skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
balsamiq is great for ui mockup. Other than that I agree with habs, paper works. Although i have recently started using Microsoft One Note 2007. It makes for great brainstorming / idea throwing / white boarding.
> - stepping away from the screens regularly (set a timer to remind you because it's easy to blow this one off)

Ubuntu includes an application to enforce breaks by locking your screen. I have tried it. Works.
How did 100,000,000 women disappear?
Stuff To Do: http://stufftodo.dedasys.com/ - it's got markdown syntax, and I can rearrange the list of things to do quickly and easily. It probably doesn't scale up to having huge amounts of notes and things you want to show connecting and so on, but I like it for quick notes.
All about Types in Javascript - Automatic type conversion 
How to convert fromobject to boolean, int<-> string and what it means in the real life programming
I don't think he was saying that computers exclusively run the Airbus. He's saying that the failure of the autopilot in a difficult situation leads to a cascade of problems that can be harder to deal with in the more simplified Airbus cockpit.
Why Every Innovator is in the Toy Business
SquashFS: Not Just for Embedded Systems
This reminds me... why is Urban Farming so popular in other nations and not The U.S.?
Blank sheets of paper and a pencil.
I never really knew how Craigslist made money. I guess I never saw those recruitment ads because I don't live in one of the cities given. Its an interesting freemium model.
I never could get the complaints straight myself. My personal Mac and the Macs at my former employer all religiously used color calibration, so we never had problems. It was mostly from end users, clients, and message boards was where I fielded complaints in the past.
Maybe the coffee hasn't kicked in for me yet, but this whole project seems to be missing something. First, I find it odd that a visiting lecturer in visual arts would have been a consultant for disaster recovery and development in one of the most profound natural disasters and screw-ups this country has seen. Second, while I appreciate that they found an alternative use for the substandard living vehicle, a mobile greenhouse hardly seems impractical given the goals of the project. Finally, after reading the article and visiting the associated site, it seems they have simply installed a retracting entry point, nothing more.
Totally agree with KWD. Freemind is the first app I open before starting anything new (project/proposal/article etc). I love mind mapping, Freemind's keyboard controls mean you can quickly produce a complex map without ever having to touch the mouse. Love it.
Yeah, I should have made it clear that I was talking about autopilot. I have read other stories about the disaster that toyed with the idea that the Airbus autopilot cannot be overriden, and that the computers will always decide whats best for the plane.

For example, this statement from his article is misleading:

The computers are programmed with some strict rules (in fact, Airbus calls them “Laws”) designed to assess the human commands from the flight deck – and veto them if they would put the plane in harm’s way. Point the nose too high or too low – or bank to steeply and the computer will correct your bad airmanship. Who’s in charge here?
Really well written! One thing I was curious about was the use of TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 instead of TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA: what's the difference between these setups in terms of mem/cpu usage? Obviously it varies between servers, but is it roughly 2x, 10x slower?
By the time you turn 40, you may likely have a mortgage and family. Packing the family up and selling the house to pursue a more challenging development job in another area is just not feasible, especially when your spouse has her own career. The "Plan B" suggestions given by the author are good for people in this situation. A few more are teaching software development and writing about technology as a journalist.

Most software in the field today (80% is the figure I read - trying to find the article again) takes user input from a screen, queries a database, and sends results back to the user. After developing enough systems like this, you realize only the technologies are changing, not the problems solved. Keeping up with the latest tools does not change the dull repetition of this reality so you can easily lose incentive to keep up. And, frankly, I'm not sure companies need to pay someone with 20 years experience to do such mundane development.

Interviews for my last couple of employers centered more around growth in the organization, ie. understanding business processes, the business' industry, and organizational dynamics, not on technical knowledge. I think there comes a point when organizations begin evaluating a potential employee on potential to grow in the organization rather than grasp of functional vs. imperative paradigms, etc.

If staying a developer is what you really want, then it's probably worth learning another problem domain. Perhaps mining biological data for patterns, etc. (Heck, despite advances in neuroscience we can't explain why a stroke causes memories to "move" to another set of cells in one patient but are lost in another patient. There are plenty of problems to be solved.) Anything that makes the field fresh again. (Of course, you may run into the same problem I stated in paragraph 1.)
That's funny. Judging from popular gadget sizing, I've apparently got fairly large hands (e.g. I was mystified when I found out people hated the original XBox controller. I thought it was perfect).

And I do far better on the iPhone keyboard than Treo/Pearl/etc. The landscape enV and BB Bold are easier for me to hit keys accurately with, but the auto-correction on the iphone more than makes up for the added errors.

I could see a physical keyboard with iPhone-caliber auto-correction being a superior choice. But for actual use with these big grubby mitts, among devices currently available, I find the iPhone to be way out front.
I often wonder if those of ya'll (sorry, couldn't resist) in the Bay Area understand that this anxiety exists. It does, and it drives many of us to drop our drawl and head westward.

I worked for a very well-funded startup in DC a few years back that failed miserably. When the end was nigh, I overheard C-levels say things like "you know, I can't help but think that location played a role in this." Did we have money? Yes. Did we have talent? Yes. Could our location change the fact that our management made stupid decisions? No. But, when you're looking for excuses the location factor is always there. And, as tech entrepreneur on the east coast it's always in your mind as you debate your next big thing.

I'd be very interested to know if those of you who are in the Bay Area with successful startups feel like your same company (funding, employees, etc) would be as successful in a different location.
I don't understand why a thunderstorm would have affected this plane. Wouldn't it have been cruising by that time at an altitude immune to weather? Perhaps this was discussed in another thread; I haven't been following the discussions too closely.
An absolutely enormous whiteboard- we just rewrite the basic bullet points over and over, then when we have it down to three or so main points we sketch out the layout and the major components we'll need to build. Then we dive into the coding :)
1) The intense shift from rural to urban to suburban over the last 100-150 years still has our heads spinning

2) More emphasis on grass farming (lawns) that are usually so much work that they preclude any actual gardening

3) Longer commutes and working days that push off lower priorities. Work more -> more money -> less time -> buying food is more attractive b/c of the lower marginal value of money and the higher marginal value of time

Other countries are either a) poorer and have to grow food to survive or b) rich but have better work-life balance and have more time for things like gardening.
I can't keep myself from looking at these images one by one trying to check if my app is on it :D
I like to use mindmaps for planning and concept work like this.

Freemind is a good open source mindmap editor for the desktop.

Or you could try my online, browser-based mindmap app. http://thoughtmuse.com ;)
Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
For organizing ideas, a very large pad of paper and a delta elite triangle grip ballpoint pen(1).

If it gets to a lot of words, back to the computer I go.

(1)I know the pen is over-specified, but I find writing with most pens/pencils so unpleasant that I even type and print single envelopes to avoid it. The delta (that specific one, not any) makes writing tolerable for me--I carry one in my pocket and use it even to sign receipts.
I have a yellow legal pad and a pen on my desk. It's kind of neat to see that it's already down to about 10 sheets left.
But this isn't what the article is asserting. They are not saying the autopilot couldn't be overridden. The article is saying that it appears that while flying into a very bad storm the pilots disengaged the AP and attempted to make an emergency, beyond-limits, turn, which the plane 'allowed', and then at some point after that the disaster struck (structural failure, for example). Whatever happened, did so before (presumably very busy) pilots could radio anything.

The article possible alludes to maybe pilots used to making very small changes to the very capable AP might loose their skills over time, but that's like saying cruise control does the same to drivers (and it might, I have no idea)
Permaculture? Environmental justice?

Has anyone claimed the law where a project's legitimacy varies inversely with the amount of buzzwords needed by its creators to describe it?

If not, I'm claiming it now. (I demand an XKCD comic on the matter within a fortnight)
Clojure Links To Get You Up To Speed
Just based on the wired article (which may or may not be fair) it does seem more like a work of art than a work of engineering.
Last.fm founders quit
Redmine. The basic pattern is usually starting with a wiki, jotting down notes, collecting links, brainstorming and dumping information I get from research or talking to people, then start opening tickets as todos start to come up, then add people to the project as needed. I do this or something like this for most tech and non-tech projects. I do have a couple moleskines, but I find using paper to be more cumbersome. Sometimes I'll use them for UI sketches. Whiteboards are great, too.
JEWELLERY EARRINGS
The shape of this kind of graph usually isn't very meaningful by itself for showing subtle patterns -- you're right that the extremes of the graph always look like that. In the original article, if you line up the Bing-vs-Google and Bing-vs-Live graphs, the intercept near the middle of the graph is a little further left. That's all I got from it. I'm assuming there's an ANOVA table associated with this study that we're not seeing, and the probabilities there must be a little more compelling.

Maybe a two-phase Turking might be interesting, too: first have the turkers fill come up with a few parameters for each query (e.g. current events, general info, celebrities, pr0n), then compare search engine results for those queries. That would help pick out the more subtle patterns that you were looking for in the original graph.
Twitterers defy China's firewall
Hi, do you have a blog or would you be willing to post something about your experience with Q and KDB+? I worked in the financial industry for awhile and we were pulling some data from KDB+ systems. I thought about digging deeper into Q and KDB+, but other side projects kept me from really diving in.

Maybe I'll revisit it now that they offer a free trial version.
Not sure if you'll like my metaphor, but here goes anyway...

As a software developer, I've always felt like a race car driver, trying to win for my customer. I need lots of help. I pretty much maintain my own car, but I need help with the course. That's where sys admins come in.

You provide the pavement. You should be proud of what you do. Without good smooth high quality pavement, not much could happen very quickly. I get frustrated when my Corvette has to run down a dirt road. Just like you get frustrated when someone's horse and buggy clogs up your beautiful race course.

Every time a customer has asked me to do sys admin work, I describe our respective responsibilities with this example. That's about the only way they understand that not everybody in IT does everything in IT.
Cake Toppers and Wedding Cake Toppers
FunDeliver.com offers custom sculpted wedding cake toppers
How I got Censored from Techcrunch: L’Arroseur Arrosé
Predicting the End of the World
Basecamp + glass floor to ceiling windows and dry erase markers.
Nope. The altitude it was flying at was not immune to weather. Also the thunderstorm had

* Strong updrafts of wind
* Heavy moisture content which was sucked up from the ocean and which turned to ice and hail

Read about the coffin corner by the same author
http://trueslant.com/milesobrien/2009/06/08/the-coffin-corne...

What I don't understand is, if they lose altitude because of being at the edge of the corner, wouldn't the pilots be able to steady the aircraft at a lower altitude?
"Why" would be a more interesting question than "how" ;-)
> Why would anyone mod this up?

I almost modded it up in sheer relief that it wasn't just one more blog post in the creationism vs. evolution "battle".
"Thunderstorms are the "tallest" weather phenomena that we experience here on the ground. An "average" height of thunderstorms is 30,000, however, depending on atmospheric conditions (i.e., the height of the tropopause) some thunderstorms can reach as high as 50,000 to 60,000 feet over the central U.S. and in the tropics near the equator. In some stronger thunderstorms, the upward vertical motion in them can "punch" through the tropopause and will actually penetrate into the stratosphere before stopping their upward growth."[1]

"The Airbus SAS A330-200, with 228 on board, appears to have flown into or near a large cluster of thunderstorms northeast of Fernando de Noronha, located off Brazil’s coast, according to AccuWeather.com.

Updrafts may have reached 100 mph, and the storms, stretching for over 400 miles (644 kilometers), towered as high as 50,000 feet, according to the weather service." [2]

Airbus A330 Service Ceiling: 39,370 ft (12,000 m) [3]

[1] http://www.srh.noaa.gov/shv/Past_Questions_FOUR.htm

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aFSn...

[3] http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/a330/
I can't edit the link. :(
Does The VC Industry Need To Lose Weight?
Tell HN: LxAdmin update released
LxAdmin has released a update for the security issues.

Those using LxAdmin can upgrade from the "upgrade home" section of LxAdmin. (Administration-->Update Home)

The latest version is 5.0.16292
I make lots of notes in Tomboy (http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/features.html) - which is a personal wiki/notetaking desktop app, primarily for Gnome, but has an official Windows port and alpha web sync. It can also be synched to a local folder (I sync to my Dropbox), to a webDav or a SHH destination.

I find it really handy.
Weather is not limited to low altitudes..
I am not normally a conspiracy theorist, but the first thing that crossed my mind was the whole crappy drama with techcrunch.

Have the founders discovered that there was a data leak - and, given their opinions on the matter - decided it better to quit than work with whoever made it happen?

I hope not (edit: because I was rooting for last.fm, not because I want it to be true).
According to weather services, the storms at the region towered as high as 50,000 feet, an altitude higher than maximum ceiling that most commercial jetliners can climb.
ICSI released a tool to "Debug your Internet."
I don't lump those all together. Why not "useful" if it really is useful, that's a lot different than calling something "essential", since that's a lie.
I would say given the constraints on founders being tied to their companies, the turnaround for leaving is far greater than the length of the TC debacle.

(I work here, and have had no indication that the TC allegations are true)
I agree. It's certainly a convenient time to leave the company.
1% Market Share in Search is Worth Up to $3 Billion Dollars
I read the comments here and I was prepared for some tale of woe involving gross financial mismanagement and staggering levels of yuppie self-regard.

Then I read the article; now I'm disgusted, with the attitudes on display here.

I hate to break it to you guys but what's happening to her could happen to you. To put it in terms of a startup she got into a booming market and was moderately successful, when the economy started tanking she invested in improvements that would help her differentiate her offering in an increasingly competitive market. Then the customers went away.

From reading the article it sounds like she works pretty hard and has to go to her customers unlike self important web developers (like me and thee) who can work from the comfort of our chairs without needing to get up if we don't want to.

And as for the iphone, from my reading of the article it sounds like that was acquired when it represented less than a days net revenue.

If you think it can't happen to you because you believe in Ayn Rand and program in Ruby; well guess what, it can; and if it comes down to holding on to your principles or feeding your kid, you will be filling out the form for food assistance and be glad it's there for you.
Last.fm founders leave
I wonder if they are essentially saying "since our stock is finished vesting over the last 2 years..."

They might have wanted to leave for some time.

edit: It's really close to the exact 2 year mark http://www.crunchbase.com/company/last-fm
2 years...about the right time for bonus, retention payments, options, etc. to vest.
Excellent write up.

I frequently wish descriptions like this existed in a fractal form with ever increasing complexity that could be "zoomed in" (or out) for more or less detail. Many times the problem is the inverse, some overly generalized news blurb lacking details or even reference links.

This seems like the well crafted super magnified version. I loved all of the in-line reference links!
2 years seems a good average length to endure big-corp life. Wonder if there's some more data on this somewhere.
If it's just me I do it on the computer. I use Balsamiq for screen mockups, Microsoft Word to write a spec (sometimes just a bullet-point feature list) and Microsoft Project to build a timeline.

If it's a collaborative effort we use a whiteboard and take pictures.
I have a favorite race condition, too. I think it's simpler to describe than Tyma's, and it has a cooler effect.

http://www.matasano.com/log/201/today-on-this-old-vulnerabil...
Nothing that requires up front commitment has ever succeeded? Really? "Destined to fail" seems to overstate the case quite a bit.
this is sometimes a good idea, sometimes not (think Space flight, for example).

The current thinking, probably stemming from Google's design-by-stats methodology is that this scales down to startups, you build something and morph it based on feedback. We used to call that design by committee, but clearly when you give it a new name its a different animal :)

I think what's more likely to have happened is that the problems have changed from things like best way to compress these bytes, faster state machine for this network stream, better LCS algorithm to find my n-gram etc, to problems that involve many social factors for their success. When this happens the only way to find those factors is to involve the social community that is creating them. Often those doing the iteration/refine cycle with the developers are not the same as those ultimately using a product, but when it works, it works well.

Software is seeing a shift towards large scale problems, like making the accumulated history of mankind available to anyone, anywhere; or supporting complex life decisions; or connecting and staying connected with multiple disparate sets of 'friends, etc. These are radically different problems being solved in different ways.

But not every problem is solved best this way.
There were bomb threats days before the disaster.

A fact that can not be denied even if it costs me another 50 karma points.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=flight+447+bomb
Because we don't have a democratic capitalist system, we have a corporatist oligopoly.

The federal govt was set up to be toothless -- and consequently lacking in responsibility -- on purpose. Then it overstepped those bounds in terms of power, but never in terms of responsibility.

So you have a rate of federal income tax that is double, triple, or more that of your resident state, while getting almost nothing in return in the form of social services. (Medicare, Social Security/FICA are on top of the base federal income tax.)

States will have a very hard time raising taxes because the fed govt already takes so much from their citizens, and tehy cannot overrule the federal govt tax rate.

And, states are too interconnected by trade to be self-sufficient unto themselves, even with higher taxes. And the federal govt controls states without helping much - and what aid they give comes with control issues.

The govt of the USA simply doesn't work in this century. It needs to be either more state-oriented, or more federalist, not this unholy half-breed.

Consider the following:

I'm an American citizen living abroad permanently. I have to pay federal income taxes even though I never intend to return.

And better yet, I can't even vote in any election. Because I won't declare myself a resident of a state (and subject to those income taxes).

Without paying state income tax, I cannot vote in the federal elections.

Tell me that's not fucked up.

(And no, I can't just declare myself a resident of a state that has no income tax. That doesn't work.)
Thanks for the insight :) (partic. about founder constraints - no experience in that myself!)
True, but in this case, the template serves a different purpose from the macro. It's there to make zap polymorphic, and would be unnecessary in a dynamic or type-inferred language. The main point is that pg's macro can be implemented as an ordinary function in a language that has references.
With only 6 to 8 participants, the study definitely didn't have the power to find all but the grossest differences between query types. It's not about study design so much as the need to recruit more people.
5, of course, being utterly arbitrary, and even when it does work, its largely luck. Root cause analysis is a science, why5 is guess work, done 5 times.
There's also Swivel (swivel.com), Verifiable (verifiable.com) and as mentioned earlier IBM's Many Eyes. You've always got the glowering presence of the Business Intelligence giants (SAP/Business Objects in particular) too...

And our startup (timetric.com) too, I guess, though looking at this our emphasis is very different to theirs: we do time series exclusively, which means we have a completely different set of strengths and weaknesses.

Interestinly enough, though maybe not suprisingly, some of the early adopters have been newspapers. IBM are working with the New York Times; we're UK based and have been working with the Guardian...
Ask HN: Making a free site pay-for-only
Anyone have thoughts or links to thoughts on taking a site that is currently free and converting it into a subscription/pay-only site? People with experience preferably. :)
I'm once again struck by how poorly the steepness of a grassy hill is conveyed by 2 dimensional images.
Federal prosecutors freeze accounts of people who play poker online.