skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well do you know what language you might start off with? And if you're not sure, can you tell us a bit more about your background and what kind of programming you'd like to get into? (i.e. what you'd like to do)

edit: You should definitely check out this article: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
It has a lot of great advice on how to think like a programmer, what languages are essential, things like that.
We use Sphinx on http://esciencenews.com , and its performance is quite amazing. It powers search and the 'dictionary' (which is really tags) feature. Very easy to configure / deploy, too!
You're right, the timing will seem perfect in a lot of situations, such as Xe's recent rebrand. I felt like those decisions deserved their own post, though.

Also, I wasn't entirely clear in my post; we rebranded some of our features, not our central site. IvyLees is still up, just functioning as an umbrella site for our tools. It already had a pretty versatile logo, which I agree is important.
Interesting article, but it is lacking due to no mention of the Internet Archive (www.archive.org).
Sometimes I'll play trance ambient just loud enough to smooth over the environmental noise while coding: http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station=
"The suggestion is that pilot-commanded rudder inputs put the rudder beyond its structural limits."

I know - my point was that, as far as I can remember from the documentary I saw, this danger wasn't/isn't peculiar to Airbus planes. And as I think the above quote from the Flight 587 report shows, this issue can correctly be called "rudder reversal".
Essential Things to Do When Deciding On Your Business Idea
Thanks for the comment. I will definitely be adding more information and making the bidding process more "instantly intuitive."
> Why would I pay them more money just to use the data I've already paid for.

Because you'll use much more of it on your laptop or desktop than you would just your phone.
Yes: do it.

You'll probably read lots about people doing global consulting, or working remotely to pay for it, planning for months, getting travelogues, etc...

But most people who have done this over the years didn't have that luxury and haven't let it stop them. They got passports, visas, saved some cash...and then just walked out the front door. Really. The hardest part in something like this is most likely that first step you take.

So stop thinking, dreaming, etc and just go. Even if you stay within this country for a few months first. Just Go.
Straw man. Who just answers god did it?

Reply: http://www.uncommondescent.com/faq/#Godgaps
Second language acquisition beyond entry level should be in the target language. There are methods ( http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/language_stages.php is a quick example ) that require no actual native language knowledge on the part of the teacher.

I haven't taught a second language myself, but I am around a few people who teach or have taught languages, and I've picked up on it a bit.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs either online[1] or on dead trees[2]. Also has accompanying video lectures[3].

[1]: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

[2]: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...

[3]: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma...
Tesla Motors CEO: Let Me Run Detroit
The actual article by Lera Boroditsky at the edge.org:

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index....
"Rudder reversal" is just a particular kind of rudder movement. There are many different problems with an aircraft which could lead to rudder reversal occuring.

As mentioned in the article, pilot-commanded rudder reversal is relatively easy to obtain on older airbus models because they have very sensitive rudder pedals. This is not an issue on Boeing aircraft. As I said, I think you are recalling the problem that certain Boeing aircraft have with uncommanded rudder reversal, but although this is an equally serious problem, it is not the /same/ problem. In particular, there is no evidence that boeing aircraft have insufficiently strong vertical stabilizers. (In the rudder reversal incidents, the stabilizer remained in tact IIRC, it was the loss of control that was problematic.)
Why Facebook Turned Down Millions To Give Away Vanity URLs For Free
I created a page but it seems to be tagged at the bottom as "Copyright © Groupped 2009". A bit of a disincentive to put real content in. It would also be nice to have a "delete" button. I'd free up my page again.
djbolivia.ca - he even has a few mixes expressly made for programmers.
Here is a helpful chart for browser CSS3 support: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html
Insightful observation.
http://www.eslcafe.com/

Check the left hand side for the forums, there's volumes of information on just about any question you could ask.

Tealit.com is good for Taiwan.
User agent checking is easily spoofed. http://paininthetech.com/2007/10/03/fake-iphone-user-agent/
I am currently going through a divorce. But my work is only peripherally involved (I am the one asking for the divorce).

I am not going to claim to know the balance. Sometimes I think it is impossible. As the father of 4 kids I constantly struggle to become both a better entrepreneur and a better father. The problem is effectiveness, not time.

I am constantly struggling to make my time more effective, which may just be a side effect of multi-tasking.
Revenue starts trickling in to OMGPOP (YC S06)
Well, once in on the site, it is really very bland looking. It isn't difficult to read, but there isn't an effective call to action either.
This could be because i have no idea what I would use it for.

If i were you, i'd make it more like a news game. Not sure how you would accomplish this, but that could give it a more realistic spin and attract a diverse group.

Most of the stuff I'm seeing on the site falls strongly into the 'who cares' column. Maybe you should take a few current news topics and have those as headlines and get users involved with something everybody is familiar with.

As it currently stands, i'd spend a lot more time on design and marketing (figuring out how you are going to get people to use it/spread it).

I don't find it usable/workable as it is, and I feel your opportunity for success with the current version is very limited.

I wouldn't go into any sort of public beta with this. I actually feel it is too early for you to be doing private beta, but I know it can be difficult to get honest feedback from aquiaintences.

Don't read what I'm saying as 'this can't be successful'. Your idea has merit, you could make something of this, but you have to have a better product than you currently have, even in closed beta.
In English, I would submit that "I don't like X" really does mean "I dislike X"; the usage is pervasive and nearly without exception. If you mean "I have no active enjoyment or dislike", you need to go more for a word like "ambivalent".

I'm not convinced this is an English problem, or even a human problem, though. The problem is the low resolution being used; no matter how fine your stated opinion, if it is being viewed through a low resolution sensing device, it'll get aliased to one of the things the sensing device can actually perceive. (This is also the correct definition of "bias", though that would take a bit longer to describe.) It takes cognitive energy to increase resolution, so a lot of times we'll use "love/hate" as the only two options pretty casually, because it's easy and we don't have an infinite supply of cognitive energy.

(A number of terms in that paragraph are sort of ill-defined but it would take a lot of time to really nail them down.)
Pick up the Learning Python book.
Can two members make the same prediction?
Python. It's easy to learn and there are real world jobs, if you get bitten really badly. MIT switched to Python as their introductory language,
Do you have any experience with programming in any languages previously, even if it was a long time ago? Some of the other resources people have posted are certainly good if you want to understand the more theoretical side of programming, but may be more difficult to start with than something with more immediate results/feedback.

My language of choice these days, especially for relatively new programmers, is Python, but just diving in to anything is the best way to get started. There are uncountable numbers of tutorials available online; a very popular one is Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python – the not-quite-finished version targeting Python 3, the current version, is available at http://diveintopython3.org/.
Ding ding ding! You win the thread. It'll break DKIM/Domainkeys too if you have 8-bit characters in your headers.

Paws off my mail, Zed.
Question: Does anyone here feel that their iPhone has payed for itself? That it has saved you and/or earned you so much money that it outweighs the cost? Cost being the difference in price between an iPhone and its service bills and a basic phone that comes free with a service package.
I think he means the reverse though. It's not that a single line of code causes thousands of failures, it's that you'll never get that particular test to fail unless pretty much everything else is failing to, ergo it's a useless test.

I don't necessarily disagree with your point, just clarifying.
The Search Taxonomy: Getting Inside the Mind of the Searcher
Autism is more complex than that. See for example http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-a.... One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Other factors implicated include increasing parents age at time of birth(mother's and father's), more frequent ultrasounds, more chemical environment, etc. Once you start to think through each factor, the N^2 effect of geeks marrying other geeks is unlikely to explain the 5-10X increase in autism over the last 20 years.
A close runner up (believe it or not) is finding good broadband

I totally believe it. My ex-wife and I did a few years of nomading (just in North America and the Caribbean) in the first half of this decade, and finding internet connectivity was absolutely the most difficult thing about it. I imagine it's actually considerably easier, now.
Great article and interesting perspective. I think the best counter to Steve's opinions can be found in the book The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. It is just a truism of life that if you are a man, your work must be the most important thing in your life and to be truly fulfilled you "must pursue your truth and give your gift to the world". Steve Pavlina has also stated this here:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/how-to-be-a-man/
If your wife or gf is the most important thing in your life, you are weak willed and are deceiving yourself. Believe it or not, your wife or gf doesn't want to be the most important thing your life!
Two members can make the same trade, so yes.
Looks like Ben Mezrich (fiction author who sold a lot better when he relabeled his books nonfiction: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/06/...) is using Severin as a source for his next book: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20080522/FREE/760602535
Me. I ride the bus for 1 hour each day. I have 3G access all the way and am able to access email and web with ease. I have used this over and again to do actual work.
Two years ago I hated IE6 as well, but then I discovered the wonders of inline-block and stopped using floats on anything but images. Since there's so many JavaScript and Flash only websites, I don't see what makes Firefox only any different. Just test in Safari and give notice that a Standards compliant(CSS3, SVG, Canvas) browser is required.
Plastic, at least, has to be formed into a product by someone. The value derrived from act of forming something depends on the output of the process. Therefore, the act of forming has little value if the output is of little value to the market.

What you're observing in our industry, likely without realizing it, is that no one is innovating. There are no Thomas Edisons.
Tesla’s Founder Sues Tesla’s CEO
Online poker winnings are not illegal in the US. Playing online poker (or any form of gambling other than sports betting) is provably illegal only in a few states.

But in those states, perhaps. I never had to pay an attorney to review that :)
I thought Vint Cerf was a german Wind Surfer.
"This is not an issue on Boeing aircraft."

Well. OK. I'm willing to concede that either the programme, or my memory of it, could be wrong.

[Edited to add: Wikipedia backs you up on the very sensitive rudder controls on an Airbus. I think what I was remembering was that, if a pilot of any large plane did this deliberately, the same problem could occur. But yes, it seems it might be easier to do accidentally on an Airbus.]

"As I said, I think you are recalling the problem that certain Boeing aircraft have with uncommanded rudder reversal"

I assure you I'm not.
That's field hockey. Ice hockey is winter.
If you get in the position where one customer dominates your revenue, it can dictate your development plans and may lead you down a path that you dont want to go. If 20% of your customers bring in 40% of your revenue, I would call that balance. If 40% of your customers bring in 10% of your revenue, you may want to get rid of them, especially the high maintenance ones.
a trade is the same as a contract? If it is, won't more than one of the same contract devalue the shares in those contracts?

BTW, there is a typo on the FAQ page 'How much many do I start with?'
Not really, I mainly use webapps etc on both. If I tried, I could easily make a webapp to max out an iphones connection.

Either it's unlimited, eg use as much as you want - really! or it's not - only use basic web/email stuff on your iphone.

If it's limited (Which is what you're saying), then they should not market it as unlimited data.
Read 4 hour workweek if you haven't already, it describes this exact lifestyle.

As for funding the lifestyle, check out affiliate marketing, it's a great business. I'm now at the point where I have enough campaigns(and SEO traffic) running on autopilot where I only have to work 1-2 hours a day online to maintain an income in the low six figures.
I've been thinking of doing the travel thing myself. I'm at the point now with my work where I can work from anywhere in the world(or an internet cafe), or even not work at all and still generate decent revenue, I think traveling the world while I'm young and free from commitment is a great idea.
For cheap travel destinations with good Internet I've heard good things about S.E Asia, especially Thailand.
Brian Eno has an extra feature to his ambient music. Occasionally there will be a little note out of place, a tiny surprise. He says this is to keep you from falling asleep, or rouse you out of a daydream you may have fallen into. If you're really concentrating, this little "bump" in the music probably won't even register.

This is featured in "Music for Airports" (good for busy places), and "Discreet Music" (takes some getting used to, but fades solidly into subconsciousness after a few minutes).
In every interesting profession, your professional life eats into your personal life.
Imagine being an astronaut and telling your wife you need to be away for a few months and that you have to train extra hours.

If your career is interesting enough and eats up your personal time, it probably is ok with your spouse.

However, be a truck driver and try explaining your spouse why you need to be away 4 days of the week.
If you have friends that also like programming, band together. It is always nice to have friends motivating you. Work on a (challenging) team project. Push each other.

If you have friends that also like programming, try to 'one-up' each other by writing cooler and cooler things than each other (while still being fair). Healthy competition is good.

Since you like writing, blog about your progress in different projects. Express how some API is awesome or how some task is hard to acomplish. Write about your thoughts.

Pick a scripting language. Find a good mentor.
No. Closures, if implemented properly, may contain references to variables in the enclosing lexical environment where the closure was defined.

Whether they live on the stack or in the heap is an implementation detail, and may have everything to do with the provable dynamic extent of the closure (e.g., downward funargs can point back onto the stack whereas upward funargs must be heap-allocated).
Jakob Nielsen's hardware setup
Yes I think that's a much better question. If web app programming was a commodity it would mean that any programmer could make equally good web apps with the available tools. But I think the answer is still no. My perception is that the difference between good and bad web apps is vast. 80% of the web apps I have ever used are hardly usable at all.
You make a interesting observation. I think the reason it seems so popular right now is because every web app created these days caters to creatives/freelancers/webmasters. So they circulate in this area a lot. I mean I can name 20 different time tracking, invoicing, and project collaboration apps.

I see less "web apps" and more "consumer applications" in the next few years. Online software that is set out to meet a certain need in our lives.
Iran Protesters Using Tech To Skirt Curbs
While I think just about anybody could do a better job with US car companies than the current management (or of the past 20 years), I don't know that Elon Musk has proven he has the ability to run a car company effectively, either.

Tesla has consistently delivered late, made numerous financial and legal missteps, and they've underestimated (dramatically) the cost of producing their cars (the Tesla roadster is more than twenty grand more expensive than the early price estimates). That's not to say they aren't learning fast enough, or that they won't build a great car company...I just think it's early to suggest that Elon Musk is a genius at running a car company at this point in time.
If this were true, then where are all of the great monarchies?

They were superior in terms of quality of governance. They were inferior at war. The monarchies were defeated militarily by democracies.
It's great in the short term. For the long term, well, see Spain.
The post reacted against the Google employee's phrasing, and compared current YouTube auto-compression to custom Theora compression.

But it has since been misread by many as comparing the codecs and their capabilities.

Chris Di Bona was essentially correct when implying that the pre-2001 type of innovation in Theora/VP3 would not be technically persuasive to modern content sites.

jd/adobe
Microsoft seeks Hot-or-Not patent
This is actually a huge point of misunderstanding among pilots.

The angle of attack (alpha) is the angle between the wing and the airflow. If you increase alpha above a certain angle, the wing stalls, and ceases generating lift. Stalls are commonly encountered when flying really slow, but can occur at any speed. Pull the stick hard enough, and the elevator rudder will increase alpha above the threshold, momentarily causing the wings to cease generating lift and no longer stress the airframe.

The lifting force generated by the wings is proportional to the angle of attack. However, when the airplane reaches a certain airspeed, flying the wings at an alpha just below stalling will cause the wings to generate more lift (measured in accelleration, or G units) than the airframe is designed to handle. This is the "maneuvering speed", the maximum speed at which full rudder deflection in smooth air will not cause the plane to exceed its design loads.

The misunderstanding lies in that this speed is considered an absolute safe speed to do whatever you want with the controls. This is not the case. Turbulence, the airframe's current position in relation to the airflow, the plane's attitude and current position of the flight control surfaces can all add to the forces that work on the airframe. So when you pull 4G at the maximum maneuvering speed and encounter a 2G gust of turbulence, the air works 6Gs on the airframe, which will cause you to exceed the design specifications.

Every professional pilot should know this, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are some who don't. It is really, really common among hobbyist pilots.
Adobe Releases Long-Awaited RTMP Specification
I wonder what the similarities between LinkedIn's Neo4J, Google's Pregel and CODASYL is. (CODASYL lost out to RDBMS ~30 years ago.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODASYL
PR stunt, imo.

sensationalist statements + tesla being a successful car company in this economic climate = national coverage
To be fair, this has absolutely nothing to do with Musk actually trying to run Detroit and everything with getting some free press for saying that he should.
your dream is a good one. believe it or not your best route to a sustainable version of this is a startup. why?
- you need to love something in order to be dedicated to it wherever and whenever (its mostly about time zones).
- you want something where effort=return and bullshit = zero.

no matter what path you take to achieve this kind of freedom balance will be required. in the case of your own business you will need to spend lots of in person time with your partners and have great discipline with communications. if you don't have pre-existing relationships of several years that's how long will it take to get started. at least it has in my case. the payoff has been huge; its lead to a company where everyone lives and travels entirely as they want. good luck
Jeff Bezos at Wired Disruptive by Design conference
I remember people saying this back in 2001.
tesla being a successful car company

But they're not successful yet, that's the point. (Of course, this is under the crazy assumption that we're defining business "success" as turning a profit)
> Re: The Macintosh
> ...No one general-purpose computer configuration can meet every user’s needs, though, so this idea ultimately failed in the marketplace.

I may be mistaken, but wasn't the original Macintosh actually pretty successful?
this seems endemic in academia as a whole

Yes, because this is not even close to a free market. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658165
It's worth mentioning, but indeed not a straight comparison. The extended batteries on a Thinkpad aren't exactly pretty:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenovophotolibrary/2774790879/
It's unlikely that Apple saved any money by underclocking the SATA interface; I would guess they did it to save power.
since macs became popular with hackers.
You don't have to go global, you can be a nomad in you own country. This guy was doing it before broadband (or the internet as we know it) existed.

http://microship.com/resources/technomadic-tools.html
I don't think that's a function of pressure, but amount. If my hands were caked in chalk, I probably would have a harder time maintaining grip. But if I have just enough to maintain dry hands, but not enough to reduce friction, then it helps.