skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For Adwords this isn't true if you are somewhat big.

We spend $300,000 a month on AdWords and have a team of 5 people we can talk to at any time.
Ask HN: Graphics creation for games?
Hey guys,

I just began to tinker with Pygame this morning. I have decided to do another hobby project using Pygame to create a nice little 2D game.

I took a look at some 2D games and also some indie games being sold. Most 2D games that are being sold now seem to have their graphics made using 3D programs (guess thats why they look 3D-ly).

Wondering if you guys here are using nice free drawing tools other than Blender (to make cartoonic graphics if not 3D)?
Good points. In response to the "devil could use scripture for his benefit" I'd argue:

What tool did God give only to humans to bring them closer to Him? Rationality. Thus, who would want you to suppress this but God's opponent Satan.

What does this irrational faith look like? It's like the child's faith in the easter bunny, juvenile and hollow, the kind that will not stand up to scrutiny. Is this the kind of faith that God intended for you? Did He want you to simply claim things that you do not fully believe? Did He want your prayers to be lies or mere wishes?

All I am arguing is that God wants your faith to come from his greatest gift to you, which is Reason, not from the part of you that can easily lie to yourself about things, for that is what Satan is trying to harness.

Satan knows that faith is difficult and knows that you would happily take the easy way out. He knows that you would enjoy patting yourself on the back for being more faithful than others and for enjoying the resulting feelings of superiority. It is Satan's victory over God when your faith is shallow and self-serving.

Only a solid, adult faith that has been honed by every ounce of your rationality can help you get closer to god by avoiding the various traps laid by Satan.
Maybe it's simpler to group the population like

1) People who find Twitter fun/useful & like it

2) People who don't

Both groups are OK.

"Twitter is what you make out of it" - Guy kawasaki
Getting Started with x264 - Video Encoding
It seems like so-called project management is mostly ideas adapted from the the great eastern traditions - yoga, buddhism, zen and eastern way to live in general. You can get almost any old book and you will find something called 'the way' - 'do'. Aikido is a good example, Bushido, and related teachings.

btw, I admire those genius who drawing users-guides and promote projects in anime style. =)
Well, sure. Next time when they silently install, say, an MP3 blocker in your Firefox, let's also applaud all the troubles they went through coding it.

Just in case if it's not clear - what makes it a rogue extension is the fact that it was installed silently.
I don't do any windows anymore, but Dolphin looks like quite the thing.
Re: my experience with math instructors, you're probably right. I do think that there's a certain sort of base level of application information that should be imparted with any given mathematical topic (for instance, that calculus is about change! Wow, I'm sorry you had such awful teachers), I just think that focus on applications is a method that's been tried already and just hasn't seemed to improve math education enough.
LG KS360 Black and Red Unlocked
LG KS360 Black is a simple phone to use but yields big results. The main attraction here is the QWERTY slide out keyboard which can be used to enter text and email messages. There is really no area in which this phone doesn’t perform well.
in Python, it works like:

foo(a, b, lambda x: x+2)

or

foo2(a, b, foo):
foo() # this is like js

The lambda is closed by the next ) or ,
Of course the first question would be about what kind of application you're programming. Is it a GUI program? If so use GTK or Qt. Is it a webapp? You have an almost endless amount of choices: Ruby on Rails, Python with Django, Perl with Catalyst, PHP with whatever
I think Blender is your best bet for true 3D, if you're going to do the art yourself. But perhaps you don't really need full-on 3D-baked in your 2D game? If you're trying to commercialize it then yes, otherwise i'd say go with isometric or pixel art.
Why is it important to mention that he is an Iraqi immigrant?
Twitter is good for several things:

* Following celebrities. For instance, I am a huge bike racing fan, so it's cool to be able to get information from some of the pros like Lance, very directly. I even made a site to aggregate a bunch of them: http://www.bikechatter.com

* Search - you can keep tabs on search terms. For instance, I look for people writing about Hecl, and a few other things.

* 'Spamming' people. Either the aforementioned people who you find via search, or write about stuff you're doing to promote it. Well, not really spamming people, I wouldn't do that, but twitter can be a good place to "pimp stuff".

The first two really depend on other people wanting to express themselves via twitter, something I'm not convinced will necessarily exist long term. I think the "CB of Web 2.0" is a great label - we'll see if they can prove it false by being more than just a fad.
I'm sure there are others like you. Twitter is something that is very difficult for people to understand because it is many things to many people.

I just don't think you can split the Twitter community into two groups like that.

Flawed analysis.

Fail Whale :)
Sounds like more of a story about how Swedish high school teachers are just as "well versed" in knowledge as their American counter-parts... :P
I gave up on reading every single tweet, just as I gave up on reading every RSS entry in my reader. I just check it when I get bored or need a break for a minute or two.

I probably don't spend more than 15 minutes a day dealing with Twitter, but I still like using it.
It's a point-of-sale, so I would assume a GUI would be best. Maybe not though? Why would a non-GUI program be an advantage for a point-of-sale application?

It could be a webapp, sure, but it needs to be able to print and interface with a printer properly... I suppose a custom style-sheet could take care of it. Do you think a point-of-sale webapp is a good idea?

And yes, I know I have a ton of choices, which is why I came here for advice. I respect and value HNs opinions.
This might help...

http://www.tdt3d.be/articles_viewer.php?art_id=99
If you install an update & this annoying extension shows up, you say the update caused the annoyance. That's how it works. It's their fault for pushing the bug/feature & they still haven't taken it out.

Regarding your other point, I think 1 high profile FOSS project (eg webkit, hadoop, V8 ) or would do a lot for microsoft's image among techies.
You could probably just email pg and ask nicely, making your case. It probably depends somewhat on whether you want to delete all your comments too.
In what field is it a "first mover"?
Title is misleading, the problem had already been solved. Its a good story but please don't linkbait.
You're hurting no one through your so-called "dishonesty."

Not true. You harm the honest students that are denied academic opportunity because dishonest students have higher grades. And by the way, it isn't "so-called" dishonesty, it is by definition dishonest. Whether you regard it as ethical or not does not change the meaning of the word.

Do you have a better solution?

What you propose is not a solution at all. It is an exploit.
Thanks for the feedback! I didn't know if anyone would be interested in my personal experience.
Ask HN:  Evolution writes very poor code.  So why is biology research rewarding?
Isn't it sort of like finding the task of understanding and debugging code written by very poor programmers to be rewarding?
Old news or not, I think that this kind of behavior deserves attention.

Microsoft's behavior is a scary game of chicken. Even supposing MS's plugin didn't change Firefox for the worse this, does MS intend to modify the behavior of any and every application running on of windows with its routine updates? If so, this standard means they could subtly hamstring any app any time in the future. Makes competition is bit tough, you think?
For simple 3D modelling (and just the modelling, mind), I've become very much a fan of Wings3D. Ignoring the geeky bias I might have because it's written in Erlang, it has a very shallow learning curve and, in combination with Blender, you should be able to get some usable renders pretty quickly.

If you want to go witth straight-up 2D, though, I've found it fairly easy to get simple and stylish results from Inkscape. That way might be better anyway - why do what everyone else is doing?

Either way, I'd recommend just throwing something together quickly until you've got a good 'working model' - then you can either spend a bit more time on the graphics, or consult someone who knows their way around a wacom!
Is there any particular reason why it should be web-based?
Many of those kids in India know what COBOL is too, they were taught by Infosys....
First I heard of it. Glad you voted it up.
Though this isn't a particularly interesting blog entry, Coding the Wheel otherwise has some of the best programming posts I've read on the web. The rest of the content is worth checking out. (Especially for the Poker Bot tutorial series.)
"I think the word raped gets thrown around far too casually. You ever listen to a bunch of guys playing video games with each other online? It's like, 'Ah man you shot me in the back dude. You raped me dude!' I'm pretty sure if I talked to a woman who's been through that horrific situation and I said, 'What was it like, you know, being raped?' she's not gonna look at me and go, 'Have you ever played Halo?'"—Dane Cook -- via Shakesville
Blosxom: A blogging platform, in a single perl file.
First, it is entirely Microsoft's fault. They did it. As the article says, they should have created an ordinary extension and put it on the Firefox extension site.

Saying that it isn't MS' fault if they followed an easy but wrong to do something is like saying it's not my fault if I rob a liquor store since "it's easier than earning money".

Firefox should provide more control over extensions but that's a different point.
Twitter is a platform upon which social connections can be built and maintained. It's a very flexible tool for working within that social domain. It somehow gets even more compelling when you and all your actual real-world friends use it via SMS. If you are concerned with the social aspect of life and if your friends are too there will eventually be a memetic pull towards its use.
Before Y2K this was a factor. Now days security sensitivities have driven the work back home.
When I first heard of it, I didn't get it. Then I got it and thought -- that's really cool. Then I ungot it. Twitter is a mullet. It's not just a fad, but a fad that will embarrass us later.

Listen, I'm all for technology. And new things really require a shift in our mindset. I love the "global realtime-ness" of Twitter, and I'm sure that core product will still be around in five years. What form it will be in is hard to say, but I can guarantee you it will not be as Twitter, which will have become a zeitgeist-icon-of-infamy for this age in the same way Pets.com and Boo are for the dot com bubble.
People who immigrate from poor countries to rich countries at the age of 10 face additional educational difficulties that most people on this board haven't. Solving a 300 year old puzzle is impressive, but it makes it even more impressive that this kid was able to do it just six years after moving to a different country and having to learn two more languages during that time, too.
A good tool for useful small-team, disconnected interaction is Campfire.

http://www.campfirenow.com/
I've worked with many 28 old wring in PHP4. But, somehow, I feel that there is hope for them - someone 50 year old dog might show them the light.

I've made John 50 because I wanted to make it too late for him to fix things (although he still stands a pretty good chance to get back on track). Do not wait for something to happen. Stop repeating "Will read this book after the next release" - start reading now in you spare time.

Improving constantly is the main moral of this story. It has nothing to do with age.
Designers to Follow on Twitter
If rss is not lost on you, then neither is twitter - it's just smaller.

It's a good way to keep up with what people in your field are working on, or what they're consuming that might influence their work in the future. If someone "over-tweets" it's easy to not follow them.
If you're looking at all of the code that evolution has ever written, then yes, I suppose you could say that most of it is very poor. The fraction of code that survives and propagates, however, is awe-inspiringly beautiful.

If you're looking for some insight into what makes it so beautiful, The Selfish Gene is an excellent place to start.
i fall into the 1st demographic and I don't use my twitter account at all. I originally got it so that I could follow the Kogi BBQ truck but got annoyed at not always seeing what I want(seeing irrelevant @ replies). Here's what I would use it for

Very small group of friends (less than 5 or so) talking. Too many friends becomes Facebook and its news feed.

OR

Following certain news that updates frequently such as current surf reports, current traffic speed on a specific street, current location of something, etc.

I say OR because you should only do one or the other since (at least I can't figure it out) there is no filtering on Twitter. Therefore, following too many things becomes incredibly impractical. At the same time, these status updates of things that update frequently can just as easily be accomplished via RSS feeds, especially since there is no communication back to whatever you're following.
What evidence do you have that the code that survives and propagates is elegant (i.e., at the DNA sequence level)?

In genetic programming, the products of evolution on a computer are completely incomprehensible.

What makes natural evolution any different?
You're equating 'cheating' with 'lacking knowledge/skill'

I said nothing of the kind. I am saying it is an unfair advantage in obtaining academic opportunity over equally or more capable students who are more honest. Even between two students of exactly equal ability, the dishonest student has the advantage.

For instance, someone may be on their way to becoming a very good physicist and doesn't care for compulsory german.

What part of this implies they deserve a high grade in German? Would a student doing equally well in German but poorly in Physics (because he doesn't care for it) deserve a high grade in Physics? Do either of them deserve higher grades than an honest student earning grades slightly below each of them? Does that student deserve to go to an inferior college?
I'm going to speak in terms of techniques rather than tools. These are the best/fastest techniques I've found:

1. Procedural generation in your own code. People forget about this option because classical 2D games were too processing/memory-constrained to allow for anything but tiles loaded direct from ROM, but it's really great for environments. It works out to be very fast to produce because you can iterate and randomize and come up with a lot of variations without extra work, but you have to know what you're going for first. The download size savings is a bonus too.

2. Characters are cheapest to do with 3D only because of animation time. If you don't have a lot of anims, hand-drawn tends to give a more lively result, especially in low-res pixel art styles, but even then, painting over 3D will reduce your error rate. Invest in a Wacom if you want to get serious about drawing on computers, but start with the smallest size: you rarely need more.

3. When I need a clean cartoony look I drag out Inkscape and do a vector trace over the image I'm working with. This can take quite a while, but the results are really good when you go all-out and use two vectors per outline to give them variable width.
Which tool you use to design your graphics won't mean anything if you don't have some artistic ability. I speak from experience. That said, if you decide to go 2-D, I would highly recommend a vector graphics editor like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator. I would argue that vector-based drawing, especially for the less experienced artist, is easier than bitmap drawing.

As recommended by J_McQuade, toss some images together at first and really focus on the actual code instead. Once the infrastructure is there, the images can easily be replaced.
It takes a long time to really explain, "favors both personal and economical freedom" than many people realize. But I don't think it matters for the purposes of that comment. We could go into an infinite regress of definitions.

But the debate reminds me of this post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/
While competition drives companies to innovate, in my own opinion, I do not think that is the case for Google...

Google has had the marketplace on lock down for years now and they continue without competition to create and improve their products. Google tends to copy ideas and improve them, or create all new ideas all together and nearly every time they do it they add some innovations that nobody even thought about.
I find it to be a great way to communicate with friends and folks I'd like to know a little better. It's like IM but you don't have to catch them online individually or disrupt their workflow.
Campfire (and similar) limits me to communicating only with the people on my team/project/company. Twitter (or iChat which allows me to "Share text, files, and code in real time") has no such artificial group restriction.
The Ultimate Lock Picker
I'm just guessing, but it would probably be more portable to different platforms – the only thing each OS would need is its own local server and (probably full-screen) web browser.

Also, it might be nice for a manager to be able to look up how sales are doing when they are not in the office. Of course, this could be done without making it totally web-based, but it would be harder.

It might be easier for users to customize the system, too – it is easier to change the GUI of a web app, I think (like adding more buttons to a window). The users could also perhaps use a custom stylesheet in the browser if they didn't like the look, though ideally the PoS app would allow changing the look from from within itself.
Many cartoons you see on tv (and cartoon-y games) are actually 3d rendered with a 'cel' shader.

For instance, check this out: http://www.crazycoder.co.za/wp/?page_id=36

Anyway, your best bet is to actually team up with an artist. Working with people you like is fun, and artists think differently than programmers, so it can be invigorating and expanding.
Thanks!

I was looking at Wascom as soon as arubin suggested me to do so, found address of local stores from their website.
could speak more about cel shader? Thats exactly the kida of graphics what I'm looking to produce. I can work with Python, Ruby and surely learn blender if it requires. Any mores links on how to do this? The link you suggested was in C++
Networks not Ready for Enterprise Cloud
Good grief! Take your favorite OSS project, or even Windows. What do you think it would look like after 4 billion years of cut and paste.
BTW, code growth seems important in some cases for evolution on a computer: http://www2.cs.uidaho.edu/~tsoule/cs472fall05/AlifePeaks2.pd...
you know, those are such generic demographics that you could apply them to any communication medium.

i can easily imagine people saying the same things about email, the internet, instant messaging, etc.
Evolution is not directed by an intelligence. And moreover there is evidence that useless code in an evolutionary process can sometimes give you better results by protecting functional code against harmful mutations/crossovers.
Google Wave Patent License (what does this mean?)
> Our single <$5,000 box handles about 4M pageviews per day without moving the cpu above 5% steady state. That's the sort of baseline I'm used to from the Microsoft stack

You realize how meaningless a statement like this is, right? You just can't go around talking about "pageviews" as if they were some uniform measure of workload.
My apologies for mis-speaking myself over the "Mist" aspect - I did know that the name was originally used, but changed before production.

Concerning the "Nova", I did say that it was suggested - I didn't say it was true. I know it's not true. No doubt I should've made that clearer. As a non-native speaker of English that happens on occasion.

I appreciate the corrections - thank you. I resent your tone, and suggest that this being HN does not exempt anyone from being at least marginally polite.

The point about the difficulty of name choice still stands, and there are numerous other examples of ill-advised names being chosen through ignorance of other languages. Perhaps you would care to find the positive and suggest other examples, rather than being purely negative.
I am saying it is an unfair advantage in obtaining academic opportunity

That's a US-specific problem. Here anyone that has obtained a degree can enroll in pretty much any course at any university/college.

What part of this implies they deserve a high grade in German?

People that cheat seldomnly have high grade averages in the subject they cheat in. The just manage to pass the subject. But that's also a US specific problem. Grade averages are much less an issue here.
Do you really think that multiplying large numbers in your head is knowing math well? Seriously.

Knowing math well, i.e., knowing stuff like Differential Geometry or Algebraic Topology, is anything but a form of marketing...
Just a guess, bu biology research is probably rewarding to some at least in part because there are so many important consequences to our lives for understanding how it works. Curing disease seems pretty rewarding, doesn't it?
Blosxom has been around since at least 2003, it's not exactly "news".
I wouldn't find it rewarding. As I said, it's like trying to understand and debug code written by very poor programmers.

I would rather use genetic algorithms for my own purposes rather than trying to understand the messy artifacts of nature.

But yes, the fear of death will give such research a lot of funding.
I used to work at a company providing enterprise systems for higher education. Fall registration was panic season; we were in fire-alarm mode for most of August and September.

Those were good times. :)
Edit This Page (1999)
If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

This part piqued my interest. So if I sue some third party because I feel Google's implementation of Wave violates my patent, I lose the license to the Wave patents? Or if I feel that a third party implementation of Wave violates my patents, do I also lose my license?

Eg. if a Wave implementation violates my (say) encryption patent, and I file a lawsuit for patent violation, do I lose my license to the Wave patents?

Seems like a neat way to scare off patent trolls, but I'm not sure I'm interpreting it right.
Seriously, that sounds like an absolutely horrible idea.
> I say OR because you should only do one or the other since (at least I can't figure it out) there is no filtering on Twitter. Therefore, following too many things becomes incredibly impractical.

There are clients that do provide this functionality.