skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The New York Times offers you a digital experience that reads like a newspaper."

I think this pretty much sums up why newspapers have problems. They aren't looking ahead, they're looking back. They're trying to squeeze an old-fashioned newspaper into a new format instead of using the possibilities and limitations that the new medium offers. Yes, they talk a bit about video but except for that it's just reinventing the old ways.

Instead they should focus on citizen journalism, user interaction, one-to-one communication, personalisation and all the other possibilities that the web offers.

It reminds me of the old Henry Ford quote "If I asked customers what they wanted they would say a faster horse"

It looks like The New York Times is busy making a faster horse.

Edit: Just read schwanksta's comment, and maybe I was a bit too triggerhappy in my criticism :-)
The 100-Year Alarm Clock
Can you imagine how irrelevant having a bitTorrent client on a phone is to most people?
Ok, a few things...

1) Maybe I'm failing to understand the meaning of "instrumentals", but the two times I actually clicked "play" on one of those songs, I heard songs which a) had electric/electronic instruments (e.g. electric guitar and synths) - so "instrumental" does not mean "acoustic", and b) had voices (the first a rock tune, the second a rap song).

So what is an "instrumental"?

2) I'm not trying to be harsh, but there's a difference between "looks/acts crappy" and "is unusable". Unfortunately this site appears to be the latter. The design is currently so bad that it's hard to be even tempted to interact with it - let alone consider using it properly...
This is really good. I like the idea of using statistically relevant answers in lieu of absolute answers. Like in this case, 75% of the time, Linux servers may be the best type of server, but there is always that other 25% of time where there are exceptions.

Reminds me of using the principle of mediocrity proposed by physicist Alex Vilkenkin to make cosmological predictions when dealing with things like inflationary theory. If there is a bell curve for some constant we are trying to establish, we predict this constant will be somewhere in the middle, chopping of the two extremes at both ends. Thus, say the theory is some version of Guth's inflationary theory, and it predicts a constant that varies over some spectrum. Thus we predict we will see that constant to lie somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. Thus, if we observe or measure that constant to be somewhere around where we had predicted it, that lends weight to the theory we were working from. The idea being that we live in an average world, e.g. in an "average" inflationary bubble, hence the principle of mediocrity. The key point is that we CAN actually use statistics to make predictions about the world, and need not have to always make precise predictions, which, in some versions of string and/or inflationary theory, one cannot, simply because of the infinite number of bubbles in inflation or the near-infinite number of possible string theories (10^500 values for the false vacuum I think I read somewhere).

Anyway the idea that there is no one right answer to a question that works everywhere seems sound in some cases.
Sony CEO: "If we had gone with Open Technology ... we would have beaten Apple"
"Professionalism does not mean rigid formalism. Professionalism does not mean adhering to beaurocrasy. Professionalism is honor. Professionalism is being honest with yourself and disciplined in the way you work. Professionalism is not letting fear take over."

That may be his definition but from my experience, when I hear people talking about professionalism, they're usually either using it as a way to complain about someone else or to boost their own ego. I haven't known many people to think of professionalism as defined above. Seems like more often than not, its used as leverage to argue for exactly what he says it does not mean.
In some limit cases, that's true, but I've literally heard the following two questions asked in the last week (one directly to me, one in the same room I was in; these are not FoF cases):

What is SCOM?
What is MRTG?

In both cases, knowing nothing about the domain gets you exactly the answer you want. I think far more often than it doesn't, a relatively naive query to Google with a followup query or two with certain words excluded will get you what you need.
Justin.tv: Hundreds of channels, nothing on.
So very sick of hearing from/about this guy. Yes, 37 is lumpy like oatmeal to you - I get it. The only thing of value I've gotten from this man's existence is unfortunately slightly less respect for V.S. Ramachandran, whose writings I greatly enjoy but who didn't seem very skeptical when testing Daniel in the television documentary "Brainman."

Although I would have a somewhat morbid interest in seeing a roundtable discussion with him, Steve Pavlina, and Tim Ferriss. They could make it a podcast and call it The Hyperbolic Chamber.
By far the worst consequence of Twitter's popularity is so many authors feeling the need to slip in lines like this: "Think of it like Twitter for your organs."
Stories like the above are way too common.

Despite how fantastic the tool is, git's biggest weakness is it's own opacity and steep learning curve. github's real magic is in indirectly getting git out of the way of the common coder. Sometimes it's through the GUI, and sometimes it's with helpful guides.

I suppose, when the core audience and developers are linux kernel hackers, usability is not going to be a priority.
All of the keynotes from RailsConf 09 posted online
There is some really great stuff here from first look through - including an interesting Tim Ferris keynote.
Computational AI in that one tries to compute a top-down model of the mind.
Answering my own question: Cognitive control, also known as executive processing and Executive function are I believe what this article is talking about.

This game claims to train this ability ( but I cannot vouch for its effectiveness) http://games.lumosity.com/brain_shift.html
I don't think your first paragraph follows (I think you can certainly contest every assertion in favor of a position without being illogical), although I agree the style is usually unproductive. I'd rather not get into debating it here, though.

The 'humor' I was referring to wasn't in the article (which is pretty bland) but in the fact that hey, this fits the stereotypical image of a programmer: slightly OCD (nitpicky) and lacking social grace. You'd think we'd be used to it :)
"Stupid people" is a bit harsh and not very accurate. It's more accurate to say that we need more quick answer guides for the less experienced. We were all there at one point in time.
Why would you like his behavior? While clever, isn't the same as having an adult as an employee who looks around to make sure nobody's watching while stealing from you just enough so you won't notice? I wouldn't want somebody like that on my team.
Regarding your last point I suffer from that too.

Well I say suffer: it comes from experience. In the past I used to change minds mid-argument - which just caused confusion and I ended up looking like a complete train wreck. Your right: argue your position hard but dont be scared to change it after the fact (after weighing the evidence).
It's the classic Gut (instant feeling) vs. Head (rationale decision) theory.
It's irrelevant to me too, so I sympathize with this view. Objectively speaking though, BitTorrent seems to have lots of users.

And speaking more generally, I do believe there is a sense of trust that is broken when a customer realizes that a business is intentionally standing in the way of something he or she wants to do. If that something isn't BitTorrent for one user, it could very well be whatever Apple decides to block next month.

Also: the app in question is apparently a remote control for a BitTorrent client running on a real computer, so it might have wider appeal than your question would suggest.
It's a massive difference though. A single software project might go through a few thousand iterations of a complete build, test, development cycle. Some projects probably go through that a week. That's completely different to the average engineering project.

I hate being called a 'software engineer', as it's pretty much nothing like what I do.
The only similarity is that we both "Build stuff".
The SheWee - No Joke...
See "A Farewell to Alms" for a really interesting discussion of the rise of low time-preference individuals in medieval England, and the role this played in fomenting the Industrial Revolution.

Short interview with the author here: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/08/10-questions-for-greg-clark...
I routinely take screenshots of design elements that I like on the web and when brainstorming on some design work I have to do I first check out my small collection.
There's nothing quantum about that. This is just limited knowledge. Composition of such "uncertainty" has no quantum characteristics that I can see, just all classical probability.

Classical probability != quantum.
Agreed. Take Facebook; one of the biggest sites in the world, is changing not so subtly to emulate Twitter.
The best and the brightest (let's say 16%^) are going to go to college because of scholarships, etc. But as to the other 80% of high school graduates? Right now, 65-70% of high school graduates are going to college. That means that 49-54% of the college population isn't "the Best and the Brightest", and can't count on scholarships to anything but lower-tier schools.

While public schools are cheap now, at a tuition increase rate of 6%, those tuitions are doubling every 12 years. At those rates, the tuition of a child born today will be 3.2x current tuition.

We've got to do something, because 70% of the country simply won't be able to afford to send their child to college at those sorts of prices, especially with the earning power advantage disappearing. As it is, you have to plan years in advance for college. Doubling the costs is going to make it impossible for at least some Americans to go to traditional college.

^ - 16% is one or more standard deviations above the mean, which means 1230+ on the old SAT, or 115+ IQ, to give you an idea.
Put it in your terms and conditions / terms of use. A lot of places will do that.

Also, most companies have no problem with logo usage - that said sending them a quick email cant hurt...
I think salesman are often aware of this, and think they're smarter than they really are. They pitch a completely illogical argument to you, you don't fall for it, but they still still think they can explain why buying their product is a good decision.
I don't understand the need for defmulti.

(defmethod my-add ((x integer) (y integer))
(+ x y))

(defmethod my-add ((x string) (y string))
(concatenate 'string x y))

CL-USER(8): (my-add 2 3)
5
CL-USER(9): (my-add "foo" "bar")
"foobar"

Keep in mind you're dispatching on both arguments; the MY-ADD generic function is created for you and it's lurking in memory. You can add :before, :after and :around methods, which will allow you to get a hold of both arguments BEFORE the dispatch method is applied and after in a serial fashion, or AROUND the method dispatch altogether. This allows for stuff like logging, debugging, tracing, method wrapping and augmentation for moving-target type protocols and designs, etc.
"Smart" in this context means "engineering smart", sounds like they lacked some business smarts... There's more than one way to be smart.
I have also accepted that I am not good at designing but I will not accept that I cannot get good at it.

In the last couple of months I've come along decently (working in the few spare hours I have!). I recommend that you narrow down to ONE package, IE Photoshop, and then start doing online tutorials.

There is a wonderful collection available to start with, my favorite place are the *tuts.com sites. psdtuts.com or nettuts.com
Who thinks that this is really an example of thinking better? To me, the kinds of performances that he has produced so far sound more like the performances of memory performers like Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas, who do amazing jobs of memorizing facts the rest of us don't bother memorizing, but who don't get called on to solve tough, real-world problems. How about proposing coming up with an enduring Middle East peace settlement as a paradigm for "thinking better," or at least something with more of a problem-solving aspect, for example developing a proof (or refutation) for the Riemann Hypothesis?
Hulu is fascinating. Watching it (the company) is like Celebrity Deathmatch between Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

My own observations:

1. Content is still king.
2. Hollywood is trying to change (Hulu), but fear limits them (Boxee)
3. Cable companies are the middleman. They are the ones who are the most scared and their existing relationship with Hollywood affects what Hollywood can do.
How do you test each design?
until you love it

Is there any role for user input in your design process?
I don't like the example. Facebook is a master of interactive design, and is pushing the envelope of large-scale AJAX design while remaining surprisingly agile. Twitter is just a utility.
Interesting EULA clause for the Adobe AIR component - don't even think of trying to read your NYT on a Tablet PC unless you are running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition...

"...you may not use an Adobe Runtime on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet and Tablet PC (other than with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than with Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, Internet appliance or other Internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device,"
I don't think they can or want to do revenue sharing with Apple.
I just thought it was an interesting example of derivative technology and design. To me (today at least) this is more interesting than youtube itself.

Also:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I suppose the problem is that if you are browsing, you are stuck.

AngelConf was great.

Sports fans love it because they can rely on someone else in a broadcast umbrella to catch events they may not otherwise be able to see.
8 Photo/Image Gallery Plugins for WordPress
But OSS.
>>What programming language should I learn? C.

What a horrendous answer, no new programmer should start with C in 2009, java or php or python or any damn thing but C and jockeying memory references.
I'm amazed that all answers posted as I post this don't refer to one of pg's key ideas about making a successful start-up:

"4. Understand your users."

http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

I would think that the very most important thing to do in designing a website is to build in usability and user-friendly information architecture, and to have a process to test how well the users like the site for getting their tasks done.

See also

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
> Well, anti-trust cases do depend on evidence of collusion between market participants

And the Taliban only execute gays where there is evidence of homosexuality.

Sorry, the "evidence" bit by itself doesn't make me think that the law is justified.
How about proposing coming up with an enduring Middle East peace settlement as a paradigm for "thinking better,"

Well, Israel is dimpled, and the PLO is round, so I think the ideal two-state solution would look something like a golf ball.
I don't see how that domain sound or looks anything like a swear word in Swedish. The closest thing I can think of is mutta but it's quite a stretch and they aren't pronounced the same at least not in any English accent I can think of.

There are however plenty English words that resemble or is profanity in Swedish, we don't really take notice. Like kiss is the word for urine in Swedish, yet people don't raise eyebrows or giggle (or really notice) when they watch a romantic English movie or anything.
There are a number of good resources on here, but it amazes me that there are no Paul Graham references at all. I don't know about anyone else, but I've found damn near all of Paul Graham's essays incredibly useful over the years. A list of a few of the most relevant ones (bear in mind that most are tech-specific to some degree or another):

http://paulgraham.com/relres.html
http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html
http://paulgraham.com/newthings.html
http://paulgraham.com/die.html
http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
http://paulgraham.com/mit.html
http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html
http://paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html

There are others, but those are a few of my favorites.
It doesn't surprise me that the members of U2 might be "deeply professional". They're a multi-billion dollar media enterprise. For the same reason, it doesn't surprise me that Neko Case once jumped off the stage and punched out a heckler. She made $340,000 of the album before her last, and plowed $300,000 of it back into the band. Of course, she's an artist, not a multi-billion dollar media enterprise.
Dupe
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=563882

The first FYI comment links to a really interesting HN submission on a very interesting blog post debunking this guy. That blog post is much more interesting than this article.

Oh, and 3.14159's comment is also interesting. I enjoy hearing descriptions of the way people think. It seems that the way one thinks is opaque to most people.
Once I used a logo of a auto company on my site. I had the surprise to be told to take it down...otherwise face a lawsuit.
"having accepted that I, for once, am not good at something"

This is an excellent point. I am in the same boat. At a pinch, I can bluff, hack or brute force my way through pretty much anything to do with programming, sysadmin, databases, whatever. Not as fast as an expert, ugly as hell, but it'll work. Mostly, heh.

This doesn't cut it for graphic design, however. When we're talking about the aesthetic appeal of a web site, it needs a real artist, an aesthete, a professional. It needs to be done well, and it needs to be done right - mashing stuff together is not an option. "Ugly but works" is inapplicable and anyway unacceptable.

Know your limitations. The front end is not the back end, and "good enough" is not good enough. Hire a pro, choose them carefully, and get opinions from non-techies before you commit. If you're serious, nothing else will do.
First off I was using one of those chest mounted hart rate monitors to mesure this and I am not dead. Second work = F * D ignores the increase in efficency's that your tendons provide. I can swing 2,000 lb 10 feet at the end of a long cable and not use much energy. However, lifting 600lb .5 secound pause, drop it 18 inches, .5 second pause, lift it is much harder because your tendons can't store as much energy for the next push. But, in running each stride you only need to add enough force to compensate for the inificency of the stride which is far less than the energy needed to lift your body that same distance verticaly.

Still, when you reach the limts on how fast you can move the body you can still aproach the same numbers, a 100kg person running at 10Mph for 60 min can still burn around 1020 calories. But, again your force is not your weight.

However, running involves a lot of inpact strain on the body and tends to lead to long term problems.
{
X x, y;
if (x > y)
return;
// some code ...
}

where X has a destructor. I'm curious if you can do this in Lisp without explicitly calling the destructors (for x and y) in proper places - two places in this example.
* Draw it on paper

* Photoshop

* Send it to the PSD2XHTML guys

* Add DJango template tags
I hate being called a 'software engineer', as it's pretty much nothing like what I do.

Ironically, having studied several engineering disciplines, I feel precisely opposite of this. I want people to understand that building reliable software is an engineering effort.

In my work, I try to balance competing forces and constraints to design reliable, elegant, modular, well-tested components at low cost. Just like practically every other kind of engineering I've ever seen.
:) Metaphorically speaking, of course. That first breakthrough is the best feeling in the world, for sure. I enjoy learning new things, but frustration is part of that process. If anything, frustration is a driving force for me. If everything was easy it wouldn't be worth doing.
Yeah, why not charging? At least 99c? Is not that much...
I've just added the opt out feature as a quick fix to those who object to this superficial website

http://www.hottweeters.com/opt-out/
Firstly, read about design theory. Designers would love to convince you that what they do is magic, but if you read or even browse through books like "The Art of Color" by Johannes Itten or "The Elements of Typographic Style" you'll have a better understanding for the mechanics of establishing a visual style/rhythm, and to me that's the majority of design...establishing a balanced, consistent rhythm.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but a major thesis of the article is that this is effectively not true for C++ (vs C) because the language is so complicated (thus the implementations so inconsistent/subtly incorrect) that it's incredibly difficult to determine exactly what the compiler is going to do with your input (or conversely, determine what in your input caused a given error in your object code.)
Who views the word chaos in a positive light unlike the vast majority of people?

What you are doesn't change the tone of the metaphor you used.
Are these apps that download content to the phone or manage torrents that the users' home pc's are running? If it is the latter, I can see it being very useful for the target demograph.
Google will take the place of Microsoft even on this field :)...
Amazon to Apple: keep your hands off our iPhone Kindle eBook revenue
That'll never sell.

Instead there should be a news site that gives you a brief quiz to determine your political bias, and then serves you biased news stories that agree with your preconceived ideas. It takes a task that people already do by hand, and automates it!
I have gotten good at following tutorials, but I can't make anything original. This might have been made worse when I visited a designer friend of mine at his work place; if the pro spends a whole day on one logo or photo, what hope do I have? life is too short, and my "friend" is affordable ;-)
Newbie Twitter users not sticking around
rubbish.

Apple had style and a slick user interface. AND they used massively restrictive technology until very recently.

Sony made many many errors in the digital market game. Say what you want about Apple they nailed the digital music player market with bullet-like precision.
100% agree, as artists who make money aren't artists anymore. To be a Real™ artist, you have to be so passionate about what you do that you don't make money from your work. The more unprofessional you are, the more of an artist you become.

/sarcasm