already (and there are no user_ids that equal 0 or 1 in this particular table)

(Before someone asks, all the passwords are salted and encrypted using SHA-256. Although, now that I think about it, they are in a binary format, which makes me wonder if I should use %b instead of %s... and since its in binary format already, I really don't need mysql_real_escape_string for the password either. Ugh )
Test the strength of your password policy
Ah, what I meant to say was "The reason big companies with bad design are the way they are is because they are run poorly from the top, with philosophies that force the entire company to behave like its lowest common denominator."
Haven't RTFA yet, but want to answer the question posed in the headline: yes. Passionate creatives are often very protective of their idea and unless an exceptional corporate culture exists (Google 20% projects back in Goog's glory days, etc...) most of them that I've met would be loath to turn over something they love to the commitee.
There is no universally accepted definition for rape, so that's a flawed statistic. As well, police infrastucture and local culture may drastically sway how often incidences are reported.
Great article! John Gruber makes a very similar point in his talk "Auteur Theory of Design" [1]. His thesis is that "the quality of any piece of work always approaches that of the decider (i.e the autuer)".

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk3UcgbbmxQ
Yeah, I was a fan of http://domainpigeon.com/ for a while, but that got a bit too restricted for me (as it became more commercial), not to mention a bit unwieldy to browse through. Bookmarked!
i think your are twitter addicted that why all your demos are twitter base
I'm on a panel at this one in NYC soon
http://ultralightstartups.com/newyork/twitter-based-business...
There are many government grants and loans for small businesses and startup. At my startup, all our rnd salaries are essentially covered by a grant.

For companies that have revenues under 500k, the tax rate is only 22%.
Treating music as something bigger than 'just' entertainment is pretension IMHO, just as treating wine as more than a drink or chocolate as more than food. That's not to say we don't find greater value in them, but at the end of the day it's an artificial value, an indulgence.

(I say this as a musician who loves both wine and chocolate, and who would be utterly miserable if denied any one of those three things.)
Did anyone expect anything else? My default assumption's that behind corporate websites are more-or-less talented people stifled by corporate bureaucracy.
Wow, it's like domain pigeon only way better. Awesome.
and does anyone know about companies that look for foreign software developers?
xmonad is significantly shorter than wmii. According to http://blip.tv/file/324976 wmii has aroun 6k lines of source while xmonad spots a mere 0.5k (in version 0.5, but more recent versions like 0.9 should still be in the territory of 1k loc.)
I think weather is a big concern.
OSCON 2007 - Simon Peyton-Jones - A Taste of Haskell Part I [video]
Slides at http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/haskell-tutori...
Before flaming: Please note the date.
Will MySpace and Facebook Help Us Live Longer and Better?
Do you think communicating on MySpace and Facebook will help us live longer? Take the Poll on Ecumen's Changing Aging blog and let us know what you think!
Post visa issues that may hinder your entry to your immigration destination
Created new my profile http://tiggin.com/foxscan
Ask HN: Why do dead posts contribute to karma?
One of my posts just got killed but karma I earned is still in effect. I think it should be fixed to reduce karma as well.

Edit: a little clarification. I think it's possible to abuse HN by submitting any crap, voting up with a few other accounts and earn karma this way.
That plan is a bit too idyllic from my experience. Rarely does the client of a small web-based application possess the ability to conceptualize the application based on a specification -- more often then not they will need to see it partially built to finally "get it."

Given that there needs to be some iterative process between steps 1 and 2. Something like define scope -> identify features -> develop -> reassess scope.
Nokia 5800 Theme: McLaren F1 Team
You mean the real world of crappy large corporations. Plenty of large companies are not run this badly. At least I hope they're not.
Summarised - the Messy Truths:

1. You need to do a lot of testing
Measure measure measure ...
The problem is, the data tells
you stuff you really don't like.
Deal with it.

2. It's all about relationships in the team.
To build anything great, you have to
deal with a lot of really annoying people.

3. Reinvent what you're doing
Change is hard, but it's essential to
stay on top.

4. The importance of morale
Frustrating things happen, and you need
to deal with keeping the morale high.

5. Focus and obsession.
No fun! No vacation, no going to the bar,
no goofing off. The core challenge is:
How do you make it fun!
You're in this for the long haul.

To build a successful company you're in a race, but it's not a sprint.

It's an endurance race.
"Another interesting demonstration of the fact that behind a lot of crappy companies are teams of talented individuals."

I agree. I've worked in situations almost exactly like the one described in the reply, and at least one well-known public website redesign that many readers of HN have seen.

When I first saw Dustin's rant a few days ago I just shook my head and said "he's probably never worked in a design agency that serves fortune 500 companies where this sort of stuff happens". The amount of political willpower and organizational strength required to pull off a total redesign in most fortune 500 companies or governmental agencies is tantamount to moving mountains. These are the type of organizations and client/agency relationships where the font size on a single button on a form in a "contact us" page can be debated for weeks, where talented designers sit in boardroom conferences till 2AM listening to teams of hundreds of people all throw in their 2 cents instead of actually working on the design that's being discussed.

The thing (that you allude to) about the design agencies that get these kinds of contracts that's interesting is that they are full of exactly that: talented fantastically creative individuals. And when a team like the one I worked on finishes a massive redesign that gets covered across the web, there's a feeling of utter failure because the final product that makes it out is never even close to what could have been. Corporate politics reduce it to a mere shadow of that. At the same time, a feeling of relief and accomplishment for having just finished the damned thing and navigated the barbed wire mess of insanity that it takes to deliver such a thing.

Next time you see a designer with a multinational bank, airline, consumer products & goods company, automotive company, government agency, etc, in their portfolio, ask about the emotional scars ;).
Alternative-energy markets builds some VC momentum
State v. Craigslist: Showdowns and ho-downs
An even better question would be if they had the means to discover, capture, and document his frustration. You can't fix something you can't measure.
It's nice to know that someone's watching the watchmen watching the watchmen, at least in some countries. By the way, when the first judge's ties to copyright industry broke in the news I was just howling. This is a great show.
Out of curiosity, what is your experience in producing web content for a site that serves dozens if not hundreds of business requirements at any given time?

EDIT: at the scale of a site like AA.com or any global company?
Ha, that's what I'm working on right now at Frogmetrics.com. We're a YC-funded company, and our goal is to try and help some of these enterprises understand customers better so they can better the customer experience.
tiggin is clone of twitter
I think dead posts ought to be subtracted from karma:-)
Here is a new comment (with links etc) on "Perl best practices"

http://www.dagolden.com/index.php/199/time-for-second-editio...
Steve Blank: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 2
Still doesn't make it relevant to this discussion, though.
Maths vs. physics view of the world ;)
I think the whole thing would be hardly worth the effort to write something to manage the karma.
I completely agree. I love my current start up and I would never turn it open to committee unless I was able to control where it goes.
Tunecore - On-demand music cd delivery by Amazon.com
The interface is weird. The form fields are on the right and the submit button is at the top left, so you have to move your mouse across the screen for each query.
What about uranium depletion? Never mind how safe we can make it, or how cost-effective... neither of these things matter if we run out, and I can't find a definite, comprehensive study on how long it could last. Projections range from a decade to seven decades using current technology, or longer than the life of the sun using breeder reactors and seawater-uranium extraction technology. Considering it is essentially nonrenewable (breeder reactors don't create new uranium, per se, just extend the lifespan of the stuff we've got) this is an important question to ask.

Does anyone know of a good, comprehensive study on this? My google-fu is weak on this topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_depletion#Pessimistic_u...
I'd examine relocating the buttons, or adding more to the top. I tended to just use the Go button over and over, instead of moving the cursor down to the Next button.
I think better to report the numbers per US household instead of per capita to give a realistic idea of your share. There are roughly 100 Million US households so for the $3.5 Trillion budget = 3.5 X 10^12/10^8 =
$35,000/household
That is a number I can understand
Hulu is blocked. So you get much more done.
Also note, PhDs with a job offer get a multi-year year income tax exemption.
Are you confusing the video with the live, interactive demo? You need Windows or Java for the latter, as far as I can tell.
We are not a degrading culture of hackers. There is a reason why there is very minimal voting down of items. Its because if you see you have a bad article, don't submit it.

If your article just died, then grow and learn from it. Don't demoralize your self over it. If we give you negative points, its demoralizing you.

Also, you should edit your topic with Ask HN:Why do dead posts contribute to karma?

It gets more notice that way.
Any news on a version for Mac?
OpenTable IPO lifts hopes on stock exchange
I talked to a fellow Swede a few years ago, that worked in Canada for a while. He described it "as Sweden, but it works." IMHO, that sounds good.

(But the situation depended a lot on where in Canada you lived.)
That's becouse old Polish had Singular, Plural and SomethingInBetweenWhichICantFindEnglishWordFor.

The word is "dual" for the marked number between "singular" and "plural." Some other Indo-European languages, and some languages from other language families, distinguish singular, dual, and plural. I like languages like Chinese with no marked number at all in nouns, so words don't change form as you count things.
Good results both in English and Italian
Crack is not good for you.
Isn't karma lazy-loaded anyway? Sometimes it is hard to spot instantaneous changes in karma even for forum activity that is documented to change karma. Obsessing that much about karma probably is counterproductive. Just look for something better to submit, and learn from the examples of the best submissions of long-time submitters.
What I meant was spam rather than (slightly) irrelevant posts like mine. You can post any crap, give it a few votes from different accounts and earn karma that way.
Because Canada with its points based system of immigration became a sausage fest.
Tesla now worth half GM's value
I like it but it wasn't immediately obvious how to use it. Perhaps have something pointing at the right bar?
This is actually one of the best intros to Unicode (and string encoding in general) I've seen. If the rest of the book ends up being of this quality, I'll be pretty pumped.
Thanks, but that's not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for the career sections of startups...you gave job boards for start ups.
Adding the string ' (1993)' would improve the title.

P.S. For the incurably curious, like me, author's current blog at http://blogs.verilab.com/partain/

P.P.S. Nice Unix recipe for a temporary fixed-size filesystem: http://blogs.verilab.com/partain/2009/04/this-much-and-no-mo...
I also love how he uses the "Etc" ligature. This feels exceptionally well-done.