skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Facebook certainly could have handled things better but other than that I agree with you. It seems a little obnoxious to demand free service. Even if it was free before.

If it were more money he might have a better case. But given other platforms cost thousands of dollars (Sony's Playstation program for example) I don't see $375 as that much of a hardship.
I was thinking of doing one, but the few stock images of car cutaways I could find (http://www.khulsey.com/stockimages.html) are $1500 =(.
Safe signals in Perl
How to Scale Your Ruby on Rails Application
Open letter to a Microsoft Evangelist 
Dan Fernandez @ Microsoft,

Thanks for replying to the thread I created on the facebooktoolkit codeplex site entitled "Microsoft is ignoring .net developers" http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=52107

I wanted to expand my concerns beyond the poor support of the Facebook toolkit to Wordpress and similar advantages PHP has over .NET. First, let me make it clear that I love developing in .NET. I created Yappler.com on my own with 100% .NET backend. My issues are with the open source and other framework advantages PHP has over .NET and not the actual language itself.

When I looked to add a blog to Yappler.com the best option I had was blogengine.net. Though it’s a decent CMS it still pales in comparison to Wordpress. Now I'm looking at forums. YetAnotherForum.net is good but vbulletin is probably a better solution.

As a programmer how can I justify to a client .NET as a backend over PHP which offers a powerful CMS like Wordpress? Some concerns, like the slightly higher hosting fees for a windows server, can be addressed but when it comes down to being able to use Wordpress, Facebook, vbulletin forums software for about $140 and other cheap and powerful off the shelf solutions .NET is just a very distant second.

I’ve been using Visual Basic and C# for over 15 years. It saddens me to say that if I wasn’t a programmer myself and started a new business today there is no way I’d go with .NET. Please help me and other loyal .NET programmers catch up to the advantages of PHP.
However, if the messaging layer provided ordering and uniqueness guarantees, that same code could not be compromised. Also, your comments seem to be specific to SimpleDB. Is it possible other components that depend on AWS-Auth have related issues?
but I don't have my trusty TI-89 calculator to help out

You speak with knowledge, worthy adversary, but with my HP-48g, I would defeat you! </bad overdub due to RPN>
Yikes, you're right. That's obscene.

I hope non-profits like Kiva are able to help in this area.
This vs. an airport express?
Stanford Online: High Performance Web Sites [video]
So in other words, they have an average of 1320 feeds going at any time. That's nothing to sneeze at, but the YouTube comparison doesn't seem quite apples to apples.
One of the exeptions to the "gotta get a warrant" rule in US constitutional law is the "plain view" exception--if the cops see a marijuana plant through your front window, they don't need a warrant to go busting in and seizing it. So if the FCC's monitoring equipment indicates that radio transmissions powerful enough to require a license are coming out of your house, would the transmitter count as being in "plain view"?
Finding flow
Supposedly, yes. In reality, I don't think that's so true (that they're build for regular users).

GNOME and KDE are also very amenable to the needs of hackers. I'd say they're designed as much for power users as regular people.

With GNOME, lots of lip service is paid to making a DE for "regular people." But who /actually/ uses GNOME? Linux users. Linux users are almost overwhelmingly not "regular people," but power users. GNOME is very amenable to the minimalistic style of many hackers.

And KDE is amenable to the "let's do some awesome shit" style of many hackers. It's on the cutting edge. It's not used by regular people and I don't think its development is driven by their supposed needs.

Personally, I use Openbox and the command line. These are the best "desktop environment" tools I've found yet, by far. But they're not for everybody. They're for power users. And here's my point: they are the way they are by design, not by "suck."
Why all the downvotes? (I don't mind downvoted, just curious about an explaination).
This is a huge issue for coffee. Making sure not to use tap water here at my office vastly improves the output of the Keurig unit we have.
My guess is he needs to work on his presentation content especially if his long winded blog post is any indication

(grin) It's nothing to do my presenting. I'm talking about trying to get people to listen to each other. I'm just trying to get people to have normal high-functioning interactions with each other. But they're too distracted by, well, themselves.

They ask us how successful teams operate, so we tell them they all work together -- co-located. So everybody shows up in same room and spends all of their time electronically engaged somewhere else.

I have an instrument rating for flying airplanes. It's one of the most difficult pieces of technology to manage for a single pilot flying alone in hard IMC. And it's life or death. Pilots have to learn this attention span management skill to a much higher level than most people.

What I'm seeing is that technology is becoming more and more distracting, while the human brain 1.0 is still wired for face-to-face caveman communities.

But I'll work on my presentations too. : ) I'm afraid you're stuck with my loquaciousness.
The fact that Justin.tv is beating YouTube in terms of volume of content creation is at least impressive to me.
Well the defacto standard for most corporate projects seems to be java... So it doesn't surprise me that even people not using java would still write java-like code.
The poor city I'm adjacent to, Trenton, has no supermarket. People simply have to shop at the convenience stores, which are more expensive anywhere. I'm not aware of anything you mentioned inside the city--just in the suburbs surrounding it. Housing is not super cheap: 800-1200 a month rent is typical for a far-from-glamorous home, maybe 700 if you're willing to live in the high-crime areas. Most people with kids would do anything to stay out of those parts. That doesn't leave a lot for food, utilities, child care, transportation, and misc. costs.

I'm not really sure what city you're considering. It's far from the reality I've seen.
Ask HN: Opportunity to earn a cut on every transaction. How big should my cut be?
I have been asked to put a quote together for developing and maintaining a public web based application for a promising new startup.

Yesterday, I presented a "no strings attached" time and cost estimation for developing the initial version of the app. I took into account that the estimated cost might not fall into their budget and presented two alternatives.
Their business model is primarily a transaction based one and is very sound. They have sole rights to distributing the virtual product/service and key retail vendors have come on board with letters of intent.
As I suspected, the quote did fall out of their budget range and at that moment I decided to bring forward the alternative somewhat "informal" proposals.

Option B.
My business owns the IP on the software. They use it and pay just for maintenance costs.

Option C.
They pay less for the system and I get a piece of every transaction.

Today I found out that they really liked the Option C. Now that the two alternative proposals where informal, they want to see something on paper and then we can come back to the table thereafter.

As per Option C, what do you fellow hackers think would be a good deal? What would be a realistic percentage, per transaction, to ask for? (Taking into account that their business very strongly depends on the system I will build and maintain. Also I was very highly recommend for the job by one of their current business partners. :)) Also, how much less should I charge for building the system in relation to taking a cut in the transaction costs? (Is there maybe a ratio as a rule of thumb?)

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
How to Listen to the User and Hear the Experience
+1 for mentioning the arbitrary curve-based ranking common in big companies.

Tightly coupling salary/bonuses to performance reviews with this type of system is a disaster.

Unfortunately, my experience is that most managers in such a system lack the insight to minimize the effect on employees. Maybe when you're talking about minimizing the effect of telling an employee they are (non-deservedly) one of the "3" performers, you've already lost the battle . . . Add in the inevitable weird corporate culture stuff "you are a '3' because you got promoted this year, it's just your turn in the box" and you have a perfect recipe for draining motivation away from employees.
What's the difference between a target "user" and a target "demographic"?

You're right that advanced users benefit from straightforward design and simple workflows. But I think saying "Linux usability sucks" is tackling a much broader issue than that.

Plus, I would argue that Unix, and Linux, are all about straightforward design and simple workflows. Think about pipes and the command line.
I would guess for the notion of creating another HN account to sockpuppet/additionally up-rate someone.
Any HTTP server. The runtime compilation takes place in the browser (the compiler is written in JavaScript). The pre-compilation uses a command line version of the compiler running in Rhino)
I'm really fascinated by all the crypto debate that's been going on lately, but I'm completely green when it comes to cryptography. If Applied Cryptography and Coding Horror aren't enough, where can I go to learn about this? I see a lot of conjecture about how "no one knows how to do crypto right" (except the fellow writing the comment, of course), so I'm interested to know: Where's the right info at? I'd love to learn about this subject.
"Install Microsoft Silverlight"

I think I'll stay without the secret knowledge of High Performance Web Sites.
Whenever I get downvotes, I stop to consider whether or not my comment has added to the conversation. If I think it has, and I can't figure out why I got downvoted, I just move on.

Of course now I re-read all my comments right after I post them, so I tend to delete quite a few before voting happens either way.
An addiction is a habit to stimulation. Like TV, Internet is very powerful stimulator - it holds your attention (some times partial, as it described in comment above) and allows you to forget or to push aside any challenges of so-called real world. In fact, it works the same way as an alcohol - cheap and low-pleasant solution for wasting your time.

All those tweets, blogs, emails and headlines just keeps you loaded, keeps you away from actual tasks or problems, like a popular radio and then TV shows did.

Of course it is much easy and even pleasant to read tens or even hundreds of short, primitive, mostly meaningless posts and comments than to do something useful.

In this illusion it seems like you're getting new facts, accumulating knowledge in various areas and it raises your self-esteem, but actually you're just switching channels from one advertisement to another.
US economic recovery could take 5-6 years
> Pilots have to learn this attention span management skill to a much higher level than most people.

Perhaps you should mention this to the Colgan training co-ordinator. I don't think the CO 3407 crash had anything to distract the pilots other than their own conversation.
Yeah, the problem is they have TOO MUCH video. The s/n ratio on JTV is so high that pirated channels are the only thing worth watching. I'm sure there's some good content in there, but good luck finding it.

Their launch was brilliant (I love the concept), but they need to come up with a way to filter and summarize. I need to be able to grab 30 seconds out of a video and nominate it for the daily "Best of JTV" or something.
Not all content is made equal. On average, I'd say there's more than a minute's worth of effort put into each minute of video posted to YouTube. Most of the feeds on live video sites are static cameras pointed at televisions, puppies, etc. There's some effort involved in setting these things up, but it's certainly less than 1:1 with the amount of footage being uploaded.

I'm not trying to trivialize justin.tv's accomplishment, I just don't think it's a particularly useful comparison.
http://www.voxapp.net/

Current version lacks playlists, which makes it completely useless to me, but the developer says playlist support and folder scanning is on its way.
This is a story from 1998. Before the dotcom era (or at its start), before startups were common knowledge, etc.
It shows the absurdity of those days... stupid spending, CEOs who talk well, but offer no value to the product development. Using used-car salesman type leading questions to "Sell" to potential hires.

I hope it wasn't posted to imply that it has any bearing on today's reality. But it is a funny flashback to those days when words meant more than substance.
Rate my mini-app: Tweetbow
It's spelled "Stanford", no D.
With Option C, do they own the IP? If so, what prevents them from cutting you out of transactions once they are convinced it is working, and they don't need you anymore?

If you own the IP, then you should think of yourself as a partner. Take a big enough piece of the action to keep you motivated to work hard on the project, ... but you also want to make sure their piece of the action keeps them happy and motivated to grow the business (and you get a piece of a growing pie of transactions).

I don't think you've told us enough to know which rule of thumb to apply.
Discovery at this scale is a hard problem. As we get bigger, more people set up spam broadcasts too (streams with no interesting content and lots of links), which makes the job even harder. We're working on it though ;-)
Idempotence only concerns a single function. There are AWS functions like RunInstances (EC2) that are not principally idempotent. They could drop RunInstances requests with the same timestamp, not sure if they do that. In any case, it is worth noting that requests have a timestamp that expires after 5 minutes.
Window Sticker Printing: Flourishes Your Business
My response would have been essentially the same as msluyter's. Strong education systems, I believe, can provide the examples you mention are needed for a child, the examples that inspire the positive attitudes and strong work ethic. I was lucky enough to grow up with incredible parents who knew exactly what to do, so it's no surprise I'm doing much better than they did. For the kids who aren't as fortunate (and I am of course not blaming the parents, how could they know?), your peers and your school life are a dominant influence in life.

Some examples that may inspire some hope:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html (or for a more reputable but lengthier description of the same program, http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/hcz%204... )

http://uei.uchicago.edu/
The book (O'Reilly's High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers): http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Web-Sites-Essential/d...

And his upcoming book (O'Reilly's Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers): http://www.amazon.com/Even-Faster-Web-Sites-Performance/dp/0...
Yes, I know this is Yet Another Twitter App but I was just having some fun using the Twitter API with javascript and trying out Google App engine. However, I also do think it could be useful in discovering people you want to follow on Twitter. Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated.
Is Information Overload Really Getting Worse? (And More Questions About Attention)
Have no doubt that you are :)
> If you post something along the lines of "first!" or general fanboism, you're more than likely going to get a number of downvotes.

>> Inane comments aside, are you sure we're not taking things too seriously?
Cool article, especially since it's from 1997. The opening paragraphs are a very accurate way to describe flow. I love the feeling of 'flowing' down the mountain on a snowboard or mountain bike. I'd never really equated the 'flow' of movement with the 'flow' of programming, but I think the comparison is a good one. Thanks for sharing.
i would charge something that "should" recoup your "no strings attached" cost estimate within the 1 to 3 years range. and if that doesn't include maintenance, tack that in there too.

might require you to get them to provide you some data and growth estimations.
We hear so often about people getting crypto wrong. (Most often in the context of otherwise knowledgeable and talented programmers applying accepted crypto tools or primitives incorrectly.) Maybe this is one of those areas where some sort of training and certification could be substantive, meaningful, and actually benefit the world?
Yes, a lot of people share that sentiment, but a lot don't. iTunes popularized the notion of organizing your music around a central database of meta data, an approach that allowed for far more flexibility and ease of use. Of course, you always come across the folks who think organizing your music on your file system is genius. These people probably think unix is better than Plan 9, too.
Parsing this headline could have been easier. Who are the alarm experts? How about: "FCC searching households without warrants, with debatable legality?"
OSS generally looks better than it did 7 years ago, but I don't see how true usability has improved too much. The major packages are a bit better, but the average project still suffers.
maybe there's a way you can summarize boring video into showing only the interesting chunks
Fixed. Posted in a hurry + cannot spell = embarrassing mistake :)
A user is a specific person (in this case, the developer), who is not an accurate proxy for a broader classification of people (in this case, people whose technical acumen is similar to the developer's).

And as to pipes, they're useful in the way LEGO blocks are useful: you can make pretty much anything you want from them. But sometimes it's just more fun to have a toy you can play with immediately, no construction required.
It really depends on what their profit margin and volume on the product is. If they make $0 in sales, then you get screwed even if they give 100%
Because it brings an imbalance in the relationship - I am giving them my full attention, and they are not. Now there are situations in which this is okay - for example in a close relationship where these things are understood, so maybe I have brought along a newspaper to read while waiting for the food to arrive, and my lunch date is checking their email.

Contrary to the comment below, the narcissistic person is the one who is texting, not the one who is waiting - because the person who is texting is almost certainly overrating the importance of him sending an immediate reply to his correspondents.
World of Warcraft can also be played by a script. That hasn't hurt it's profitability or popularity.
If someone references a book with author/title, PLEASE at least check a review on the web before commenting.

I was hoping that any answer might be insightful.

(Readability is mostly a function of familiarity. Everything has advantages/disadvantages, if I'd list the problems with Perl, readability wouldn't be there.)
With Option C, do they own the IP? If so, what prevents them from cutting you out of transactions once they are convinced it is working, and they don't need you anymore?

Presumably a contract!
Microsoft wasn't even an option for me when I considered blogging. I love the company, but I'm not sure why I would even think of them.
They didn't really do that at all. Open up your Facebook home page and take a look. Maybe you like knowing which 80's sitcom star each of your friends are, but for most people the platform has just gotten spammier over time.

The new restrictions certainly made sense when they took average apps from infinite invites per day down to 20. But dropping that 20 back to 12, then charging you to get back to 20 doesn't help users in any way.
It's not limited to Free Software. Proprietary and enterprise software usability tends to suck too.
We've tried to improve how people find live video feeds, at shiftpop.com.
Actually, you'd be surprised on the banners too. They've gotten better. We've been seeing regular 50 cents eCPM from just 1 banner, and if we tried hard, we could probably work in another one or two without seriously degrading the user experience.

That adds up fast, since the platform makes it not too hard to get to hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of pageviews a day. 1m page views per day at 50 cents eCPM is still $182k per year. Not a bad second income stream.
ok. ok. i misunderstood.
interesting. so why wouldn't i just write javascript? what is the value added? aside from the fact that i'm not coding in javascript (which i don't consider a negative)
Don't count out Myspace. There's a lot of money there too, also far more than the iPhone. Google around for Playdom, for instance.
To confirm. Yes, they are leaning more towards a contract option (outsource) rather than IP. However they haven't written off the IP option fully yet. (If strong enough case, I could perhaps still turn this.)
You clearly didn't read the article through. I have no problem with them making money (beyond the extra few million ad impressions I generate them each day). I have a problem with the fact that it feels exactly like a Mafia-style protection payment. I guess it's ironic that the most notable game there is Mafia Wars.

If they just said "everyone has to pay us $375/yr once they get over 10k installs" or something, I'd be way happier about making that payment.
I wasn't going to waste my time responding to this, but wikipedia made it easy:

The American Psychological Association's report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns[8] states that IQ scores account for about one-fourth of the social status variance and one-sixth of the income variance. Statistical controls for parental SES eliminate about a quarter of this predictive power. Psychometric intelligence appears as only one of a great many factors that influence social outcomes.[8]

One reason why some studies claim that IQ only accounts for a sixth of the variation in income is because many studies are based on young adults (many of whom have not yet completed their education). On pg 568 of The g Factor, Arthur Jensen claims that although the correlation between IQ and income averages a moderate 0.4 (one sixth or 16% of the variance), the relationship increases with age, and peaks at middle age when people have reached their maximum career potential. In the book, A Question of Intelligence, Daniel Seligman cites an IQ income correlation of 0.5 (25% of the variance).

A 2002 study[75] further examined the impact of non-IQ factors on income and concluded that an offspring's inherited wealth, race, and schooling are more important as factors in determining income than IQ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
Thanks for the heads up on vox! It's definitely showing some promise. There is also http://cogx.org/, but it's very buggy and there hasn't been an update on the site in over a year :(
Also, has this guy heard of firebug?
What direct marketers can teach lean startups
You have a small bug in your HTML: "<<title>"
(double <<, oops)

It an interesting exercise, to see it implemented using only Javascript.

The main thing about Twitter is the actual tweets, not just the faces of the people twittering. You should at least display some tweets.
You know what though, even if government was 100% transparent, I doubt it would matter. Sad, but true.
Oh no! I'm going to miss this one :\ Leaving for Vegas that day. Will be at the next!