skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's a good point that I didn't think of in my earlier reply. If you disclose - either privately or publicly - be prepared for the chance of a litigious response. If you can publish a generic example that isn't tied to any particular site or institution, it might help avoid this.
I thought of another way to say this (not that you need it):

Sometimes you write code to throw away. James Gosling has said he does this. Fred Brooks said "build one to throw away". Novelists write drafts, artists draw sketches and sculptors carve studies (I was amazed to see that Michelangelo did several studies for his sculpture of David - full size, in marble!)

In contrast, tests are an investment in code. They make the code better, more reliable, more correct - more tested. They make it harder to throw away the code.
The different versions cost different amounts of money. What do you mean by one configurable version? How would people buy it?
From their re-revised web page:

Because the game seemed to be upsetting so many, we have decided to remove it completely. We will also make sure nothing like this ever happens in the future.

It's odd that they would be making a "fan remake" without mentioning the original or its creator. Although they weren't profiting from it at the time, one has to wonder if they were planning to monetize it in some way in the future.
I think NPR has just captured a moment in time where they can pull something like this off. If the idea of catching lobbyists in the crowds has any impact, lobbyists will just stop attending hearings.
I might be wrong, but Ive always though $1 in my business is worth a lot more than $1 in any sort of retirement account I wont need for 40 years.

Business-exit is my retirement fund.
Interesting story, but am I the only one who felt that the headline and story almost sounded like something pulled from The Onion? If there was an all-geek version of The Onion, I could easily something like this.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-voice-invites-...
Just a side note. Few companies that are mentioned in Jim Collin's "Built To Last" are examples of companies that are going great even after the founders left. 3M, P&G, Disney, Walmart...
A text search of ARPA on the wikipedia article for Bell Labs didn't find a match. Can you cite any evidence that ARPA funded Bell Labs? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_labs#Origin_and_historical...

The most famously innovative labs (PARC labs) was funded by a monopoly (Xerox).
I never thought about the fact that random apps could dial my phone just by opening the right kind of URL. But now that you mention it, wow. That was fucked up. Glad they fixed it.
By that logic, if you'd tried being an untouchable sewer cleaner in India, you'd have loved your job cleaning chemical reactors by comparison.

But somehow, you are allowed to imply that cleaning chemical reactors wasn't much fun, while at the same time disallowing other people from expressing negative feelings about their jobs.
should have seen that. thanks. It seems to work now- is it normal for the organisms to spell out "Free Us" in the little graphics window?
I had exactly the same idea. This is a great post. Ohh.. how we all have been there.
I agree with that. I have a few small side projects in mind as well as a bigger one, and the only thing that keeps me focused on them is when I'm done working for the day, I put together a list of all of the stuff I want to add the next time. That way, I have a clearly defined list of milestones waiting for me the next time I get to the app, rather than having to rejuice my brain when I have some more time to work.

Also, I've been spending time thinking about how to create small, focused, monetized, short-term development apps that can bring in some revenue so I can start cutting back on my daytime work hours. That way I can get some more dev time each day.
Biology is the ultimate in reverse engineering.
Ice on Fire: the Next Fossil Fuel
Perhaps a more balanced approach is to ask "What tools do you use? What do you like and dislike about them?". The choice of tools tells me something about a how a person does their job, any job.
Professional: The most overused, abused, meaningless word in technology.
no, i just deleted the socialmoth vhost in my apache so it falls through to the isdeluxe.com entry which is on the same box.

isdeluxe is very tumblr-esque project of mine.

so yes, i made both and isdeluxe is 'simple' blogging. but it is unlikely that socialmoth.com will always point to isdeluxe

yes and no :)
What's conspicuously missing from this article is the author mentioning which method he is using, and how long he has maintained it.

Without that, it reads like an article about what he wants to do, but has never managed to maintain. It's akin to taking diet advice from someone who has lost and gained weight many times in their lives and has never proven they can stop the cycling.
Let me get this straight. You intentionally built out a custom DYI enthusiast IT infrastructure out of a random collection of OpenBSD and Linux boxen and then complain that nobody but you understands it? Unless you've completely documented how everything works and fits together you've made it very difficult for anyone else to maintain it. That's one way to ensure job security.
There's so much wrong with this article. The original data is some random journalist's list of big innovations. And even if innovation was greater during times of high defense spending, it wasn't greater because of monopolies. A lot of the novel technology of the cold war was developed by little companies.
Great little post, love your style of writing.
Introducing Android 1.5 NDK, Release 1: Include C/C++ in your Android app
It will move to OAuth shortly, I agree with that.

Any number of pics can be uploaded...from 1..*.

Thanks for the feedback.
They should have an image map over the faces and you can click on the face and then it goes to a form where you can add details about the person.
by nuance, I mean the precision of that moment, not layers of masks, which I agree take away from the whole thing. -- A slight accent staggered across multiple instruments, the subtlety and artfulness of the performers. So maybe resolution would a better term, surely who could argue against too much resolution?
I've always wondered if the polyphasic sleep hackers have girlfriends or wives. It seems like you'd either have to be chaste, or else have a very odd relationship with your significant other. I can't imagine having sex, then taking a 20 minute nap, then getting right back to SEO strategy or whatever it is the polyphasic crowd needs all that extra time for.

The other thing is that I've never heard of a woman trying polyphasic sleep or even being mildly interested in trying it. It seems to be one of those things that only guys with blogs care about.
Apple as sent numerous emails about updating applications for 3.0.

Also, that functionality was necessary... I actually implemented it in one of my application so that if you accidentally press the call button, you don't exit the app and start calling random people.
This is a great idea. I bet more stuff like this would have a significant impact-- like the amateur tail-number watchers at airports who helped uncover the secret "rendition" flights.
Great feedback - the usability definitely isn't nailed down, but we launched as early as possible.

The comments do come from tweets - I think there needs a bit more text and fine tuning.
Kayak to Bing: Stop Copying Us
Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning free download
I wonder. Lobbyists presumably don't go to hearings just to waste their time. So it would probably decrease their power if they couldn't watch hearings live.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=674036
We had a discussion about this weeks ago, pointing out that Microsoft bought Farecast who had similar site design. But it's interesting to see it just now burbling up to the top elsewhere.

I love HN, I learn / find more sooner than through so many other outlets.
Pirate Bay Retrial Denied
Living near 612 myself, I would love to get 612-AWESOME as shown in the example.
i want my

i want my

i want my MTV
I wonder why so many happiness complaints in Joel on Software forums always talk about working in "IT" (as opposed to "engineering")? I've never been referred to as "IT", but I've only worked in companies where producing software/Internet services was the core competency and either as production operations engineer (i.e. customer facing systems, not internal systems) or as a software engineer.

Is the case with these posters that they're working in places where making a technology-oriented product/service is not the core competency (or if it is, they're not working in the departments that are responsible for core products/services)? Why do people stay in these environments, if they have/want to have any sense of passion about what they do (rather than merely think of their job as a way to make money)?

The other big factor is that I am based in Silicon Valley. Could this be another factor, that outside of SF Bay Area/Seattle/Los Angeles and select other metropolitan areas anything computing-related is referred to as "IT" and treated as a cost center vs. a core competency?

Seems like there's several conclusions:

I. These people are passionate about a subject, but are working in an environment where passion is not expected or even appreciated.

II. Either for some reason they're unwilling to switch to a field or environment where their passion will be rewarded (pay/hours/benefits?), or that option is not available to them (due to geographic locale?)
YubiKey 2.0 Launched
Here's the previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=642023
They are at a public meeting, in a government building, exercising their 1st amendment rights to petition their government. They have absolutely no privacy rights here. They are not compelled to identify themselves but they have no protection against others identifying them nor are they likely to receive such protection given the legitimate concerns the public has over corruption (the Lobbying Disclosure Act [2 USC 1605] does permit lobbyists to perform routine information discovery, such as attending this event, without requiring disclosure but the fact that they are not required to report their attendance would probably not be enough for a court to find any expectation of privacy for anyone attending such an event.)
Someone recently commented, here on HN or elsewhere, that IT is often viewed as a cost center, not a profit center.

Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in corporate life knows what happens to cost centers. They are at best "tolerated" and are squeezed as hard as they can be. Anytime the bottom line needs a bump, the first thing requested is a list of "cost centers".

(I typed a bunch more, but I think I'll leave it at the above, for our mutual benefit.)
NoPorn: Apple Removes “Hottest Girls” From The App Store
Manging Configuration with Puppet
I have a new game, where I see how many sentences into a Jeff Atwood article I can get before the first completely idiotic statement, and then I stop reading. I don't spend a lot of time there.

"But as I predicted, 12 months later, the iPhone 3G rectified all the shortcomings of the first version."

The 3G had a slightly different form factor, a flush headphone jack, and 3G. I guess I just never internalized how serious some people were in their demands for less aluminum, adapter-less private music consumption, and the ability to flush their battery for spotty slightly-faster data downloads.

Threadjacking attempt: if you could excise one overly-influential blogger from the interwebs, who would it be? Atwood's quickly approaching Enderle/Dvorak/Scoble territory on that list for me.
I'm holding out for a multi-touch surface with a color screen behind it.
"Is the case with these posters that they're working in places where making a technology-oriented product/service is not the core competency (or if is, they're not working in the departments that are responsible for core products/services)? "

Bingo!

Being a software engineer (or just "programmer" if you will) for a company for which producing software is the primary business is very different from being some kind of IT "drone". Hell, even if I wanted to program for a company that did, say , insurance, I would at worst be an enterprise programmer, and those jobs , while being (relatively) boring seem more more fun than these "IT" horror stories.
Has anyone actually tried this out? I'd be very curious to see how people like it and how it compares to MT in general, as well as to WordPress.
None of the people identified so far are "players" in the game, just low-level staffers who were sent to take notes and show the flag. The real lobbyists do not go to hearings, they make phone calls and do lunch and social events. To place this in a context that people here might understand, if these photos had been taken at a random internet conference then you would be seeing associates or EIRs of a VC firm and not general partners.
Farrah Fawcett Last Rites | Farrah Fawcett Died | Pinay Ads
I cant seem to find it on the US Amazon (Amazon.com).

I see some likely, but potentially renamed alternatives by the same author.

Any of these:

http://amzn.com/1905264151 - Same name, not sold by Amazon
http://amzn.com/0525950621 - Different title, same author/approx publishing dates

Thoughts?
Has anyone gotten an invite?
Just put the cost of insurance in a bank account for cheap common problems. Not only do you not have to pay the overhead, but the bank pays you interest. :) It should (but won't necessarily) average out.
Win7 home premium full retail $199

$200 for an OS?

You got to be kidding me
In the midst of reading this article I had the feeling I was reading something from a conservative blog:

In the arts, perhaps the most important change since the 1960s is the decline in what had then been the greatest engine of artistic change: the generation gap.

Generational conflict over aesthetic styles is most common in a relatively ethnically homogenous society, such as 19th Century Paris, rather than in a multicultural city, such as Ottoman Istanbul.

And this:

Although increasing ethnic diversity is widely assumed to make the arts more “vibrant,” the triumph of the ideology of multiculturalism appears to have instead helped cause pop music to stagnate stylistically.

There’s a fundamental connection between the growth of ethnic pride and the decline of generational rebellion, because to rebel against your forefathers is to rebel against your race.

I find it funny that an article bemoaning the declining rate of cultural change would be published on a conservative website. But it weirdly makes sense because it is blaming the phenomenon on multiculturalism which, I guess, is some ideology backed by the "other side" (liberals).

There’s a fundamental connection between the growth of ethnic pride and the decline of generational rebellion, because to rebel against your forefathers is to rebel against your race. Thus, for a group of young black musicians to issue a manifesto pointing out that 30 years of rap is plenty would be racial treason. Although long exhausted musically, hip-hop has become so emotionally entwined with African-American identity that we’re all stuck with it.

The author thinks race is an issue but this happens with country music and pop music too. The music industry is very conservative about funding musical acts that buck the current trend or a tried-and-true formula. You can see this in the tv and movie industry as well. It's not about race it's about money. The industry gives us what it thinks we want and we accept it because it's easier to access over more diverse fare (the industry has a superb marketing and distribution system). There's a vicious cycle at work that enforces the status-quo.
It makes little sense to use a hybrid Perl/PHP product these days. MT was suffering from being a Perl/CGI product and patched it up with PHP only to still be eaten by WordPress. Too little too late.
Like dieting but more so, few can stay on a short sleep + naps regimen permanently.

I'd guess that napping efficiently is difficult unless, you're sleep deprived enough so that you can nap under almost any condition, which doesn't sound like it feels good.
I have a hunch that the income distribution of Iphone apps follows a powerlaw. Things like this tends to do so (karmapoints and users of HN, for example, follows a powerlaw)

So if you can get data for a few apps, which should be possible, you can estimate the K-coefficient, and voila you can make a calculated estimate as to exactly how big a percentage of apps make less tham $10,000. And lots more too :-)
There are a lot more PC gamers than it might seem. They don't do laptops.
Your 2nd paragraph is dead on. Working at a company where you are viewed as an overhead expense, rather than as an R&D cost is no fun. It's the third tier software job, but there are a lot of these jobs out there. I'd put working for a company that sells software as tier one and working for a software consulting company as tier two. This is why those jobs are so subject to outsourcing, if you bring in another company to take over those functions, at least the employees of that company are working towards their core competency.

One "solution" to this is to get more involved in the business or mission of the organization you support. Of course, the bureaucracy may resist this sort of move.
The reverse - going to sleep as the sun creeps up - is difficult for me. It feels worse to me to try to sleep as dawn comes than just an hour earlier.

I'd expect to fall quickly and pleasantly asleep after an all-nighter, but the combination of dawn, the pounding of my heart and racing of my mind actually leave me awake and thinking for an extra few minutes. It's possible that going to sleep in that state gives me extra insight on what I was working on, but it doesn't feel good.
I like the thinking part of my job. It's the sitting and typing that I find (literally) painful.
Ask HN: stats on phone calls from website visitors?
Does anyone have any experience or notes to share on the effect on posting a phone number, such as a toll free number, on a website? I'm primarily thinking of sales-oriented websites for web-based products, not e-commerce or consulting/services.

I understand that it varies, but if you have anything to share I would appreciate it.

If you can't post exact numbers, percentages of total unique visitors or at least a ratio would be great.

edit: What I am asking is basically how many calls are generated from posting a phone number on a website, i.e. what percentage of website visitors who will call a phone number provided it is available.
Sounds like Melody is an attempt at addressing the hybrid problem (amongst a lot of other problems).
As a compliment to this book, I submit "Fooled By Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. An excellent book that describes very well how human beings make deliberate attempts to rationalize random events.
I am trying to find a couple primary sources to back up your suggestion that I got the REM/other phases backwards. That would be quite embarrassing, but I am pretty sure I am correct. Does anyone know of any of any good studies done on REM deficit?

Polyphasic sleep does not train the body to "need less sleep" directly. But it appears the body adapts to use the naps more efficiently than it would use a longer chunk of sleep. To suggest there is "no basis in science" for this seems kind of a stretch. There is science that describes this process.

I'm aware that people claiming to have messed up biological clocks tend to have environmental or physiological factors that cause the problems. I have done pretty much everything sort of isolating myself from artificial light for a period of time longer than about a week, and my body is stuck on a 28-hour clock.

Also, you suggest that people deprived of artificial light snap into a "exactly" 24-hour schedule. This is actually not correct. Many studies have been done showing that the default schedule ends up being about 25 hours when you deprive people of clocks and light sources.
I find that doing a side project along with your day job is more of a psychological problem. You lose motivation knowing you can just stop your project with no real consequences. I think you need to make some sacrifices (maybe not quit your day job) in order force yourself to put in a lot of effort.
I don't understand your question.

If you have a phone number on a site that sells web-based products, it would seem that nearly 100% of the calls would be coming from people who had visited the site (which is what I think you're asking).
That's bad
This is the one: http://amzn.com/0525950621

UK sub-title izs "The Science and Politics of Fear". Also the Independant review on that page is the same in the back cover of my copy :)

Alternatively does this link work for you?

http://www.amazon.com/Risk-Things-Shouldnt-Ourselves-Greater

That is the correct book 100% :)

Edit: From his site they are all the same just different titles for different countries.

http://www.dangardner.ca/
Farrah Fawcett dies of cancer | Farrah Fawcett passed away | Buzz Online 24/7
I tried to comment on the story but it is broken.

To the author:

I think where you say "require that I learn an entirely new language" and go on to mention interfaces and handlers, you mean instead Cocoa (Cocoa Touch in this case)

Nice write up and good luck
It's computing with multiple data centers...

You can have a local cloud (a data center that you're in) and an external cloud (an undisclosed number of data centers that are external to you)... but whenever you abstract the number of external data centers, that becomes a cloud.
I would like to suggest a convention to the title for reviews too - Book Review:
Windows 7 Will Cost Less than Vista - windows 7
Why CouchDB doesn't scale
totally. at least for designing and implementing the core technology, i've found that i need large chunks of focus time. i also need time to mentally shift from one set of problems to another...kind of like writing things to disk and then loading up the next set.

it doesn't have to be an order of magnitude less productive, though. i find that if my brain is too cluttered to change problem solving paths for the night, then i'll go to bed early and wake up between 3 and 7am for a productive morning.

i also find myself taking off work days around weekends. i split my weeks between solid days of work and solid days of side-project. these large chunks are so awesome for getting "real" work done, which is more than useful, it's also motivating and satisfying.
Good idea, I'll bear than in mind in the future (I was going to put (Book) at the end but forget. whoops.
If you read more closely, you would see that this isn't a WTF, but more of a beautiful complex system that actually makes sense. blhack only used one OpenBSD box for the normal network and used the second one to patch the network together after one of the T1s went down. Sure, it's DYI, but it is simple and makes sense.
Recovery.gov Bid -- a Good Failure
Light is an indicator to our body to wake up. If you pull an all-nighter and want to go to sleep, avoid the sunlight as much as possible.

Conversely, I like to sleep with the shades open, because I feel it's easier to wake up in the morning if there's natural light in my room.
I think he is referring to conversion rates...
What does this article say that is interesting that caused people to upvote it?
It would be interesting to see screenshots and interesting results.

I wrote a similar artificial life program, called Bluedogs. The hard part was tweaking the constants of the digital universe so the creatures would quickly evolve useful traits. You can see it at http://tamale.net/bluedogs/.
I think his solution makes sense. I'd like to give my dialer apps permission to call whenever they want.

The current dialog box adds an unnecessary step.