skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the better practices from the world of "agile" software methodology is dropping the team's weekly status meeting and instead having morning "stand-up meetings" every day. Same thing - you don't let people sit down. It completely changes the tone of the conversations, because no one wants to stand in a meeting room for longer than 10 or 15 minutes.
I think that's the whole point - that you get too caught up into the pretty face and you focus less on the product which renders your ad/image ineffective.
Tips For Keeping It Real On Twitter
"Poor people eat an unhealthy diet because they cannot afford high quality protein and complex carbohydrates on a consistent basis. Further, parents in poor families often work excessive hours, and quick meals become the norm due to the lack of time."

I personally think this is BS (sorry for the tough stance) and I agree with others in saying it's an educational thing. My family grew up in poverty when we immigrated to Canada, but we still managed to eat healthy and cheaply. My parents also worked crazy amount of hours as the only jobs they could only get were poor paying remedial ones like dish washing.

Despite all our hardship, we managed to eat a healthy diet and we were able to do so because my parents understood the value of vegetables and fruit and stretching the dollar when it comes to groceries. Now that I'm all grown up, I can't go more than two days without feeling amazingly guilty if I don't integrate a good serving of vegetables into my diet.

When ever I hear stories about how people are claiming that the public is being educated, I always think of this interview that I saw once of a young girl who idealized Jared from the Subway commercials. She was with her mom and she basically said how it was so unfair that they didn't have a lot of money, otherwise she could afford to go on the subway diet like Jared. What was extremely sad about all of this was, her mom was nodding her head in agreement.

I've been out of school for quite some time now, but for the life of me, I can't remember being educated in school on a regular basis on how to eat healthier. I would hope that this is higher priority for schools now a days, but I highly doubt it.
Thanks for that. I'm buying the book.
Natural Cures For Bacterial Vaginosis - 3 Simple BV Treatments
Announcing Ghostery 2.0
The sun tracks in a straight line over a certain vertical range depending on your latitude.

Not quite: http://www.gaisma.com/en/info/help.html
Here in Taiwan, at least, the Chinese for London is 倫敦 and Washington is 華盛頓, both of which are phonetic transcriptions of the way the residents of those cities pronounce them. Unless the city has a special Chinese significance, such as San Fransisco (舊金山), there's people attempt to keep city names in sync with what locals call them to the extent permitted by Chinese phonetics.

Calling Beijing "Peking" or Mumbai "Bombay" may be what older people are used to, but it's not what's on any map I've seen this century.
$5 an hour for movies? Who pay that these days?
Not terribly surprising, considering a big factor for those who buy Windows is the price.
Ottawa is completely missing from the list.
Instead of emphasizing Etherpad's selling points

Meh, that's the nature of the press. One day they're doing fluff pieces for FasterWeb and the next they decide to pit an unsophisticated web app against Google.
The Generation M Manifesto
Stephen Fry, on copyright law (long, audio only, but very good)
I've been using Logic since the Atari days, and I certainly don't mean to belittle the contributions of eMagic! I'm less familiar with the linage of Final Cut, but I'm sure whoever developed that before Apple did fantastic work.

But, though it's become a cliche in this context, I think what makes these products world-changing is Apple's vision. [EDIT: actually, now that I think about it, it's not their vision. It's their business model (the very thing the OP was deriding). Apple sells hardware and can use software as a loss leader. So it's able to sell Logic and Final Cut for much less than when they were the sole income of their respective companies] After Apple bought Final Cut and Logic, they slashed prices, refined the interfaces to make them much more approachable, and gave users a way to migrate from simple iApps, to Express versions, to the full-blown Studio packages.

This ease of use, low cost, and easy migration vision of Apple's all works together to democratize the creation of media. As a platform, it places an emphasis on the creation of media, not merely the consumption of it.

That's what I find world-changing about it, and I think its all stuff that's happened post-Apple-buyout. But I'd love to hear more about any similar efforts made before Apple bought these products.
Microsoft's $528 million Washington tax break
Isn't it the role of a VC to give a company funding so they can get a big return on their investment later one when the company sells, or something along those lines? I mean, isn't that something everyone expects when they get involved with a VC? Isn't that what they're for? Am I misunderstanding something here?
And here's their response to the BBC article: http://blog.spinvox.com/2009/07/23/spinvoxs-response/
Official Response from Spinvox about BBC Article
I think that concisely encapsulated the two go-to solutions for so many hackers: a) create a complex system that will postpone or perhaps solve the problem; and b) make the problem irrelevant with a miracle stroke of genius solution to be fleshed out at a later date.
Testing events with Twisted's Trial
See, that looks cheap to me. DK claims 1000 liters/day for a cost of 0.2 cents/liter; let's be pessimistic and assume 500. (Maintenance would be my biggest worry, but let's keep it simple.)

Now if we take grinding poverty as a per capita income of $1/day and consider a village of 100 people, that means everyone in the village could have 5 liters of pure water a day at a cost of 1 day per week - a 14% 'tax' for 1 year.

That's a big economic hit for a very poor village, but it would not surprise me to find that such a village might lose more than 14% of its productivity to a combination of acquiring cleanish water and lost productivity due to water-borne diseases.

$5200 is not big bucks to us in the developed world. Surely it would not cost too much to buy 5 of them and do a year long comparison of 10 villages where half of them have the system and the other half serve as a control. Even if you add in setup costs the total bill for such an experiment would only be $75k.
Emergence is my favorite science. It's infinitely applicable.

Also, this article is another reason why I love this magazine.
I wouldn't be surprised if "forced" is even too strong of a word. What would you do if some folks who had loaned you millions of dollars and who had presumably worked with you to make your company successful, said, "hey, is there any way we could get our money out?"

VCs aren't servants to the entrepreneurs, they're partners. When you take $20 from a customer, do you feel a sense of obligation to make sure they get something in return? That sense of obligation doesn't get smaller when the amount goes up.
Trying to do one thing -- text editing - really really well is probably a good defense to Google Wave.
The delayed sign up idea seems to be very potent. Rather than having someone dump all of their information into your database right away (which you then have to save, probably for as long as your app is running), you slowly draw the information out of the user, making the registration process as transparent as possible. If (using your example) Aunt Suzy goes through all the work to sign up, then gets confused, not only does she have a bad taste in her mouth when it comes to your app ("Oh, MyBigApp? Yeah, I tried it once, but after I spent 20 minutes signing up I got confused and left"), she also won't be coming back to use that sign up if she got confused. For the most part, there's no reason to have a user registered for something if they're not going to use it.

In regards to connecting apps, I'm really not convinced being able to do that is a good idea (I hate it when people have to post everything they do online to Facebook, or whatever else they use). There are people who like it, so it may be worth having, but it certainly isn't a feature I would encourage using.
Smart Bear Software's also used by Cisco
What sort of idiot would consider a photo convincing in the first place? It is just there to attract notice/attention; the point of the article is that they often attract attention to the wrong part of the ad.
I just can't take any list seriously, that has a twitter app in the top 10.

#10 HootSuite, Vancouver - A Twitter toolbox that manages multiple Twitter profiles
When I first heard of rietveld, it only worked with Perforce but I see it now works with subversion.

If you want something that works with Git, you can use gerrit from google. They are using this for Google Android code inspections.
How Typekit works
Everyday I take a 15 minute bus to a 15 minute train. On the bus I'll either veg out or listen to short podcasts.

Short Podcasts I recommend:
-stuff you missed in history class
-moth podcast
-BBC global news

On the train, I'll read books off my hacker reading list (c programming, programming pearls, design patterns, etc)
For legal factors to consider in selling a small business, see http://www.grellas.com/faq_small_business_007.html (you may find some of this helpful even if yours is not a "small business" sale).

For more sophisticated deals, some random thoughts (from a lawyer who has represented many hackers, not a hacker as such):

1. Avoid earn-outs if at all possible - if you go with an earn-out, plan as if all you will see will be what you get at the initial closing.

2. No-shop clauses are fine but keep them short and make sure they can only be extended by mutual consent.

3. Talk with your law firm/CPA firm about tax and structural issues up front, before you do a term sheet. If you have a C-Corp with low-basis assets, an asset sale will leave you with a potential double tax hit. A stock sale or tax-free merger (A, B, or C type) is preferable in such situations but each has limits and restrictions on it - understand the structural points up front, it will help considerably in how you negotiate the deal.

Term sheets may be legally non-binding but, you can bet, they will shape your deal all the way through to closing. Structure it right in the term sheet, then, and you will not be haunted by inadvertent blunders up-front that prejudice your deal throughout.

4. Watch out for duplicity. Use NDAs and limit due diligence to protect against a buyer's gaining a lot of info about your company and then using it competitively against you after dropping the acquisition.

5. In dealing with acquisition teams, make sure to do the primary negotiating with the key decision-makers so as to avoid getting the "two step" shuffle.

6. Try to limit trailing liabilities on the deal. Limit the size of hold-backs. Keep the reps and warranties as narrow as you or your lawyers can negotiate. Make sure they have a short-term expiration date (e.g., 1 year from the date of closing).

I am sure others will have more significant practical points to make. Many other items might be added to this list.
There's something to be said for language enforced limitations supporting encapsulation when creating an ecosystem of reusable components - something Java/C# has been great at.

An analogy is enforced immutability. Unlike Ruby, Python has immutable strings and tuples, and requires the use of immutable objects for hashmaps - a great choice for library writers, though a minor inconvenience for application programmers who want to say "trust me, i won't change this object later."
And they should. I know there is, no matter how small, a market that is willing to pay to not see commercials.

The quoted prices are way too high, but with an iTunes like model we could see very different shows from those supported by advertising. Or more likely cerebral shows, which were canceled in the past, would now be supported by direct buys.
Everyone who pays $10 to see a 2 hour movie at the theater?
Ask HN:  Would improving US high school education discourage entrepreneurship?
Some factors to consider:

* getting grade inflation under control would reduce self-confidence, thus making it less likely that people would do a startup

* a better understanding of probability would allow people to more accurately predict their chances of success, thus reducing the number who would attempt a startup

* a more competitive high school environment would implicitly tell students that academia is the way to go
Although I think it's a good thing for congress to help us out with things like this every now and then, the author's list of gripes are a bit much. I think congress has better things to do.
I found it ironic at the end of the article, it said "You can follow Garry on Twitter HERE." instead of posterous.
None of those numbers add up.

$5/hour to watch a movie - $10 per movie. A number too low for watching in theaters or buying the DVD. A number way too high to rent a movie. A number insanely high to watch it on TV.

$.75/hour to read a book: A ~200-300 page book would take you 7-8 hours to read. So thats $6/book. Seems like way too low, compared to what people are willing to py.

$.25/hour internet use: that means an always on connection would run you $180/mo.
OK, fine. Apple makes the iPhone, the SmartCar of computers.
You're living in a consumer bubble.

When I referenced "changing the world" I meant grand social problems and solutions that effect almost every human. Not a bunch of spoiled tech/gadget obsessed "Haves".

Ask the kids in Ghana how the iTunes Music Store has effected their lives.

"I honestly don't know what else you could expect from any other company of any size or business model."

We should all expect more from ourselves than simply overpriced/shiny electronics.
WordPress Comment Hacks
As is Kitchener-Waterloo.
The article title seems to confuse everybody, especially if you read the comments.

* Apple has 91% of _revenue_ when > $1000 is being spent
* They only have 7% of the market

The way I read this: there's a ton of cheap machines out there, and they ain't Macs. (Duh.)

Is it me, or does it seem like Microsoft is still not avoiding becoming the "budget" system? I can't see this working out in the long term, if they want to continue to avoid being a commodity. (You know, charging lots of $$ for upgrades.)

Something tells me the next year is going to be interesting.
Python doesn't need no steenkeeng conztantz
I found this amusing:
"More seriously though, no, there's no equivalent for constants in Python, as the programmer is generally considered intelligent enough to leave a value he wants to stay constant alone."
Oh what a horrible, horrible analogy. I wouldn't wish being the "Jaguar of anything" on my worst enemy.
I found this amusing:
"More seriously though, no, there's no equivalent for constants in Python, as the programmer is generally considered intelligent enough to leave a value he wants to stay constant alone."
Thanks for the heads up. For a long time, this blog ranked on the first page of Google in Saudi Arabia for the keyword "sexy." Lots of useless traffic.
That's incredibly cool. I wonder, though, if these things produce a strong enough magnetic field to interfere with radios, cellphones, wireless internet, etc.
I always liked the similar one that has become (probably always was) an urban myth: Bee's can't fly... I wonder if CCD is confirmation that Newton was right?
Well, the cliff notes version:

Adobe were the breakthrough company to develop video editing on Mac, with what is now Premiere. Final Cut was a spinoff of that when the developer left for Macromedia, which was in turn split between Apple and Adobe (FC & Flash, respectively): http://steveblank.com/2009/05/11/supermac-war-story-x-the-vi...

Now you're right about Apple's price cutting, and it's more obvious how this drove down the cost of video - but on the music side while you had ProTools at the extreme high end and Logic at the prosumer price, over on the (post-Atari) PC side you had very aggressive competition from Steinberg (Cubase), then Cakewalk, and ultimately a host of others - not to mention trackers. eMagic had a big first-mover advantage in their price space, but competitors were really eroding that with a combination of pricing and ease-of-use. I personally think EMagic would have gone bust within 2 years if they hadn't been able to fall into Apple's arms.

To be fair to Apple, they were very smart to focus on things like high bus bandwidth and high-resolution hardware timers which are de rigeur for this sort of work. Wintel was able to play catch-up in large part because of the rise of electronic music, where things like hardware latency and so forth were less critical.
That's a good point. I think that very few people actually practice what they preach.

The way in which society rewards successful people is to give them lots of money, I suspect that the real equation is not just whether you've given back during your life more than what you have taken but how much you will have influenced the world for the worse or the better in the long term.

In that sense it is a lot harder to figure out how much a single individual can change things.

Two jets, two helicopters and an island sound a bit over the top, but I think I'd have to know more about the uses they're being put to before I'd make a call on that.
Your second paragraph struck a chord with me - through middle and high school, nearly all my math teachers would preface various topics with "You'll never use this in real life..." With that kind of sentiment, its no wonder why a lot of students did not want, or develop, an understanding for math :/
Technologists can have all kinds of disconnects from how things really work, when you're good at fixing and inventing machinery the temptation is to view everything as a machine and to 'fix' it in some way.

The worlds problems are not going to be solved by a single individual, no matter how gifted, but you can't fault a guy for trying.
Venture Capitalists are capitalists. They believe that all wealth flows from capital.

Entrepreneurs believe in free enterprise, that wealth flows from one's efforts.

There will always be tension between the two camps.
A Conversation with Arthur Whitney (APL, K, Q)
The Demons of Mesothelioma Need to Be Fought Till the End
I don't know what the reason was, but you can probably find someone mentioning it by searching the threads referencing the publisher in comp.lang.lisp, from 5-6 years ago.
Really enjoyed the explanation of how addition falls out of the lambda calculus, as I'd never seen that before.
Gmail Tries To Make It Easier To Unsubscribe From Spam Newsletters, But Fails
I can't edit the post any more. I meant they aren't the ones who would want to rock the boat.
I prefer to just add ^://^kontera.com/^ (swap ^ for *) to my adblocker.

Magical things that appear on mouseover—whether ads, Snap-style previews, or anything else—are annoying and almost certainly unwanted. It’s a pretty bad interaction model, particularly when it’s something not worth the interruption.
Mac Versus PC Debate Has Never Been Clearer
I would have read the article, but my internet connection was down.
Very Cool 3D Sketching Program
Video on the homepage shows an example of using it and some sample drawings. This blew my mind when I first saw it.
Especially if you are willing to work hard.
recursive, not redundant.
Etherpad could, in theory, write their app as an app for Google Wave, but Google Wave itself isn't going to provide the Etherpad experience.
Where do you see those numbers in Apple's press release? Or did they gave them in the press conference?
If not, since when did NPD claims became Jobs RDF?
Regarding best non-holiday quarter in company's entire history—it is not something to be shy about and not exactly cherry picking. Unless you did expect Apple to beat its best holiday quarter in ordinary quarter during recession?
Evidence-Based Scheduling 2.0
Hopefully do a Rin/Robert Bernocco - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html
Bank of Canada says recession over, growth returning
Aside from all the Java crap it has multimethods, but it doesn't really make sense to call them OO because there's no object that they're attached to.
I'm working on a startup-like project within a very large company. A couple of trends I've seen:

- Unless you can show that your project will make the company more money in the first couple years than putting it into the bank it's a no go. We're told that it's cheaper to wait for another small company to succeed and then just go and buy that.

- We have IP, great labs, technicians and vendor relations for the technologies we're in already but it's hard to expand into totally new areas because we wouldn't be utilizing the existing resources. The usual answer is outsourcing but it's very hard to find good help when you don't quite know what you're doing yet.

- We had an official innovation funnel for a few years where employee ideas could gain some traction but that approach was abandoned in favor of the few-big-bets approach. I can't honestly say why the funnel failed but after a short while we called it the "funnel of death" since the financial types would never accept the business plans. At some point we tried to keep our side projects out of the funnel hoping we'd get far enough on our own.

We make mostly hardware so we're a lot less nimble than pure SW shops but some of the same trends surely apply.
It's a cool story, but he's hardly the first to do it - I worked as a volunteer English teacher in Asia for 6 months, and did this with some of my senior classes - excuses for missing homework, being late for school, losing their notebook, etc - I think there was a prize for the most creative one. It wasn't an original idea of mine - I got the idea from a similar lesson in my own high school english class (UK).
being discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719475
One tonne 'Baby' marks its 60th birthday
People Who Have Redefined the Road to Success
That just means that your browser doesn't support tail recursion. Google's implementation is easily tail-call optimizable by any decent browser!
You have a lot of hidden assumptions built into your statements, to the point that unpacking them would take longer than I care to spend on it. Your question is malformed.
The reason seems to just be that LISP books generally don't sell well. And it seems to still be in their submission guidelines.

http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html

"Books on topics that have dismal sales despite quality books being available. (If you're addressing a topic where good books have sold dismally in the past (for instance, LISP, LaTeX, or Web-based training),"
"...but that liquidation preference (3 or 3.5X!!) is meant to ensure that no matter what, Sequoia actually gets a guaranteed return."

Since when does liquidation preference confer a guaranteed return?
& previous discussion: http://searchyc.com/arthur+whitney