skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I guess what I find interesting is that someone so young (25) would be entrusted with such an important product, and entrusted alone. He could only have been with the company a few years at most. If I were in charge of that, I would at least send two people to pick up those phones, and they'd be people with bigger stakes in the company (maybe upper management or even vice presidents?).
A state governor resigns amidst controversy after running for Vice President of the United States and you don't think this is news?
Ask HN: What Music Do You Listen To While Coding?
Just curious what music you all listen to while coding (can be genre, specific artist, song, or random). No one is judging you here.
I have the feeling this will be decried as a failure three months after launch and taken for granted as a part of our lives ten years from now.
>What constitutes a monopoly?

IANAL, but I get the impression that antitrust suits are supposed to stop businesses from being anti-competitive, not from out-competing their opponents.

If the issue at the heart of this case is that PageRank may be unfairly directing traffic to Google services rather than competing services, couldn't the investigators just sign an NDA and examine PageRank?

[edit: formatting]
I guess I'll answer my own question. Typically I listen to R&B, but my older graduate adviser has recently gotten me interested in classical. My favorite is the Brandenburg Concerto #5 by Bach.
Similar comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716110
Similar comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715920
Front Loading Testing… For teams with a high Dev to Tester Ratio
I don't disagree, and considering the amount of military hardware that NASA puts up, they will be keeping NASA for quite some time. What should be done and what is actually done are usually two completely different things when it comes to the U.S. gov't.
A smarmy leftist crossed out "because I know being right is better than being popular" and replaces it with "but I'm convinced that being right is better than being popular", with similar pointless non-corrections, in an obvious hit piece and you think this is news?

Hmm? Do you think this is news? It's a "dumb blonde joke" writ large. These people are cockroaches, period.
But isn't that self defeating? If China decides that they want to go to the moon for strategic purposes and that private enterprise is the way to do it, then they will loosen up restrictions and tell the American engineers to come over and help. I'd imagine a lot of them would go to China because they see NASA getting less and less prominent. I don't see how this helps strategically.
Has anything changed? A 100years ago how many people knew (or cared) how a steam engine or telegraph worked?

You don't have to be computer literate because there is a computer on your wrist. In the 30s the big thing was electric motors, everything was going to be run by electric motors and people would have to become electric motor literate.
oh hell yeh agreed.

I said fear. should have said irrational fear. Such things can do much for furthering tech (example: the space race) but also hamper it (example: the current NASA situation).

Catch 22 :)
A 3.25 hour long .mp3 of techno music played at a rave held in my college dorm's subbasement.

That, and random OP/EDs from anime.
Announcing release of HadoopDB
That is awesome. Great application.

I wish more people would post their applications.
To the extent that the administration is looking at Google, it's because they are on the same page as a lot of people running around on the Internet. Microsoft is old news, a defanged lion that doesn't know it's dead yet. Google is the new awesome. Ideologically , they think monopolies are more of a problem than the previous administration, so their faith in Google's dominance that is essentially unassailable has a downside there.

Microsoft's issues with Yahoo, and Yahoo coming out looking inept, confused, and powerless, helped cement Google's position as the only provider on the block. Bing at least provides Google with a counter-argument. We'll see if it ever becomes plausible.
preposterous
I go to Shoutcast and bring up All-Classical WGBH 89.7-HD2.
Almost anything out of my fairly large collection (I hate silence).

I had the misfortune (or good fortune) to grow up next to a gifted musician - with a massively diverse musical taste. An example playlist I clearly remember from my late-late teens (blaring out from the room next door) went along the lines of: Slipknot, Spice Girls, Bach, Eminem, Metallica (or something like that). That kind of thing, apparently., rubs off :D
This isn't thinking. If you really are hackers, then hypothesize the opposite.

What if Palin is the most important and profound leader of this generation? What if her sincerity is truth? Find facts to support this conclusion. Explore the secret histories of the world. Get drunk on the cognitive dissonance.

Whatever you do, don't spend all your time re-enforcing your existing biases.
I've had some of the same reactions.

Remember that Readability is only at version 0.4 - and i'm not sure that it even has a plan to montetize (sorry, haven't read their site details). Have you considered bringing this suggestion to their attention?
Google - Code Jam
JotForm: Easy Online Form Creation (plus comparison with Doculicious and Wufoo)
At first, I thought that the document was a semi-fabrication -- a third party transcription done to force readers to confront the Governor's terrible English skills. I can understand how one might give a speech in "the vernacular," but the released transcription suggests that she regards this mess as reasonable English.

However, it is hard to find fault with her as her writing skills unfortunately are average for an American. I blame the electorate for not demanding higher intellectual standards of its leaders.
LAX parking lot is home away from home for airline workers
To some extent, yes (we want good stuff as cheap as possible) and yes of course this applies to other manufactured "off-shore" goods. By the way: I own an iphone as well... that is why this makes me even more so sad (as being part of this subsystem). Things have to change I don't have a proper solution though but I hope it will work out as time passes (e.g. people of China building an honest as possible democratic system, us ("the west") becoming less spoiled, etc.).
'Greed' is not intellectual or logical in nature. Its psychological

And what about those 'projected returns' figures that never materialised?

And what about Earth's limited capacity to sustain unlimited needs?

And what about that huge desert in Iraq where once a great civilization flourished?

And finally what abt - "There is enough for everyone's need not for everyone's greed - MKG"

Intellectuality is not the only angle of looking at things. Try it out with any woman !
I think it's the "too big to fail is too big to exist" theory he's talking about. If a financial company is backed by taxpayer dollars and everyone knows they won't be allowed to fail, as is certainly the case now for the consolidated powers, they can play Russian roulette but with the pistol against our temples.

I'm not sure what percentages of control constitute a monopoly, but if you look at the definition of a trust, I'd say it wouldn't be outlandish to suggest that anti-trust enforcement wouldn't be out of hand. Even if you were so libertarian to be opposed to such things, rescue with breakup as opposed to rescue by free money and consolidation surely would have been preferable.

The perhaps larger issue with the massively consolidated power in finance is regulatory capture.
RIM cries foul over Nortel auction
Yahoo's front page makeover
OpenMoko Layoffs Lead to New Open Hardware Venture
I just installed AVG's latest version after reinstalling Windows 7 (to upgrade from Beta to RC.) I remembered from using AVG during Windows 7 Beta that they included that link checker, and I hated it as well, so I did a custom installation instead of the default/recommended installation, and I was able to not even install the link checker. Now I do not have the exclamation mark thank god. Also, I didn't install the AVG toolbar either, so it's not nagging me either. Usually when you have an issue with software installing things you don't want, it's simply because you didn't do a custom install.
Readability is a (somewhat experimental?) service offering from Arc90, which self-describes as:

"Founded in 2004 in Brooklyn, arc90 was created with the goal of designing and building captivating and forward-thinking experiences on the Web. Our strategists partner with you to identify opportunities and help execute on them at all stages including design, architecture and development."

They've got a bunch of interesting projects underway so they may sort of have "a full plate" - but it looks to me like they use Readability as a way to gain visibility and positive press, so hopefully they'll be resourceful enough to take this beyond v .4
Questions to Ask Before Starting a Business
mostly groovesalad from somafm.com -
very rhythmic beats with no intrusion, almost becomes oblivious after a while.

Sometimes Mozart or some random classical music - it boosts me up at unexpected times. I often tune into online musical stations, but the ads distract me. If I am reading, sometimes, a violin concerto puts me into zone. It's better than random distractions.

At the odd times, when I am really comfortable (as in not stopping to think)- instrumental techno trance.

I have also tried white noise - can't do it for more than an hour max. but it works for me - is my preferred listening 'music' - actually a session of white noise helps me concentrate for couple of hours.
The POTUS sounds like a stammering idiot without his teleprompter.

Um, no he doesn't. Maybe you're thinking of his predecessor?
90s Chick Rock. The Cure. Urban Folk. The soundtrack to Run Lola Run. And Meatloaf.
Chrome has a nice feature where you can drag a file from any folder/your desktop and drop it onto a file input element on a web page.

Unfortunately, this feature does not work in Gmail (!) because they use a custom Flash-based uploader there.
$23.3 Million Has Flown to Twitter-Based Startups
going to sherlock this one and say his superior stole the device for some black market green, he put the subordinate as the only one in charge because he'd be easy to blame.

pretty sick
Absolutely. For multiple reasons. I can see more lines of code on one page. I can spread out multiple pages and see a lot more code. I can mark it up any way I want. I can post it on the wall. I can easily take it with me (I rarely move my laptop). And perhaps most of all, I can give my back and eyes a break by leaving my desk and lying on a bed or recliner while I review.
Google Pagerank Update More Frequent | TechJaws: Internet Security and SEO
Greed is not the cause. The natural result of being greedy would be that one would have avoided all of the mines to begin with. While Boesky committed a serious crime in my eyes, his 1986 speech actually contains some good stuff. "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself". Greedy people don't like to lose money. It's only when greed is mixed with stupidity and a lack of self-control that it becomes a bad thing.
None - I can't code while music is on. Ditto conversation, and ditto doing math.

There was something in PeopleWare (I think) about an experiment done with people listening to music. Those listening to their preferred music performed about as well as those who preferred silence and got it, and about as well as those who preferred music, but had silence. The group that preferred silence but had music performed, unsurprisingly, comparatively badly.

The sting in the tail was this. The task they were given had an "Aha!" insight buried in it. Namely, the full set of transforms they'd been asked to implement turned out to be trivial, although the individual components weren't.

All the programmers who had the "Aha!" moment had silence, regardless of their preference. No one with music saw the short cut.

I've since tried to find concrete evidence to support this anecdote, either papers, or first hand accounts, but the recounting in PeopleWare remains the only reference I have.
ASK HN: DreamIt Founder Running For Congress - Needs Help Picking Out His Logo
I was kind of hoping there wouldn't be release notes, heh.

Are there speed metrics on Parrot vs CPython, SpiderMonkey, V8, etc?
I like #'s 15 and 37
25 isn't so young, almost a decade after a person can join the workplace

It's strange to see how these days people in their twenties are expected to behave like adolescents. There was a recent NYT article gushing about how incredible it was that Obama's speech writer was only 27 whilst his peers played video games all day. By that age Darwin was already back from a five year voyage collecting samples and Einstein had written a paper on special relativity.

Luckily the HN community expects us to do something worthwhile regardless of age.
My issue with this is that it seems that they marked up a transcription. It'd be a lot more interesting if they'd taken her prepared remarks.

I think Sarah Palin is a moron, but this is a cheap shot. A funny cheap shot, but a cheap shot nonetheless.
The article first and foremost blames chinese society and government. Apple's secrecy is mentioned only as a side note without assigning any blame.
Or, "English Majors: When Needed, Indispensible."
Re: describing your product matter-of-factly instead of grandiosely.

At a Startup School, Greg McAdoo of Sequoia described how they wanted each company to have a one-sentence masterplan and described how they made Cisco change their self-description from "We make boxen that do X,Y,Z" to "Cisco Systems networks networks".

If you're applying to be the next Google and most importantly if you guys look for the next Google, I think that sort of implies that the founders have some grand vision for the future of the company and that's the thing they'd want to put forward -- and that you'd want to see put forward so that you're confident they can be the next Google.

I guess what I'm asking is, would it have been better for 1976 Apple to apply saying "We sell a neat microcomputer kit for $666" or "We want usher in a technological revolution by making computers so darn pretty and easy to use that everyone will buy one"?

The former is more accurate, but it's the latter that really represents what the company is about and what its potential is.
Isolate elements to render differently on the iPhone with pure CSS
> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

I think this is both wrong and incorrectly applied to Newspapers in this case.

I would say rather ::

"It is difficult to get a man to understand his salary may go away if the industry changes while he is still earning money the old way."

That's not too Luddite now is it?? I mean people faced with working their existing jobs and seeing innovation taking place are going to take a suck-it-and-see approach.

.

With the credit boom of the past decade swelling advertising revenues, the erosion of income has been overlooked. Newspapers regarded internet as a loss-leader, helped by the small number of people using the Internet.

Now there is a bust, and the Internet is a force, the Newspapers are looking for every avenue to earn money (fair play).

.

That is very far from the simplistic, incorrect view that people ignore a problem because they earn money that way.
It's not just any state governer, it's Sarah Palin.

You have to understand that many of us ditched sites like Reddit and Digg because for weeks on end hit pieces on her were the front page. On Digg it was a farce because you could limit the topics down to any one of the narrow choices and still get two or three Palin stories on the front page.

My first instinct seeing that title was "Oh on, not here. Aren't we done whipping her around yet?". Then realizing the source was HN, I had to click the link... I'll concede that it was interesting to see the edited copy.
His team seems lacklustre and uninvolved. No feedback, no interaction, no ratings. It doesnt take much to involve in your 99 designs contest (I've done a few and it's a great experience). I hope they show more interest in his campaign.

(#43 seems the best to me)
I've run three designs at 99designs, and I've found the best thing you can do to get great work is to give a lot of feedback (well, feedback on every design, not necessarily a lot of words, except where it is warranted), and do it at least once per day.

It keeps the contest in folks minds, it keeps designers coming back with new ideas, and it gives designers confidence that you're serious about the contest (and will pay up when it's done). I think activity also keeps it higher in the listings of ongoing contests, but I'm just theorizing on that count.
Disclaimer: i'm a Mac user and have nothing against Apple.

Said that I guess we (and the companies) should start thinking if this kind of 'collaboration' or contracts with Chinese companies are not only profitable (that is the main -if not only- reason) but good for China, the Chinese company, the Chinese workers, the non-Chinese company and the end user.

Because I guess, we are exploiting the workers in a country with a dictatorship just to get cheap gadgets, toys and such.

And yes, I would say Apple is a bit to be blamed for this. Not that Apple were aware or that Apple would approve these (I'm 100% sure it doesn't) actions.

But, if this Chinese company -and others- keep their contracts with American or European companies although things like keep happening (At least we know about this case! How many of them have happened?)... they (the 'first world companies') will become (if they are not already) part of the problem.

ps. Sorry for my English (I'm from Spain and well...)
He missed my favorite: http://www.persvr.org/

CouchDB requires custom views for each field you want to optimally query. Persevere (using the JavaScriptDB) does that natively and smartly for all fields: http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2009/04/20/javascriptdb-persever... (see section: Adaptive On-Demand Concurrent Indexing)

The biggest benefit of NoSQL dbs is the ability to add properties (i.e. columns) on the fly. Querying these properties should not be an O(n) operation. Unless I am completely mistaken, it is in CouchDB unless you write a custom view. Persevere doesn't require that and supports most common methods of querying ( http://docs.persvr.org/documentation/jsonquery ) If you query a field, it will index it and if you query it often it will maintain the index and update it regularly.

I'm just starting on a project that uses Persevere and already I'm quite impressed by it. It may not be as famous as CouchDB/Cassandra yet but it offers a lot of very interesting features including transaction support and nested objects with referencing.
Unwebbable - Not all documents can be a web page
offtopic: I'm with you, I'm tired of people at their 30-ish and saying 'I'm still young, bla bla bla' :-)
This is why I like the OpenMoko phones. Open source hardware; nobody needs to kill themselves over revealing the details.
What makes a great Software Developer?
Maybe it's just me, but I really need as close to complete silence as possible. The hum of HD drive is comforable enough for me. Anything more distracts. YMMV.
Having had a Wave account since the week of its demo at Google I/O, I am extremely impressed with its possibilities. I believe that if anything will replace email in the next 20 years, it will be this.

The question is do we really need to replace email? It has obviously served us well for so long. If you think about the "what would email have looked like if invented today?" question that Google was trying to answer, you start realizing that there are so many limitations in the current model.

How? I think Wave will be a win when everyone with a Gmail inbox has a Wave inbox automatically. Then, if you're communicating with other Wave users, you get tons of added benefits (which slowly everyone else is going to want). Otherwise, they can simply interface it to send good old fashioned emails to "old" addresses.
The 2009 Git User's Survey
I was bit confused in my description here, sorry. /usr/bin/env existed but when it was run under the cron user's environment it could not locate the interpreter we required and failed silently. The shebang line worked fine under all other users' accounts. Very frustrating. I assume this problem was due to the cron account's $PATH being set up differently somehow. In any case we just went back to explicitly choosing our site-specific interpreter path.

Related pet peeve: people using #!/bin/sh when they really want #!/bin/bash. They are not interchangeable!
This was the only piece of advice in the article that I really liked. It doesn't matter whether you work well with your spouse. It could be a truly great working relationship and still present a problem for your firm.

The problem is that other people will hate working with you and your family. You will fail to recruit the best, you will have to pay the workers you do recruit more money, and morale will always be lower than it would have been if you had not hired your family. Other employees will simply assume your family gets special treatment. (And they're always right.)
Generating Heat Maps Using Perl
How To Give Yourself A Procrastination Inoculation
I can't go for all 3 days, but I'll be there for the Sunday night demo. Looks like fun.
It's disappointing that there is, apparently, no support for the Kindle. It doesn't look like there's support for any dedicated reader, for that matter. It's a software reader that can be installed on a computer, iPhone or Blackberry.

I love my Kindle. Sure, it got it's warts and I don't like DRM in principle, but it does exactly what I want it to do and it's convenient. However, it would be nice to have another source for ebooks even if I can't use Whispernet to buy them. There are a couple rinky-dink stores that aren't price-competitive with Amazon so I was excited about the Barnes and Noble announcement at first. It will be interesting to see what kind of uptake they have without supporting dedicated reading devices.

[edit]

After reading some more it looks like they've got their own format and DRM. sigh It's bad enough that we've already Amazon selling ebooks that are only compatible with one device. I was hoping at some point their store would open up to other devices, and they seem somewhat open minded to the idea considering their primary business is selling the books themselves. The last thing we need is a bunch of book sellers trying to lock customers into one format and one store.

“I don’t think they will be stealing market share from Amazon,” Ms. Rotman Epps said. “If anything I think they are contributing to the growth of the whole category of digital reading.”

I'm not so sure about this. I've been a fan of ebooks for a while and, if anything, I'm a little turned off right now.

She added that as more consumers begin reading digital books on phones and other mobile devices, it made sense to market to those readers as opposed to those who are buying dedicated reading devices like the Kindle or the Sony Reader.

It doesn't look like there will be support for dedicated reading devices any time soon.
Meteor : HTTP server for web 2.0 / Comet
As a "recovering journalist" who constantly recommends Readability to friends, the lack of authorship attribution concerns me greatly.

I don't write Javascript, so I can't provide myself with such a service, but as annoying (heavy bandwidth/printwidth) as many posts are, I think the average web-browsing citizen is soon going to catch on to the joy of reading clean copy.

Here's my vote for Readability (or some other enterprising JS coder) to offer this service along with attribution of authorship and original URL. —just my 2¢