skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You should not compare Coupons.com to Groupon. Different businesses. Groupon sells deals - you have to put money upfront i.e. commit to a discount. Coupons.com prints money in the form of %/$ off discounts. No need to commit any money even after you acquire a coupon from Coupons.com.
Funny that I'm running Mavericks on a Hackintosh and I haven't had any issues in the last 3+ months.
I view thinking about the problem, researching the problem, etc, as being indivisible from the coding aspect.

Really, it's telling how -I- feel after a day spent in meetings. It feels wasted. I'm grumpy that I achieved nothing.

Whereas a day without any meetings, where it's head bent down, writing code, even when it involves research or looking up API docs, or going to ask questions of domain experts when interacting with other systems...feels productive. Even when some of it changes because the customer comes back and says "No no no, it should work like (X)".

Honestly, it feels more productive when the customer can instantly tell me what is wrong after the fact, than if I spend an hour up front trying to pick their brains, to then code it, and to -still- find out it's wrong. Per another thread we had here, people find it much easier to tell you what is wrong than to tell you out of the air what is right.
Probably mean 'nigh'. Neigh is a sound horses make.
You Might Not Need JavaScript
Are you about to code some awesome web stuff and have JavaScript enabled in your browser?

Turn that s* off!

It's about a development style called NoScript First.
What's amazing about newer machines + SSD + ample RAM is that you start to perceive software slowness more than ever. Whereas before I wouldn't care if my terminal took 0.3s to open a new tab, now I want to get it down to .05s (which, using zsh completions, doesn't seem to be possible).
I've recently changed my hard drive, and no, my macbook pro 2009 does not run mavericks smoothly with 2GB of ram.

kernel_task takes 200 to 500MB of ram. Programs take age to start.
Now the story of the ballistic climb with the Lightning seems cut from the same cloth, with even the current Wikipedia reading "88,000" yet "trading speed for altitude." What does it really matter, when a mach 2.0 craft like the lightning reaches 88K feet, yet is trading speed for altitude?

In the case of the Lightning, it supposedly could have gotten itself up to 87K in the path of an SR-71, and gotten a missile lock, had the Lightning been capable of firing radar guided missiles, but from what I've read, this was not the case. (Also, maneuvering to orient the plane for missile launch would've been dubious at best.)
Brother of Dorian Nakamoto Responds
I always read COMMENTS first
I mostly read COMMENTS first
I always read the ARTICLE first
I mostly read the ARTICLE first
I never/rarely read comments, just the article
I never/rarely read the article, just the comments
While I fully agree with the senselessness of this overlapping-parallaxing-animating background drivel I did notice it seemed to work rather well here, using about 52% CPU on an Athlon II P360-powered machine (not the fastest around) running Firefox 30 on Linux. This is still 50% more than I'd like to see once the page has rendered, but for that purpose I have noscript and friends - I actually had to allow scripting on that page to see the animations in the first place...
The sound output thing I found to be an issue with headphones - it'd happen when I was on headphones, closed the mac, took out the headphones, then open the mac up and woke it up again.

Interestingly enough, I picked up a pair of bluetooth headphones and the issue has entirely ceased to reoccur.

Still frustrating as hell, though.
I have mixed feelings on the glossy-everything trend that seems to be the norm these days. I suspect glossy is indeed better when the environment is right--but it often isn't. I went through the same thing buying a new TV for my sunroom which, as you might imagine from the name, has a lot of light during the day. I don't use the TV in that room much during the day and the glossy plasma is indeed wonderful at night, but matte screen have their advantages in sunlight and, I suspect, are the overall optimal choice for a lot of uses even though they've fallen out of favor.
For open in new tab on a Mac, I use CMD-click. Takes two hands, but works without special setup and I usually have a hand near the keyboard anyway.
I understand using js to push some of the rendering time off on the user but surely you could mitigate some of the overhead with caching headers. I mean, the pages themselves are not that big...

As far as the source code goes, true enough (that seems to be a fundamental problem with applying open source ethics to the web) but as long as you're trying to attract security-minded individuals, maybe let them make pull requests and improve the security of the site?

Still though, it looks nice and I do like the collapsing threads.
Well let's see, there's probably something in the drawing co-

Four full-sized canvases laid atop each other?

(And I guess peeking at the code, they may be able to get rid of one of those Math.sqrts by using the distance-squared everywhere you need it instead of the distance. As a first pass there's probably other sqrts or trig that could be removed, but its hard to eyeball minified code)

I thought it was a very pretty sight, but it probably could be made a lot less harsh.
Not entirely true. LAWS has been in active tests and is, I believe, being deployed now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBDF0Tm0kuY
Yeah, Windows XP was a 'disaster' at the beginning according to most people. I personally didn't think it was great until Service Pack 2.
I kernel panic about once a week (probably VMWare Fusion's kext). Wireless sometimes doesn't re-connect, often for extended periods of time. The location services icon always puts itself in the same place in the menubar, rather than take the leftmost slot, leaving weird gaps.

Mavericks is pretty crappy as far as OS X releases go. They need to slow down with all the nifty features. I'm all for yearly OS updates, but regressions are worrying.
Mac OSX is the least customized OS I have ever done myself. I have very few customizations because the default settings and UI are fine. Coming from Ubuntu and Windows, I think Mac's UX is quite nice. The two exceptions are rename (I want to old Windows double-tap style) and the Preview program. I want to be able to view images forth and back with my arrow keys by default. The finder is also a little annoying sometimes but I didn't get a separate program but maybe I will.

One absolute must-correct issue in the future is Mac, Windows and all Linux distro should share same set of commands. Most Unix commands are available cross-platform but a few aren't. Unfortunately, that's not possible :( And forget about the difference between Windows commands and Linux commands. I could live with the difference, but, oh, it's 2014 and I hope one day we don't have to have live with difference.

Lastly,

I got a maxed-out MacBook Pro 15" (16G RAM, 1T SSD) thus dumping an estimated $1,000 profit into Apple’s cash hoard.

You sure? A 15" retina max 1TB and 16GB is $3000, not $1000. I think you meant an extra $1000 profit.
And what if the code has a bug? Code is also difficult to analyze. The people who do numerical computing need to prove theorems about what their algorithms produce.
Snark, Chord, and Trust in Algorithms
People easily remember the bad projects but the f-22 program didn't have the same problems.
It's trivial to use a "large" subset of the keyspace if you have any clue whatsoever about information theory. Just pull ten words uniformly at random from a list of the 4096 most common, hash them, and you've got yourself a 120 bit key right there. (Or even hash them another 128 times to give yourself an effective 7 bits of extra security.)

However, obviously idiots who will pick a 2 word passphrase should not be encouraged to use a brainwallet.
That's a good question, I think, thought I'm not sure, the answer is people are now far more expensive, adding more people means less money is made. Let's use your dams example. They built a bunch of big dams in the 50s and 60s and each one had more than 10,000 people working on it. They were mostly publicly financed, so more or less not built to make money. They didn't worry about adding a few more (or a few hundred more) people to the job because they were cheap. Now, the people that do this work are really expensive, and adding a few more means the people in charge make less money. Another big thing is probably rules and regulations and laws, far fewer back then. Good? Bad? I dunno.
I was watching Dogfights off of YouTube, and saw that one F4 Phantom pilot had developed a technique of purposely "departing" his Phantom from controlled flight as a radical airbrake to force Migs to overshoot, and actually got to use it in combat. And it worked!
I'm confused what the option actually does. Isn't it the default behavior that if you click on anything and drag it, you drag it?
Re:

"I got a maxed-out MacBook Pro 15" (16G RAM, 1T SSD) thus dumping an estimated $1,000 profit into Apple’s cash hoard.

You sure? A 15" retina max 1TB and 16GB is $3000, not $1000. I think you meant an extra $1000 profit.
"

I think he was using the 35% gross profit margin on $3,000 selling price to come up with a $1,000 gross profit. Actual Net Profit depends on many other factors, SG&A, R&D, etc...
I think this is pretty interesting and appreciate that it's presented with working code.

I think people freaking out that they're taking our precious integers away are being a little brash. A natural number type could easily be built on top of a dec64 type for those cases where you really need only whole numbers.
> Your hard drive might be failing.

And/or the filesystem might be corrupt. Run SMART Utility[1] (free trial). If it passes, run Verify Disk in Disk Utility on your disk(s) and volume(s). You'll need to boot to another volume (the recovery partition works) to repair the boot volume if needed.

[1]: http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php
I'm struck by how many are pluralizations or modified in some other way (-ier, -est, ...)
This isn't a specification, and it's laughable that you think so.

It's a polemic, designed to try and propagate an idea and change minds.

It didn't change my mind much, but I found your comment more affecting - in the humorous!
The Military is Leaving the Missing Behind
Freelancing in the Long Run
13-inch or 15-inch? If 13-inch, you may have a bad HD cable.
I'm starting a machine learning content aggregator with Meteor. Any requests?
I've only been working on this for a few days so far, but I wanted to get a better feel for what you think is missing in content aggregators. I'll be around for an hour or so – below you'll find the demo, the code, the project blog, and the signup form for the release email. Thanks!

http://demo.fraction.io/

http://code.fraction.io/

http://blog.fraction.io/

http://subscribe.fraction.io/
I never said anything about the quality of the initiative, but I think it is worth noting the author. It does give some context.
Since when does Crockford say that JSMin is the right tool for this particular job: translating JSON5 into regular JSON?
Harvey Weinstein to California: Expand Hollywood's Tax Incentives, ‘Please’
That's a neat observation. Thanks.
Fascinating. In this game, the side that buys a rainmaker can never win. They can only buy the prestige that comes with a higher top line, but do nothing for their bottom line.
Didn't Netflix offer to put their CDN machines inside of Comcast and were flat out turned down?
This isn't a "click", it's a double "touch-pad tap (no depress of the button)"

I've gotten so used to tap interaction, as opposed to "clicking", that I could easily work with a Mac now that had no "click".

I don't use the double-tap interaction (interferes with some games, and sometimes you get a deselect if you've multi-selected things on the screen) - but the three finger drag is wonderful.

[Edit: One exception - on bootup, before the OS is running, it won't recognize tap commands, and you have to click]
One anecdote: I can get up to 6.5 or 7 hours of programming in, but I'm utterly drained at this point. I'm sure others can go higher, but my mental stamina gives out completely.
Sidenote, the PDF-->HTML tool used in the above link is awesome!
https://github.com/coolwanglu/pdf2htmlEX
FWIW, I've had good luck with using the "select all" keyboard shortcut in those circumstances. I believe that you have an additional advantage in that Firefox has an option(1) to deactivate their stylesheets (one at a time, IIRC) which can also get you back into normal styling without a great deal of effort.

1= or it used to but without it in front of me I can't promise it still does
Google’s Jared Cohen: It’s “Obvious” Bitcoin-Like Currencies Are “Inevitable”
I've spent way too much time screwing around with my macbook for no reason, and I still didn't know about `systemstats`. thanks!

is there a (modern) list anywhere of OSX-included CLI tools like this?
The term "mantissa" is related to common logarithms, why is it used in relation to floats?
We would welcome contributors at Loomio! It's a simple tool for anyone, anywhere to participate in decisions that affect them. We have a big vision of a more democratic world at every level.

http://www.loomio.org
How We Can All Listen Better?
Law firms don't have "management" like a typical company. Partners are shareholders, not employees, and the power structure is based on who originates the most business, not on who holds what title. "Management" can be a pretty thankless job under those circumstances.
Facebook announces F8 (30th of April 2014)
Thanks for sharing. You should post it in the group for cast developers: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/11574215756910358545...
Understanding CRISPR/Cas (genome editing)
I had filled out their form and asked to be contacted about 6 months ago and haven't heard anything back. Talking to some accelerator people, it seems to be pretty common. Even using their network the accelerator was unable to get useful information about how to use this program. I think while it makes great headlines it might be 3-4 years till they figure out the policies and requirements around this.
I had lots of WiFi issues until I turned off bluetooth. Give it a go!
SR-71 Sled Driver : Flying the World's Fastest Jet
This is a GREAT book about the SR-71. I'm submitting since there are so many posts on this topic recently. It's unfortunately out of print, but I'd encourage anyone who enjoyed the recent posts on the SR-71 to look for this in the local library ( I know who does that anymore! ).
Show HN: Sproute
also, the point of a straw man proposal isn't exactly to be refined... it's to get jump off ideas from the straw man's trivial refutation.
>> an estimated $1,000 profit

> I think you meant an extra $1000 profit.

I'm not entirely sure what the difference is.
Lyft, Uber, and their likeness are going to be huge.
Legislation permitting, I can't see many standard taxi companies surviving for much longer.
Being productive is pure execution of an implementation or an idea. Anything else like planning, thinking through your problem is not deliverable or visible in the final output. Yet these things are necessary. Deciding when and how much to plan and think about your problem becomes a strategic decision. You want to spend the minimum effort required for the most effective solution within your time frame.

I'm almost certain that I have an undiagnosed ADHD, but living in London it is something that is not recognized. Whether this condition exists or not, my attention span is well below that of my peers at work. This lead me to actually find out what the optimal period of time I can concentrate doing something without my mind wandering. I took a timer and over a period of a week I experimented with blocks of time, starting from 25 minutes , I gradually reduced the block by 5 minutes until I found that sweet spot. I expected it'd be about 15 minutes, but to my dismay it was only 5. WTH!

I accepted the results and started each task with the expectation that any task I complete should finish in less than 5 minutes. If it doesn't then I'm either being inefficient because I'm

1) disorganised - spending time looking for artefacts required to do the piece of work
2) unskilled - spending most of that 5 minutes not executing but thinking about how to do it.

At the end of the box of time. I'd document what category my inability to complete the task fell into and then I'd note it somewhere so that at the end of the day I could either spend time getting that area more organized, looking for opportunity for automation or learning so that I become a bit more skilled. Dealing with my disarray and unskilledness at the end of the day helped me work smarter. Intraday, I'd not have the time to do this, this is where the grind comes in, where you plough through a piece of work knowing that it might not be the best way of doing it but you need get it out the door. The time management system is unnaturally granular. You can quickly put a stop to an unproductive avenues. This has gradually made me a more organized and skilled programmer over the last 3 months. More importantly more productive. It's also given me detailed metrics on my productivity. I can measure my level of distraction, unpreparedness and so on. The odd effect of all of this is that I can work much longer hours without moving from my seat ( I do force myself to get up for breaks)

All this is possible because of where technology is now, without it the process is far too granular and unwieldly to be practical.

From my experience I agree with what the author said in points 7,8. This is vital.

* Haven't an objective productivity metric - how do you measure your productivity.
* Accept that the grind part of the job

I think everything else can either fall into the categorys of managing procrastination, motivation and being a bit more organized which can vary widely depending on individual.
TV Commercials Recognition (2013)
Secret Creates Realtime SXSW Web Feed
Note, this coin is not officially backed by the Oglala Lakota Nation Tribal President Bryan Brewer or the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council.[0]

Reservations have to follow federal not state law, I feel like this is issuing a currency. They (well Harris), could potentially get themselves in some trouble here.

[0]http://www.indianz.com/News/2014/012781.asp
They've been here on and off for a long time. For example, issue 8 of Hacker Monthly back in 2011 had an article on the SR-71 as its cover story.

http://hackermonthly.com/issue-8.html
I've only said Cordova works great on iOS.

It doesn't work so great on Android, but I wouldn't go so far as saying that every Cordova app is garbage :). For some apps it works reasonably well, for others simply doesn't work.
What will the machine learn?

Is it supposed to find stuff I like that looks like stuff I liked in the past?

Or will it do something more interesting?
I agree with you, and I don't. With the way many companies seem to treat salary, I'd certainly rather work hourly, but that's really not the way salary is supposed to work (or does where I work).

When your hourly, if you start feeling sick in the middle of the afternoon go home, you have to put it on your timecard and it shows on your paycheck. Similarly, if shit hits the fan and you pull an extra 20 hours cleaning it up, you have to put it on your timecard and it shows on your paycheck. Seems fair right? And it is. But both you and your employer are spending a fair amount of effort on simply making sure your time (not work) is accounted for correctly.

Salary done right is when both you and your employer agree to skip the bean-counting. They have around, say, 40 hours worth of work they'd like to hire you to do, and they'd like to pay you 'x' much to do it. Now when it'd a lovely spring day and you decide to take an afternoon walk with your significant other, eh you still get paid the same. All caught up and don't feel like being at the office anymore? Eh take off. Whose counting? At the same time when there's a fire in the server room and you all pull all nighters bringing things back up, no one needs to waste time figuring exactly how much time you spent.

The problem with the way so many companies are doing salary currently is that the company is very happy not to count the extra hours you spend at work, but insist on an exact account of the time you didn't. Hell, they usually even go so far as to give you an allotment of time your allowed to not spend at the office. That double standard is the problem with most salaries, not the concept of salary itself.
Ask HN: Is my Yeoman generator useful?
I created a Yeoman generator for a node project scaffold I've named egress (available at http://github.com/shakeelmohamed/generator-egress).

I thought of this idea when recalling my past experiences at hackathons. When time is extremely limited, you should not be wasting time on building an application architecture. You should be spending all of your time on building features.

With generator-egress, you can simply run "yo egress" from the command line, give it a site name, author, and description. After generation and setting your Postgres credentials, you have an express based web app in seconds with: user account join/login functionality, and password encryption via bcrypt.

Last Friday I "released" v0.1.0 of generator-egress. On top of my very busy work and school schedule, I was able to build an MVP of a web app in exactly 6 days (10-15 hours total) of development - most of that time was building a database schema and writing SQL queries.

Some other features I'd like to add to egress are supporting different databases, theme customization (currently using vanilla Bootstrap), better error handling, and better input validation.

Please take a look at generator-egress. I'd love to hear some feedback on whether or not this is useful for you, and ways I can improve upon it.

Thanks for reading!

-Shakeel
Thanks! that's exactly what I'm doing every day, I use headphones too and plug/unplug them very frequently. I also never shutdown the mac, I just put it to sleep by closing the lid.

I've been doing the same for years with the old MBP (regularly coming to 30 days uptime without any itch) and always considered this the best feature (bulletproof sleep) that keeps me from going back to linux.

PS
Ironically enough, just after posting my first comment the mac freezed up again...
"I’m too old now to not use Unix"

Add that to his list of memorable quotes.
That's an interesting URL...I remember using that last year.
General Decimal Arithmetic Specification
A Glimpse of Technology Hell
This was my experience too. I found that I was productive 2 hours each day. The time tracker helped bring this up to 4 hours in an 8 hour day. I would play a game where I would try and beat yesterdays score.

Unless you have your own office, or at home or coworkers are forbidden to talk to you on pain of death and torture, I find it extremely difficult to be more productive than 4-4.5 hours in a 7-8 hour block of office time.
Yep, let's see whether I can blaim iOS autocorrect: nigh. No. Thanks for the feedback.
Did they actually say that theory, or was that his theory for why they "never listened to him"?

The article doesn't say explicitly, but I strongly suspect (having read a lot of Greenspun's online writing) that when he says "they developed a theory", he's basing that on things they said and did.

Also, of course, the objective data (plenty of which is given in the article) made it clear that Greenspun's criticisms were valid, so clearly the other Board members should have listened to him.
In practice the powerful would be able to restrict supply lines and access to market for upstart competitors using anticompetitive contracts, so those not in a cartel would simply wither.
But not for long (at least in their original form).
keyremap4macbook provides a (slightly kludgey) UI for adjusting key repeat speed, among many other options. Also, it obviously lets you remap keys. I prefer to have the Right Option key on my MBA work as Enter.