skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I worked in a company that changed their old, legacy office block for a brand new open plan one. Everyone was out in the open, and though there was an obvious hierarchy of seating, most of the desks were unassigned and changed ownership each day. The floors themselves opened out into a huge open space, and all the meeting rooms had glass sides.

I have to say I wasn't a fan. There was a lot of background noise, and it was very difficult to have a private conversation. I constantly felt like someone might look over my shoulder (a problem if dealing with sensitive documents), or interrupt work I'd struggled to get focussed into. It was also hard to have private conversations about sensitive topics without having to search for a space away from everyone's desk. Previously we'd just talk about stuff without moving.

My biggest frustration, though, was the fact it was very hard to be anything other than corporately bland in our attitudes. When we were split into floors and rooms, it was much easier to laugh and joke, and I often saw people bring something in to announce someone's birthday and make a fuss of them.

After going open-plan, it seemed the only way to celebrate anything was to interrupt the entire office, which put a large dampener on it.

There's also the issue that if you tend to be introverted, open-plan offices can be exhausting.
If only there was some way for links ... and the targets of those links ... to exist on the same layer of abstraction.

Imagine, if you will, a "linking" app - you view content in this app, and then link to other content in this app ... I'm still working this out in my head, but I think there could really be something here ... with the "linking app" that is ...
On a tangential note, it's not quite right to call the European system socialist. "Social democracy" might be more correct, otherwise people confuse it with communist socialism which is an entirely different regime with much more negative connotations. There are very few things in common between the systems in, say, Sweden and Soviet Russia.
Profoundly important,but not in the way we might expect: exoplanet revolution
Pressure Cooking to Improve Electric Car Batteries
National Archives (UK): JFK File Digitised for 50th Anniv of Assassination
> Especially when we're discussing teenagers,

...and who haven't finished cognitive development.
I really like groovy, it seems to be a good sweet spot between the power of java and syntactic sugar. I just wish there were more framework options, like something between ratpack and grails. I dont want to use ORM or a heavy duty framework, but something a bit more structured than ratpack. Grails seems nice for what it is, but it just isn't what I need.
Apple wins another chance to ban Samsung phones for infringing its patents
[video] DHTMLConf
I'm not convinced that any technology exists today that will be so set-it-and-forget-it wonderful that companies should plan to build it now and leave it the hell alone for a decade.

I think you're making an implicit assumption that a LoB application must be built with a single technology.

The recent fast pace of technology development has demonstrated that specifics come and go, but foundations can remain stable for much longer. Data portability matters more than code portability. Open formats matter more than open source. Communication protocols matter more than whatever is on either end of them.

If I were trying to implement a major LoB application with reasonable longevity today, I'd go back to basics and plan the software architecture with that goal in mind. Ideas like modular design and separating interface from implementation might not be trendy in a world of web frameworks and "living standards" and processes that are described as "Agile" but really just mean not bothering to plan anything properly. However, those basic principles are as valuable today as they ever were.

There is no reason an LoB application using a SQL-based data store running on Linux servers and accessible using tried and tested mechanisms like sockets shouldn't easily remain viable for decades. Probably the most you'll ever have to do is upgrade some front-end technologies to keep up with whatever devices and software platforms your people use to access the system, but that's easy.

The problem with a lot of these legacy intranet applications that have relied on successive generations of proprietary browser plug-ins isn't the dependence on the plug-ins themselves, it is that they didn't really have that kind of clean separation of responsibilities. Business logic was coded up in the front-end, so when the plug-in became obsolete, a core part of the application's logic was left in limbo. Communication was done by sending custom formats over home-grown protocols, so when new technologies came along, all of these formats and protocols had to be reimplemented from scratch and often without a proper spec.

It's not like it's ever been a secret that these tactics were likely to cause maintenance problems sooner or later. The people who planned ahead still have in-house applications that work just fine. Hopefully the people who didn't will at least learn from their mistakes and know better next time.
While the ageism of the startup scene is legendary, I think it's incredibly myopic. The assumption seems to be that older people who are hardworking and exceptionally intelligent are likely not to be conversant with the latest technology/programming language du jour and therefore have nothing to offer. I also wonder if startups feel that they can more easily exploit younger workers with airy, hand-wavey promises of future payoffs that older workers would be less likely to accept.
Yeah, sort of agree. I found myself wondering, whats wrong with ye olde bread board? And then, like you say, kits, which we can easily still buy.

But lower down I saw their ideas about using this kit on paper or material, and what not. Which does seem more like craft materials than education, but also educational. So, I'd suggest this kit is a way in. It can get people, kids, interested, and once "hooked" they can then get all bread board about it, then wield a soldering iron in anger.

So, really it depends on how this stuff is used. Any one using this as an education tool would need to sort of spot the talent, and quickly move them on to something a little more educationally useful.
Nightcode wasn't on the survey, but I hope someone besides me wrote it in! I should've held a write-in campaign.
Australis displays at least 17 tabs before expanding into the tab-scroll view when full screen, which is more than I'd typically have open at a time anyway.

http://i.imgur.com/8JIwdgh.jpg

Tab-scoll, to me, makes a lot of sense as it prevents any confusion over the content of the tabs, especially when those tabs lack favicons: in Chrome, you simply get a blank page icon when the scroll bar overflows.

The only downside to Australis for me so far has been the removal of the "thin" address bars/small icon sets, there is no longer an option within Firefox to enable them, as far as I know.
I come not to praise QWERTY, but to bury it
I have seen someone get fired at a restaurant I worked at because they were always too overwhelmed to smile consistently. Perhaps Americans are forced to smile at times but why would someone foreign take offense to that?

By the way he got directly fired because he wasnt smiling when he was walking around. Dont you just love being employed in a Work at Will state.
> People would literally mail you responses

Get a PO Box.
Is Priceonomics ever going to do anything besides write epic blog posts?
Yes but the point is that it would be physically locked by a code, so it could technically not be forced open like a non-protected package.
Just picked up the book, anyone else?
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | Ruby Bridges Interview
Senate hearing on Bitcoin [video]
I felt this way back during the dot-com bust. I was worried that a single bad choice on my end would lead to my entire bloodline failing, and I eventually had panic attacks, health problems, etc.

My advice to you is, give yourself some slack. Even if you make a few mistakes, it won't lead to catastrophic failure. Don't worry about work. Save your money dutifully, and go to your kids activities. You'll realize that there will always be opportunity as long as you're making good solid decisions. But you don't need to be working 24x7.
Robots don't buy iPhones, or pay for data plans from Verizon and AT&T.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm not arguing that HN is somehow optimal. I'm just saying that as a continual time investment, it's provided greater returns than the alternatives I've used in the past, with regards to staying on top of the scene in tech, startups, and tech-related policy.
I'm holding on to them because coinbase is taking forever to validate my bank account.
> Alaskans have always struck me as overly cheerful people

Exactly. They're genuine and real, as are Yukoners.

It always strikes us how similar Yukoners and Alaskans are, to the point people from both places always agree we should break off and form our own country.
Any advantages that Litecoins offer over Bitcoins? As long as I pride myself on being somebody who bought into Bitcoin for more than its fiat value potential, I may as well be consistent and understand Litecoin as well.
This is an excellent and a very interesting post. Thank you for sharing!
the good thing about that is that if the police doesn't carry guns, the "need" for criminals to carry the gun is reduced, and everyone wins.
But in this article, he makes it seem as tho his failures were due to career choice, bad mortgages, age, etc. When in reality, it could simply have been self-respect, maybe stubbornness or pride. I just think this article may have been unfairly billed and titled because there is a HUGE piece missing - that of his own pride.
Everyone In The World Hates Their Jobs—But Americans Hate Theirs The Most
How to buy stocks. Didn't buy just-issued Microsoft stock because the mysterious "how" was just daunting enough. (You had to actually go to a brick-and-mortar broker office; no such thing as "online trading".)
Ads as war weapons
Can We Talk?
Couple of things:

1) There are many lactose-free milk drinks -- from literally "lactose free milk" (milk with lactose removed) to any kind of kefir/yogurt like products.

2) Being lactose intolerant doesn't mean sudden death upon drinking products that contain lactose. In most cases, it means "generic upset stomach" symptoms (that could have any number of causes -- e.g., is it the lactose in the latte, the coffee in the latter, or is it lack of sleep?) with moderate lactose intake or very few or no symptoms when lactose intake is only occasional.

(I'm lactose intolerant, but I didn't actually know this until recently.)
Definitely looks interesting. Can you also elaborate on how you came across this startup? Were you googling around for something related or did you hear this through a friend?
Linux is the platform for robotics
I try to use softwares as vanilla as possible (especially with multiple computers not all synced) but thanks for pointing that out, we'll see.
how/where would someone be able to study that? sounds like an interesting subject. right now i'm studying for public health related field, and something like that could come very handy.

please tell! :-)
If I'm not mistaken Chrome's bar is just a copy from Opera also (witch i'm sure didn't came up with the concept).

The thing is: there are UX patterns that are better than others. That's not copying, it's just common sense.
In my own words, what it's like to fail... You have beaten everyone at their own games, and then you yourself, at your own game. And then you could really give a fuck what priceonomics meant to say.
The matter gets even muddier when you start thinking of different weights, sizes and styles (eg italics). Are 12pt and 14pt Helveticas different fonts?
Really thinking of switching. Heard lots of great things.

One question - how is customer support?
"step one is to not have 8 kids"

Really shows how intelligence and common sense are two different things.

Or making decisions based on emotionality and what you want.

Just because you want 8 kids (or 5 or whatever) doesn't mean it's a good idea to have that many kids.

And just because you think your passion is being a comedy writer doesn't mean it's a good idea to take that career path or take that gamble.

I mean I would imagine it would have been possible when he was offered the dream job by Tom Arnold to look at it rationality (hard but possible) and know enough about the business to realize the gamble he was taking.

As opposed to the gamble that a person fresh out of college w/o kids or a family in the same "go for the brass ring" situation.
This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan
I'm sorry, but this will be overrun by trolls and give out unhelpful/bad advice. Plus, there are already forums for this.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline:
1-800-273-8255 There's trained people to give support on these very issues. There's other numbers you can call as well. Check them out.
Unsurprisingly, private offices score the best, by a huge margin. Right now, I've got a huge office to myself (separate from a two-person office next to me by an open passageway). It's super quiet because there are bookshelves full of books to absorb any noise, as well as thick 1970-era carpeting. It's the most productive place I've ever worked. I have no idea why tech companies would pay engineers gobs of money,[1] spend gobs of money on huge office campuses,[2] then inflict open plan or cubicles on said engineers.

[1] Office space is expensive, but not that expensive relative to an engineer's salary. The going rate for class A space in Manhattan is about $70/square foot per year. That puts a 10x10 office (assuming 85% usable space) at about $8,000 per year + build-out + maintenance.

[2] Apple's new spaceship building (in the middle of a faceless suburb) will cost $5 billion and have 2.8 million square feet of space. One World Trade Center (in downtown Manhattan) will cost $3.9 billion and have over 3 million square feet of class A office space. A lower-profile project, the New York Times building in Midtown West, was constructed for $850 million and has 1.5 million square feet.

Apparently Google spent almost $2 billion on a squat 18-story structure in Manhattan with an over-abundance of depressing window-less interior spaces... I'm going to assume it was the difficulty of getting 2.9 million square feet in one place rather than just bad taste.

EDIT: I'm not saying Apple's offices are open plan. I have no idea what Apple's setup is. I'm pointing out that companies are certainly willing to spend a lot of money on these big suburban office parks, multiples of what it would cost to just buy a couple of skyscrapers in SF. Thus, cost does not seem to be the motivating factor (except maybe in a penny-wise pound-foolish sort of way).
When I look at your screenshot, it really doesn't look like Chrome at all. Well as much as any browser looks the same with url bar, etc.
My understanding is that keeping your database in a separate container from your application(s) is a more preferred topology. In theory, you could easily spin up/spin down application containers as needed, and they can use Docker's service discovery features to automatically become aware of which port the database is listening on.
Wrapping AFNetworking With ReactiveCocoa
Thousands of families already have a Nielsen box on their tv.
How is this that different?
Add Kinect facial recognition if you don't want to code the data manually.
Hacking and Philosophy: Crackdown Part II
That's not the point. Even if you have good rep, there's nothing stopping you from doing a reversal and then whoever sold you it out the money and the BTC. Unless you personally know the person, never sell BTC by paypal (Or really anything you wouldn't want to lose money on)
I thought this was going to be about Russians hiding secret messages in magazines, like that movie where the guy hallucinated he was cracking codes.
Didn't see this survey in time to contribute, but I'm one of the tinkerers who's used CLJS more than Clojure. Most of what I've been interested in doing is in-browser. For my last project[1] I used a regular Clojure REPL to clarify my understanding of the standard lib and paste in little functions for testing. Don't remember why I didn't use a browser-connected ClojureScript REPL. Maybe it just didn't seem worth typing "rlwrap lein trampoline cljsbuild repl-listen" when I can type "lein repl" :P

My biggest wish is for the ClojureScript compiler to be less accepting of stupid code. I've made all kinds of moronic mistakes[2] that would ideally yield a warning or even a straight-up error, right at the source, but they don't and I just end up finding data structures full of nils at runtime. I've also hit a few traps with lein-cljsbuild[3][4]. This is all definitely improving though.

I've now started my first real Clojure project, a web app built on Luminus[5]. Luminus kind of strikes me as training wheels for Clojure. It's easy to get started with, and minimizes the sense of foreign-ness coming from a Python web development background. But I doubt I'll still use it once I have more experience, as opposed to simply putting its component libraries (Compojure, Ring, lib-noir, etc.) into a project directly. Which is fine; it fills a valuable role in the ecosystem anyway.

1. https://github.com/graue/dumbbell

2. Example: http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJS-639

3. https://github.com/emezeske/lein-cljsbuild/issues/239

4. https://github.com/emezeske/lein-cljsbuild/issues/248

5. http://www.luminusweb.net/
Closer to Van Eyck
An Eventful Morning
> Socialism makes every other person a potential enemy and a potential victim. Resources are scarce. People come to hate one another.

You're taking a look at countries that have implemented 'socialism' and ended up with what amounts to dictatorships. Do you really think that Communism as envisioned by Karl Marx included someone like Stalin, or the corrupt officials that inhabited governments in the Eastern Bloc?

For all of the rhetoric that the far-right sling around in the US about the evils of Socialism, even they have Socialist policies. The government regulates, picks winners, keeps companies afloat that are 'too big to fail,' Social Security and other welfare programs, etc.

Don't confuse situations where neighbors reports other neighbors who then 'disappear' as having anything to do with Communism or Socialism (or than that they have historically resided together).
Five Suspected In $45 Million Cyber Heist
The problem with your argument is that you assume that attempts at suicide are being supported by some sort of logical reasoning that inevitably leads to the conclusion of killing oneself.

This is rarely the case, and is mostly seen in instances of euthanasia where the sufferer has no chance of life improvement due to an irreversible decline in health, and thus requests an assisted suicide.

Whereas those who are suicidal due to depression tend to take the irrational view that their mental anguish will never cease. This is bias towards extreme pessimism, not rationality.
Ask HN: Best resources to understand AI
I'm looking to immerse myself in the theory to build up a stronger foundation. I already have Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd ed) by Norvig and Russell. Beyond theory, I would also like to learn more about things like hadoop/kafka/storm/etc.

I know this is rather broad, so let me know if there's a better way for me to clarify what I'm looking for. What methods have you used to learn more?
Google Earth Intros Tour Builder, A Cooler Way to Tell Stories [video]
> I recommend you take another look.

Actually, I recommend you take another look. Chrome's tabs are significantly more rounded than in your illustration.
There are a bunch of 'positive thinking'-style things that claim to 'increase self esteem', but actually intentionally cause unrealistic expectations - and when those expectations aren't met, then the larger the gap/mismatch between expectations and reality, the greater damage to self esteem.
You need to be careful with that line of reasoning. Things change, it wasn't clear necessarily when Rosanne was on that Sitcoms were dying. Nor that the replacement wouldn't need jokes. The take away is things change and if multiple things change at the same time in a negative way it hurts.

What struck me was sitting in a library surfing the web. I'd much rather sit in the library and read books. If his description of the days being so long an boring and lonely for the homeless, does it make sense to start a program to read to them for a couple of hours a day. It won't be boring and it could be educational.
My initial thought: I could imagine a Facebook or Twitter app that analyses posts of all your "friends"/"followed" to establish the mood of the post and to highlight a trend that may look depressive giving a person a suggestion that their acquaintance might be having problems. This may relate well to suicide prevention.

Getting people to sign up for a social network because they're depressed seems like an impossibility.
Terrifying. But inspiring too.

I rode by a homeless person on the way to work today. This reminds me "there, but for the grace of God, go I". (Substitute whatever you like for the god word: fate, karma, etc.)

Sometimes it is good to be reminded that sometimes sh*t just happens. (And I know, he could have done things differently in terms of life choices, but he also had some really poor luck.)
Bitcoin will rise in value forever: proof by induction
We currently are not. We tried them out, but found that the counter value would spontaneously change from time to time. This could have been user error, but we weren't able to resolve it via our own wits or the user group.

We evolved our design to use simple integers and add to them in a way that didn't require atomicity. That has been rock solid.
To be pithy, Americans live under a managed democracy, a system that is noted for not really being democratic, actually. So when that system tries to teach its young about democracy, it teaches about the rituals and mechanisms used for confirming which branch of the preexisting elite will rule this time around. Actual democracy, in which the people exercise real power over their own lives through both parliamentary and devolving mechanisms, simply doesn't get brought up.

Americans then go on to decide that democracy has failed and should be replaced with futarchy or neo-monarchy or technocracy, ignorantly presuming that they've even tried democracy.
Or they are just assholes...
Haven't read it, but the source I've always heard cited in claims that less distraction leads to real productivity gains (3x) is Peopleware http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321934113/ref=ox_sc_act_ti...
The best setup I think I've ever seen was a large room with tiny personal cubicles lining the walls, and islands of open work areas in the center. You could go to your cubelet for phone calls, email, storing your coat, etc, but coding work was done at the islands. Each island consisted of five workstations two on each side and one at one end. Each workstation had two 24" monitors and a wide berth, with two chairs and more available. Pair programming was comfy, and getting four or five people around a single piece of work was easy.

If you were at the islands, you were working and available to be called over. If you were in your private cubicle, you were to be left alone unless it was really important. From total openness to decent privacy in a few steps. That's as good a balance as I've seen.
Senate Hearing on Bitcoins
MIT professor Andrew McAfee: 3 universal questions companies ask about big data
Deeplinking is pretty forward thinking. I routinely work with 20-30 different mobile advertisers and you'd be surprised how difficult it is to get traffic bought on just a device and country level, let alone product level.