skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Greetings. I was the interactive designer (among other jobs) for Customized Graphics. We're trying to be the Cafe Press or Zazzle for custom vinyl products, including Giant Wall Graphics, Bumper Stickers, and Banners.

I work for a small company called eRetailing in Columbus, Ohio. Customized Graphics is a tremendous opportunity for us. We're treating it like a start-up within a start-up.

eRetailing has had some success in the custom apparel space, and now we're moving on to other custom products like stickers and wall graphics. There have been a couple questions on HN in the past about where to find custom stickers for your business. Well, you can absolutely find them here.

We think we're special for a few reasons:

1) When we were building this site there was no one else operating as the Cafe Press of Wall Graphics. Just recently, LTLPrints launched with a similar model. I've seen them mentioned on here before and it looks like they have a great product. We're looking forward to the competition!

2) Our Design Center is delightfully robust. It’s very easy to add your own text and art and then change colors, fonts, sizes, and more. You can also upload images, including vector art. (We think we’re the only place where you can upload vector art to create custom products, which is important for large graphics because vector art scales.) (See: http://www.customizedgraphics.com/designcenter/Wall_Graphics)

3) We represent the next step in online customization. For example, at Café Press and Zazzle you can shop from thousands of family-themed designs. But none of those designs are actually customizable. But clicking on one of our designs sends you directly to our design center, where you can edit text, colors, and everything else. So if you find a family wall graphic you like, it’s incredibly simple to click "Edit" and add your own family name. (See: http://www.customizedgraphics.com/search/all/Family)

Thanks in advance for any feedback! Everything still needs a lot of testing and improvement.
> it seems likely that pretty much any strongly typed language could do something like this

No. Or more precisely, in a dynamically typed language (which may or may not be strongly typed) there's no point in doing so, it won't buy you anything expressivity or correctness over nullable references.

Pretty much any statically typed language would benefit from making names/references non-nullable by default and moving nullability into the type system yes.

> it's allowing the nulls to exist in the first place that is actually the hack

How is it a hack? It's trivial to implement, but there's nothing hacky about it.
I agree with you, even though your opinion seems to be unpopular in this thread.

I read nothing about a gun being held to this poor old man who was obviously crippled by his lack of a back bone.

Why was this man talking to the salesman about a piano in the first place? He must have wondered into a piano store, thinking it was a travel agency in hopes of booking his summer vacation. But right at the moment he realized he had stumbled into the wrong store, the salesman caught him with his tractor beam and would not let this poor man leave.

I agree with most comments, there is something wrong with society, but I'm not so quick to judge the salesmen. Why not blame the guy shopping for a piano when what he really wanted was a vacation?
"And now pick up a pencil or a pen (if you're really courageous) and practice on this very page."

3 things: 1. How quaint! 2. Did anyone else notice that the entire article was a giant .jpg? 3. Good on them for not being afraid to start a sentence with "And".
Oops! Your search inquiry has a Haram level of 3 out of 3! I would like to advise you to change your search terms and try again.
That is exactly why I have to take this article with a grain of salt.
They may have valid points, but they also wrote a book, and this article promotes their book.

I grow weary of anything on the web with an undertone of "Buy my Book! Buy my book!"
Tweet real postcards to your friends + new postcard API.
When it comes to long distance hauling of stuff on twos you want to let the machine do the work.
"I don't need a shiny car, but I often feel like I want one."

I think you're hitting on something here. Maybe more to the point is that there is something else you want more - either to save your money for things that give you more security or enjoyment, or to follow your principles, etc. In you heart, you feel that NOT buying a shiny car will make you happier than buying it.

Much of our unhappiness comes from sacrificing our higher desires - health, security, accomplishment - for lower ones: junk food, instant gratification, laziness.

The salesman in the article is pushing his customer away from a higher desire to a lower one. And helping to make him less happy.
I started smoking because of the boredom and frustration of high school. After that nightmare ended i had to re-rationalize smoking and i ended up doing that by telling myself that it has a positive effect on my concentration in a combo with caffeine. Im not sure if it really is so, or is it me just trying to rationalize my stupid addictions.
print(cÃ©sar)

Should give arc a run for its money.
The Yike also allows you to avoid the legions of bicycle fundamentalists who will inevitably accost you over an electric bicycle choice.
The missing stipulation is that the owner would like the move from his old home to his new home to be seamless, without disrupting his family life in any way.
This is, more or less, the writing my school taught me in the UK.
i want video and audio. whiny ideologues should go away.
When I had a job this was pretty much my exact routine - started at 6AM every morning. Just replace the workout with meditation... I'd go to the Gym and/or Bikram Yoga w/ the girl after work during the week.

Somatomax has also been invaluable for my sleep and clear operating mind the next day...

Now, without the job, I typically getup at 7AM (sometimes a bit later), shower, catchup on email and Hacker News then start my personal project.
I have ridden recumbent bikes (e.g. http://www.recumbents.com/home.asp) for decades. Mine is very much like the Yike: underseat steering, approximately 20" wheels, short wheelbase, and I sit almost directly over the front wheel (like the Yike) except I have to pedal. Here is what I know:

1. sitting on a wheel means every time you hit a pothole you say yike as your spine is pounded.

2. you MUST keep both hands on the wheel at all times because it is dynamically unstable (very different from an 'upright' bike which will steer hands-free).

3. forward center of gravity will dump you on your face under heavy braking (or for the Yike - the slightest braking).

4. small wheels feel every bump in the pavement (which has a fractal dimension explored in greater detail as the wheel gets smaller).

5. You can ride a recumbent for hundreds of miles in a day and still be very comfortable (I have) but it requires a chair-type seat; preferably with some recline to it. That seat looks painful.

6. A short wheelbase like my bike or the Yike allows you to turn on a dime - but it takes practice as both wheels do not have the same weight and a skid is unrecoverable. Do not attempt this on ice, snow, wet leaves, etc..
CWTenterprises - Social Media Marketing
xhttp://www.example.com/\\>%20&amp;<?
Hadoop buzz continues to excite the cloud
Tell HN: Help populate Stack Overflow with R questions and answers
I agree with one of the commentators below the article ("B.Karn") that there always seems to be a bit of a "Clever Chinaman" undertone in these US/China articles.

B. Karn's comment (unless there's more than one) doesn't say that at all. So not only have you read that sentiment into the article, you've read a pointing-out of it into a comment.

(I agree that such a sentiment has existed in such articles in the past, but not in this one. Perhaps I'm missing the radar for it.)
Patently absurd, like most software patents.
When AOL released their 'anonimzed data set' I happened to be in a datacenter that had some pretty good bandwidth so I grabbed a copy before it was pulled it, even now, several years later it is amazing what you can mine in terms of data that is relevant today.
Niagara Falls
DIY Electric Bike Uses Advanced Power Drill Batteries (DeWalt NANO-Phosphate)
Last I checked there was no vi mode, which is why I stuck with zsh.
Top 125 VC Blogs - Ranked By Google Subscribers
The chinese are planning way ahead, think decades.

Inflation != rising prices

Inflation = Increase in the money supply

Inflation HAS already happened, now the symptoms will start to accelerate.

Hyperinflation is always a monetary event, not an economic event.

Fiat currency is based on confidence in the government among other things.

Gold is a bet against the government.
"And it's for copyright issues, not for security. "

Huh?
The technical arguments for Dalvik I remember are twofold:

(a, minor) the dalvik vm is a closer fit to the underlying cpu (being a register-based vm iirc) which makes it simpler to implement and/or a little more performant

(b, major) the dalvik vm (contra the jvm) is designed to more-easily support the "single vm instance with multiple logically independent apps running in it" model; this reduces the vm-induced memory overhead b/c the vm and any system-wide libraries are only loaded once.

There's probably also some truth to the trademark argument.
What happens when you write:

begin
entry.at('description').indx_txt
rescue NoMethodError
end

? With the generic rescue you will always get nil back. With #andand you get nil from nil and a NoMethodError from objects, which is usually what you want.

Also, if #index_text is correctly spelled but it raises a NoMethodError, you're silently discarding it again. For this reason, I avoid silently discarding exceptions even when I think I know what I'm doing. If I'm wrong, I'm in a lot of trouble...
What's a conditerator?
Backpacks are small. Foldable metal bike baskets can fit large cloth grocery bags in them. Two of those are enough to carry almost anything I need for the next week or so.
An interesting note: after I lost my iPhone, restoring the replacement from the backup I didn't realize iTunes had been making reset not just the e-mail settings and contacts, but the ring tone settings, wireless network passwords, etc. As much as I try to stay away from being a fanboy, I was very pleased with the UX.
RAM/SSD storage means that we'll probably be CPU-bound in the future.

Isn't this obviously wrong, barring some breakthrough in memory latency?
That's why you need a business-minded partner. :)
Start ups require balls, time, money, and a good idea.

Everything else can be hired.
Spde: Offshoot of Processing in Scala
There's a fundamental problem with the concept of 'cool' that causes blast-damage to the semantics of words around it. Long ago, the word 'awesome' actually described something that inspired a sense of awe. Now it's something people say when someone offers them a can of cold, unsolicited soda. 'Wicked' once meant 'evil'. Now a mildy impressive not-even-very-extreme-sports move, like a skateboard grind on a concrete curb is 'wicked'. The word 'sweet' once referred to something that contained sugar. Now an expensive car is a 'sweet ride'. In days gone by, one had to advocate complete and total social reform in order to be 'radical'. Later, all one needed was acid-washed denim and poofy bangs.

Alas, sex hasn't been an essential part of sexy for a long, long time.
"But in a society that we like to claim is tolerant of all values, who are we to say that any of the buyer's values -- his motivations for making some choice -- are wrong in any objective way?"

If he regrets his decision, we're not judging him, but sympathizing with him. The salesman would have been more helpful to say, "I think what I'm offering is great. Here is all the information on it. Why don't you take some time to think it over?"

Then the man could take the time to separate his momentary emotions from his actual priorities. And he would be happier in the end.

Any salesman who is willing to do this earns my respect. There are salespeople who genuinely want to help their customers. The one described in this article does not.
You're right, I should've been more specific about which ones I mean, but if you look at the numbers they show exactly what I was explaining.

Those tests with very low memory usage show Java using 16 times as much memory as C++ because almost all of it is VM memory, whereas the tests using a lot of memory show Java using only around twice as much memory.

At least that's the general picture. I know very well that it depends hugely on what kind of data structures are being used and so on, so it's going to vary.
You say "I have problem X. Let me Google that or ask my friends what they do."
Looks like someone took you up, and beat C with javascript:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=reg...
probably learn more and network more from starting up than you would from an mba.
no one knows how to fight [deflation] once it's become entrenched.

Personally I agree with this, but remember FED Chairman "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke's oft-repeated quip that the FED has (metaphorically) a printing press and can whip up however many dollars are needed to prevent deflation. So in theory, the US has the right man in the right place for this very problem.

I don't see a whole lot of success yet. With all the layoffs and offshoring it's not clear additional dollars are the right approach -- wait, I take that back. It would be a great help if there were more early-stage Googles to employ people to make others more productive. If only there were some way to encourage talented people to start new companies...the US needs a Startup Czar!
Rails does what he mentions ...

[shell] ./script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.3)
>> nil.blank?
=> true
>> "".blank?
=> true
>> [].blank?
=> true
>> {}.blank?
=> true

It lets you write cleaner code in situations when you don't care if an object is empty data or a nil. Avoiding the "whiney nils" ruby has a reputation for.

instead of

if myobj && myobj.size == 0 then :blah end

you can write

if myobj.blank? then :blah end

makes me miss perl though
Venture Capitalist At Your Service
Raw powerpoint: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jwmills/EAC.ppt
I noticed that Disqus uses a JS widget to embed comments. I like that approach a lot. I wasn't sure of all of the benefits, but full CSS styling is pretty nice.

As a way to get bloggers to adopt it, I think I'm going to make custom CSS skins on a blog by blog basis and start posting links to a new relevant poll that I made in the comment section.

You don't think that would annoy people, would you?

Hopefully a few bloggers will start embedding the poll into the bottom of their post.

Geocoding IPs would be really cool to combine with a map. I'm set up to do that now, I just need to collect more data.

It'd be even cooler to be able to find polls that a similar user base has answered and statistically analyze a certain poll(85% of the people that agreed with your blog also agreed with ...).
I think they actually meant to say "It is likely that you will be thrown off the front of a YikeBike in an emergency braking situation - this is very easy as there are no handle bars in the way." :P

I really don't see how jumping off front of the bike is intuitive though. I mean, it's like trying to jump forward from the chair your sitting in. This in itself is an unnatural action, and to top it off the bike is gonna be moving forward when you jump forward off it. I foresee some severely bruised backsides.
20km/h is only a little over 12mph. I can sprint faster than that for short distances, so even if the front wheel hit a huge curb and stopped instantly, I'd likely just run to a stop. Having fallen off both conventional bikes and recumbents, I'd feel pretty safe on this thing.
I saw this a long time ago and thought, "cool, but what about scalability, performance, etc..." But now there is back-end support. I'd like to see how this performs with the Lift framework. Cool project.
You can also specify the app to open using the -a flag and specifying the full name of the app (with correct spacing and capitalization), e.g.:

open -a 'TextEdit' foobar.txt
open -a 'TextMate' foobar.txt
...or you need to move on to other ideas.

Not everything is worth monetizing.
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A guy I really look up to (A VP of Engineering type of guy with a lot of startup experience) said once:

"At a startup, you need people who build shit and you need people who sell shit. IF you succeed on those fronts, eventually you might need people to manage/organize shit."

Time and again I see startups with technology that's inferior to their competition kick ass because they have a salesgod out there getting early customers or bizdev relationships. But I don't think an MBA is ideally suited for this role-- in fact, I think they've probably been well trained to manage/organize shit and wouldn't lower themselves to a cold call/email.
To copy/move/rename files with suffixes quickly:

cp /home/foo/abc.cpp{,-old}

equivalent to

cp /home/foo/abc.cpp /home/foo/abc.cpp-old
I find diagrams and other structural / notational concepts are far easier to put onto paper with a pen than enter into a computer. For example, I was recently implementing a Patricia trie, and I jotted down some of the different cases for node splitting etc., to get the semantics clear in my head for the code I was about to write. Typing it into the computer would have been much more laborious.
Lessons From A Serial Entrepreneur Who Started When He Was 15 Years Old
True enough, but the post to which I replied didn't just use the word "sex appeal" in a to me alien way, he also mentioned that this device would "get him laid". Jokingly, of course, but I'm still unsure we even mean the same thing.

If he simply meant that the iPhone was "awesome" by the definition you just mentioned, then I'm in agreement, but if he meant that he liked the device because of the reactions he thought he'd get from his surrounding due to having one, then we do not.
A faster/cheaper version of the folding 13A plug
Article is worth it for one reason:

I tried the "UFO catcher grip" (with the pencil between the index and middle fingers) depicted and saw immediate increase in the legibility of my hurried block printing.

I achieved greater lateral control of the pencil with this grip, also.
Yes, and I really wish Apple would use it, since they already have all the pieces required.

It's annoying that a command like "file" can identify a GNUmakefile as text, yet the Finder's QuickLook (for instance) will not preview it, instead simply calling it a Document.
The cat needs an insulin injection every morning before she is allowed to have breakfast. She crawls up onto my chest and paws me in the face until I wake up (no joke). When she first started doing this - years ago - I would keep my eyes shut and pretend I was asleep, but to no avail. The moment she knows that I'm conscious, she starts meowing, jumps off the bed and heads for the kitchen.
Mississipi is richer than Europe
There's http://www.charitynavigator.org/, and the arguments against: http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/11/charity-navigator%E2...
I've been watching the Capp project with great interest since its debut, and hoping against hope that it turns into a serious alternative to the mess that's out there today for web dev.

Now I'm worried that the combination of the Atlas delay and lack of serious Capp-based public websites is going to hurt its initial momentum.
Somewhat related, on charity: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800663
Ah, I tested as many different blogs as I could. Bummer about LiveJournal though.
You stole my response.
Complaining about voting reliably earns a downvote from me. Such comments add nothing to the discussion.

Additionally, snarky jabs at the rest of the HN userbase for not providing unbiased and rational discussion are not a good way of getting unbiased and rational replies. It is more likely to perpetuate fanboy/hater bickering, which we can all at least try to keep to a minimum.
This is fascinating material I didn't know existed; thank you for posting it.
This bit was great.

"You've never sold cars before. Is that right?"

"Right."

"Why do you want to work here?"

My first inclination was to say, hey, I'm a car freak. Always have been. I could explain cars, how they work, get people excited about the performance and the different features. But then I remembered my editor's advice.

I smiled at Dave, trying to convey the feeling that the answer was obvious.

"I want to make a lot of money," I said.

The effect on Dave was amazing. He smiled and relaxed, as if I had said the password to enter an exclusive club. If this had been a cartoon, dollar signs would have appeared in his eyes accompanied by a loud "Cha-ching!"
and crl+r again for the next match. The ctrl+o tip didn't work for me though (OS X).
I'm confused by the majorty of what's in this presentation, even after reading the whole thing. can anyone post some more detail on the contents?
Goodbye, DRM; hello "stealable" Digital Personal Property
You can still find it around the interwebs, in torrent sites etc... I'm just not sure about the legality of using it for practical or academic purposes.
the rest of the sales cycle becomes natural, like judo or ballet.

Judo and ballet are perfectly unnatural. They take dedication and concentration and consistency, years of practice. There is no other animal in existence which will take the time and effort to perfect a set of particular movements.

Also, we should use words other than "want" and "need". Make up a few, give them definitions and that way we'll avoid any equivocation or any other logical problems.
What's wrong with that? Read the material critically. Scratch out a few letters on a piece of paper. If it makes sense and you want to go further, buy the book.

As far as advertising goes, this is pretty useful -- it gives me some value even if I don't buy the book, and directs me to a resource that I might be genuinely interested in.
Finally! No longer will my PDFs created in InDesign open in Acrobat instead of Preview!
I'm sure it compares favourably to the Yike, but the range on your commuting bike is not unlimited. How far can you ride before you have to stop and eat?
A list of isolated, confined and feral children
Meet Randall & Help Build an xkcd School
What Does the Department of Homeland Security Know About You?
Using WordPress to generate flat files
They did invite these criticisms by drawing comparisons to S3, EMC, etc. However, they already tried to factor out the cost of operations so that s3 was on equal footing with the non-service offerings. We can quibble about the specific numbers they used, but I think the bigger quibble is that by their own estimates, those costs are substantial, seemingly far outstripping their hardware costs by something like an order of magnitude. Even so, at the scale of a pentabyte or more, the savings are substantial enough to be worth addressing.

As for the missing costs that you cite, think this through. What do you really think the per-unit costs for assembly and testing are? Even if each unit required a couple of man-days, the costs would probably only add ~10% or so per unit. The other costs you cite for the initial hardware and software engineering are fixed costs, the same whether they are storing 1PB or 1,000. Also, if they did their job right, much of the per-unit testing cost should be mitigated by the overall systems design. The system management automation can do a test cycle on new nodes before promoting them to production use, and of course, failures should be dealt with automatically.
Not inherent in the bills and coins, but in the economic system they're part of. So we could change the system and keep the physical money, of course.