skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sure devving is hard! I've most certainly had my share of ~100 hour weeks, no doubt they are horrific! They ruin you! (My partner doesn't enjoy them either :P) And I'm sure whatever crazy devving sessions I've endured, they are but a drop in the ocean compared to what people a required to pull off when they are taking the first steps in a start-up.

However it’s actually a topic that my best mates and I talk about quite often! How lucky we are that we can sit in our air condition offices all day, drinking coffee straight from a coffee machine, with our nice 26” LCDs, a plant beside us and our high back chairs... While others we grew up with come home wire sore backs, sun burnt, trash hands that just constantly hurt. Heck quite a few have even lost fingers. Sure our computer jobs can be stressful but that’s why we do it, for the kick, we have the drive, we love the challenge.

Yea no shit nobody on here digs fence posts... they wouldn't be bloody winging about sitting in a chair all day if they did ahahah. Surely some of you have had ACTUAL REAL, physically hard jobs in the past? While putting yourselves through university or the like? I had some SHOCKING jobs going through uni from kitchen hand to digging bores/water holes on farm land in outback Australia. Maybe that’s where my appreciation of what a physically intensive job means, stems from?

My point is.. How lucky are we!?!

Anways, watch me get down voted to hell because this isn't what others want to hear about our 'precious lifestyle'. But I fail to understand how your body can get SORE from sitting in a cushy chair for 15 hours a day ... !? WTF!
For maximum style points, the post should have taken advantage of the fact (related to me by my college linguistics prof) that "fucking" is one of only a few generally-accepted (by linguists) infixes in the English language.
but they usually find jobs right away. Like within a month or two, if not, they just start their own project/startup.

I know this for a fact/personal anecdotal evidence.

It seems that this downturn is hitting more the general work force, and people that do more 'soft' type of work: managers, marketing, pr, etc.

If you are a hard core engineer, you shouldn't have trouble finding a job.

The exception will be people that just came out of college, or with less than two years of experience. It seems that right now companies are hiring more experienced/hit the ground running, engineers.
During boom times, when they can't find these kind of engineers, they will hire less experienced ones, and be willing to train them and become productive.
That's why there are generally several different versions of .Net installed side-by side.
Seem pretty cool to me. I've never really toyed around in the WebOS development space, so I'm not really sure what your competition looks like.

I'm a bit rusty, but I spent a little bit writing a Font Dialog and modifying the default Notepad to use it. I think the entire premise of allowing users/devs to edit and create apps is a really great idea.

My feedback so far would be more documentation of the Core classes, unless those are intentionally off limits for now, and figuring out how to clean up the dozens of test apps cluttering up the menus. :)
Unemployment may be higher, but strangely I'm noticing that rush-hour traffic is still a lot worse than during the dotcom bust, when traffic jams on 101 nearly disappeared for a while.
We're paying $20/month for two employees. I think it's free if you don't get the State service but that doesn't seem sensible.

Yeah I'd check with an accountant on the wage / distribution / benefits stuff. For small businesses though you really can just pay it all out, just make sure you're paying the taxes.
Fidelity vs. Convenience
Yaws, a webserver written in Erlang
"Why personal change does not equal political change"

Good point but in fact you need to reach critical mass for the personal change to become change on the whole. When a large enough number of people changes in private the private becomes truly political.

If you just change in private and don't tell anybody you might nit change anything.

With critical mass you should of course apply pressure tactics to gain momentum. The boycott or recently the "carrot mob" are great examples of that.
And save some times to read it?

1. Do you believe you have what it takes?

2. Are you able to let other people down?

3. How do you handle setbacks?

4. Are you really an inventor, rather than an entrepreneur?

5. Can you accept that your company may outgrow you?

6. When you look in the mirror, does an entrepreneur look back?

Most of those questions are not answerable before you make the jump. Just do it then you'll find out most of the answers.
Producing _anything_ isn't easy on the environment.
Congress... *siiiiiiiigh
True, but what about people who live in small towns or rural areas. I'm not talking about suburbia--many of those people made conscious decisions to live far away from their work and amenities. Or do we just tell those people they really need to make a sacrifice and move to the city?

I appreciate this perspective, though. I've ridden my bike to work for the last eight years. My family lives in the city (I live not far from where I grew up) and we use public transportation. And I agree with the Economist--this program is really about getting people to buy new cars.

Cars? People still buy those things?

Yes. Why not? They're a tool, just like everything else. My family really enjoys traveling, so we (four of us) own one car. More often than not, it's parked in front of our house. We walk, bike, and bus ourselves around when we can. But it's also nice to be able to leave the city on the weekend and go camping and climbing. Or visit family. Acting as if you are on a higher moral plain because you can't comprehend why people still buy cars doesn't do much to advance the conversation and convince people to rethink some of their lifestyle choices.

That said, as I mentioned, I think this subsidy is a terrible idea.
Android vs iPhone performance comparison
Back when I still used to watch TV, the only channel that I really liked simply brought either very early TV programs (from the days where TV was new to everybody), or documentaries/interviews from 20-30 years back in time.

Maybe nobody would believe it nowadays, but TV people (on both sides) were very different then (more attention to details, more patience, more regard to each other).

Every year coming, the whole scene is freezing a little more, they even take away both colors and light nowadays (in current movies), this whole artificial spectacle will finish in the dark...
For these sorts of examples, I tend to use awk and sed too, but sometimes the shotgun is useful. One major advantage of using Perl in this context is that you also have -M, with all of CPAN at your disposal.
Microsoft: No browserless Windows 7 after all | Beyond Binary - CNET News
I find Xah Lee's arguments unconvincing.

On a typical PC keyboard of today, the Caps Lock is the
most difficult modifier key to press, and is pressed by the
weakest finger pinky.</quote>

On keyboards I've encountered Caps Lock is right on the left of an
A key on the home row - it is easy to type it (and certainly
easier than the Left Ctrl).

It makes the left pinky do 2 pinkies's work.</quote>

You press Caps Lock instead of Left Ctrl - the same work.

It forces the left hand to strain into spider legs
positions, or forces your right hand to flies about wildly if
the letter key is near the middle of the keyboard (e.g. T, G,
B).</quote>

The standard practice is to press the Right Ctrl (right hand) +
t,g,b (left hand) - no flying.

It renders many Control-‹key› spots void, since now with only one
pinky many otherwise good Ctrl-‹key› spots are hard to
use.</quote>

The Right Ctrl stays therefore there is no need to use only one pinky.
The most frequently used Ctrl-<key> combinations in Emacs is point movement commands. Caps Lock makes it easier to type some of them e.g., C-n/p.

The left hand now constantly shift from home position.</quote>

See my comment to the first quote.
Not sure how hardcore I am, but I would definitely consider myself a "linux type". I take your point about the lack of a decent package management system. I run Debian on my ThinkPad so I know what a good package management system looks like. I also take your point about Macs being a more closed system.

But for me, being a web developer who doesn't do much in the way of kernel hacking or other deeper system type work, OS X really is effectively Linux (or Unix as the case may be) with a more polished interface. I would never have considered getting a Mac if OS X was not based on Unix.

I am much happier with a combination of OS X on my desktop (used for work plus multimedia entertainment) and Debian on my laptop (used for work) than I was with Windows on my desktop and Debian on my laptop.
Now you are measuring the speed of the fork/exec call. To really do this right you need to write a small script that copies the file 1000 times or creates a hard link 1000 times.
I hope those bananas are fairly traded?
Arrington is smart. I am going to reserve judgment until I hold one in my hands.
The true revolution changes social relations, changing people in power is quite superficial and it is foolish to blindly believe in it.

Revolutions is the usual sense happen when current structures are so rotten that something else is needed, then some other form of social organisation prevails, often not really what was expected at the beginning (think russia in 1917 vs. russia after the civil war in 1921).

But it is our role as humans to modify the world at our scale, to modify our ways of interacting with others and doing things to make the world a little better. Think of the changes between the middle age and now... there's so much room to do much better... At a bigger scale, for me, the next point is introducing more participative democracy in companies, especially big companies (they are truly the most prominent fascist-like organisations there...)
In Ubuntu, go to Settings > Preferences > Keyboard > Typing break and check the box "Enforce typing break". You can customize it based on how often and how long the break lasts, as well as the ability to postpone the break, or not if you're like me who keeps postponing the break.
In the tech woeld, patents should last just one year. Enough time to build and market your product and have the advantage of being first.

After that is open season for everybody to improve upon that patent, everybody wins.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Claude+Piron%22

but:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Justin+B.+Rye%22
How about locally hand-built wooden furniture from sustainably managed forest - it sequesters carbon and provides often beautiful goods is relatively labour intensive (good for employment figures) and preserves traditional skills. Well managed forest will preserve the natural living environment of many species.

Bonus points if the carpenter eats a low animal-protein diet.
Samsung MPOWER Muzik
I wasn't aware that banana consumption was a problem or that America depends on a healthy bike industry to thrive. News to me!
Dream Gear Sound Grip
Dream Gear Sound Grip Get a grip on the most vibrant sound from your Nintendo DS Lite. All of your games will explode with cleaner, crisper and higher volume stereo sound from the 2 high efficiency drivers.
This dovetails nicely with research at Edinburgh university where particles could split in 'funny' and 'unfunny' versions. Unfortunately, when the two particles recombined, the result was no laughing matter.
Not everyone is a smart-ass college kid who lives in NYC. Some people actually need to drive (and have kids), and can't show up at a clients office to sell them web services on a public transport bus.
I wasn't aware that having a slightly-old car was a problem.
This isn't about the environment, it's about the economy. The enviro-aspects are simply a bonus and helped get this stimulus plan passed. If it was too restrictive less people would have qualified thereby killing any economic benefit.
But Claude Piron wasn't even point-by-point in his reply disagreeing with Rye, which I think can better be characterized as "prejudiced" (from a different reply above in this thread) than Rye's writing, although perhaps not as a "rant."

Just to ask one more informational question, why is it that Esperantists eager to demonstrate how easy Esperanto is to learn and to understand usually don't provide parallel texts in Esperanto with their English-language replies in online discussions of Esperanto? The Chinese saying is " 實事求是 " (conventionally translated, not quite to my satisfaction, as "seek truth from facts"), with the idea that if something is a good idea, it is practical.
Not only that, but their customer service is terrible. They overcharged me a few hundred dollars and I haven't heard back since I notified them a week or so ago.

It's not really worth my time chasing it, but it's pretty terrible service.
This program is about keeping consumerism alive to benefit the economy, not about fuel efficiency, The idea of trading in clunkers for fuel efficient vehicles is a thin veil to the real goal of getting people to buy things from an industry who lobbied the government to give them a handout. Instead of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, the robbers this time are car dealers.
This is one of the rare diamonds. Highly recommended for anyone remotely interested in filesystems.
Building Software Development Expertise - Using The Dreyfus Model
From the headline, I was expecting the correlation to be that more TV watching equals more loneliness. At least, that's been my experience. The years I spent without a TV were the most productive, and least lonely, of my life. (Of course, those years were also before the advent of the web, so there was a lot less time online, as well, which may be a factor.)

As David Mamet put it, "Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment."
Without more context it's really impossible to say whether that was a major I or not. It would be the only functional harmony in the entire pattern, so it seems unlikely it was a I. A pentatonic melody by itself doesn't infer much in the way of harmonic progression. The only reason we hear C# as tonic is because he starts there and emphasizes it with repetition and mini-cadences that are primarily rhythmic in nature. There aren't any IV or V chords available with those pitches (or iii or vii for that matter, you can imply a ii but not very well).

I would actually argue that interval actually is the most accurate term in this case. (Not that I didn't understand what was meant by the term "chord" though, and certainly wouldn't have been bothered by it)
How IBM and Apple are Kicking Google’s and Microsoft’s Butt — Datamation.com
An interesting list, but I'll wait to see the reviews. "A list of books I am currently reading" is quite a different beast than "A list of books I have read, and recommend."
The fifth is hardly essential to achieve the sound of a major I chord. Fifths are omitted all the time in classical music to avoid parallel voice-leading.
Yeah, this is the context I mean, though more so on IQ scores themselves, rather than "I'm right because my IQ is x". In some wannabe-intellectual circles, the "My IQ is.." dicksize contest does come up, and it's fun being able to quietly speak up and shut them all up.
Likely will still require some metal production for tools.

I'm not advocating that we don't produce things--I just think we often overlook the costs of production when we look at environmental factors.
This past year, senior year of high school, my history teacher based his curriculum on teaching us how to stage a revolution. He asked us to plan a revolution of the school, consider what/who needs to be revolted against, and how. It was entertaining at first and it made learning the Russian Revolution, the revolution in Argentina, and others more relevant but my teacher seemed to be bent on the fact that we should actually revolt against our government as soon as possible. I consider(ed) it nonsense.

I'll try to stay away from a political debate and focus on the psychological argument. That Political revolution in the United States can be done within its current system, through election and democracy, and as bad as things are, there is no need for a cataclysmic shift. As I see it, democracy is evolutionary, it continuously evolves, checks and balances are self correcting just like natural selection. I'm all about learning practical stuff and I just don't see where this fits beyond in establishing a critical mindset.

Please broaden my mind.
Both are valid concerns / issues. We've hopefully addressed them both within Monotask, but we'll see how it survives the beta and how it'll need to evolve. Would love your input when we launch.
It isn't a problem. You car is probably perfectly fine and may get great gas mileage. The problem is that you are not consuming. Bad American!
Well, see this:

http://www.esperanto-sat.info/article347.html

Best regards,
I think this is too dismissive of other forms of revolution. I like Michael Albert's explanation of revolution, which is a fundamental change in at least one of a society's defining institutions.
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/2564

From this perspective, the 1953 US overthrow of Iran's parliamentary democracy (to install a monarch) was a successful revolution. And even a revolution with the best of intentions (which obviously wasn't the case with the 1953 revolution) won't necessarily result in an improved society. To the contrary, society might even regress. If a revolution suddenly occurred right now in the US, since we US citizens haven't laid the groundwork of serious popular organizing and institutions, we might expect a form of fascism to probably result.
Semantics are important. What's not important is correcting a term that was good enough for its intended purpose and derails an otherwise fruitful discussion into nitpicking about the meaning of words being used.

In this case I don't think it was really a big deal either way. Discussion about the major 3rd in the video wasn't really harmed much, and a few mildly interesting posts about semantics resulted.
The guy (Doug Englebart) who invented and patented the mouse saw it expire a few years before the GUI explosion. Does this make sense? Cringely says it takes 20 years for technology to come to the fore. Patents are 17 (?) years or so. Is this fair?
How the Rail Recruitment Industry Works
Time is big.
I posit that they made the right business decision. At any one of the points where they could have embraced new technology, they were at high risk of getting into a no-win dev cycle and destroying their business.
PythonTurtle - the most low-threshold way for learning/teaching Python
You have a good point, and in some cases holding onto old code actually makes sense.

I was not there when these decisions were made, but in this case it does not seem to. As you add in emulators and new compilers you are adding to your code bases in ways that can introduce bugs and unexpected behavior into the system as a whole, just as surely as changes to the application logic itself.

This chance may be small if the code for the emulator and compiler has been debugged/tested/used/abused extensively, but if you are the sole users and it was custom written for you then the chance is nontrivial. It adds to the complexity and problem points of the overall system.

This not to mention the cost of developing those specialized and complicated emulators/compilers. Depending on how complex the algorithms are there is a good chance it would have been cheaper to rewrite it.

One other thing with the banks. You made some good points about why they still use very old software, but the other one is that in addition to being debugged/tested/used/abused their software has passed regulators. I do not know if that is an issue with this car software producing company, but I doubt it, at least I doubt it is to the same degree.
Index the world's information, organize it

Sounds like a good business idea...
This is my little side project that I've been working on for a few months.

It is a way for curious people who are not computer-savvy to teach themselves Python.
Of course, it can also be used in a class with an instructor.

Yes, I am aware of turtle.py, the turtle module shipped with the Python standard library. It has a few problems which I found unforgivable: mainly that it's not geared towards people who may not know anything about programming, or how to use IDLE. This is why I decided to make this project.

I'd love to get your comments and feedback.
"The JVM is robust, mature, fast, and (above all) portable."

mono is damn portable.
Gluten Free Tomato Soup - How to Make Cream of Tomato Soup
why not withstand mono? I've worked on two open source projects that used mono and we've had a great time with it. It's portable, FOSS, runs fast, compiles (almost) everything, and has a strong and vibrant community.

The JVM is closed source, which is a non-starter for me. Why should I invest in a proprietary platform that is lagging in features and support?

MS won this battle, get over it
I have to pick one nit with your comment ... Linux developers miss the point if they think making "something prettier" is the answer.

OS X success is not about "pretty", not in a fonts, colors, and visual design kind of way. I'd warrant Vista is much "prettier" in that regard.

What is "pretty" about OS X is the capital D design of the overall user experience. Achieving this requires deep integration of goals between developers, ui experts, product managers, and yes, visual designers.

Otherwise it will only be like, shall we say, lipstick on a pig (a very tasty and fine pig, or good pet pig if you aren't into the swine flesh, at that).
I love these guys.

COBOL is much maligned, but it does what it was designed to do, and does it well. Business rules generally don't need anything fancier, and the data transfer model (IIRC) matches up well with the paper-based systems that it replaced - so it is straightforward to reason about.

Though I think they were lucky to employ whizzes that were actually whizzes. Compiling COBOL to C would be pretty straightforward, but making a debugging for the original language less so. Though, I guess if you just kept a copy of the original source line and line-number, and your execution model was isomorphic to the original, stepping through, and debugging messages could be pretty straightforward, too.

One last point: the article says the resulting code was slow; but Moore's Law will have fixed this, so they didn't have to.
Two more things about that video:

Get rid of sentences like "The solution xxx has been waiting for". Be humble in language, impress with the demonstration instead.

Get rid of the music or change it. It's okay in the beginning when it's hardly noticable but as "drama" builds up it becomes rather ridiculous (reminded me of a really bad McGyver episode).

Other than that I liked the video. It did a very good job at getting the point across for me in reasonable time. Many intro-screencasts suffer from being too long or too high- or low-level. I think you struck a good balance there.

I don't agree with the complaint that it should be more technical. For me it was just right to get a quick grasp on what you offer. Anything more detailed should either be in text or in a second screencast.
Nice.

I see from the source that you're using wxwidgets so it should be easy to port it to OS X and linux as well.
I'm not sure this is Time Machine. I know that in VMware Fusion, at least, there's an option to turn your monolithic disk image into a set of smaller individual files. If you turn this on, then Time Machine only has to backup the smaller part-image file that's changed.

I know I've definitely seen Time Machine re-copying entire 10 GB virtual machine disk images before, with Parallels and VMware Fusion images, before I discovered this feature.
No, but I also don't think it's a coincidence.
so does the using it part...
I never got around to reading "A Feast of Crows" (I think that's the title). Is it worth it?