skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have seen far smaller estimates, 300x300 km area for entire world (current consumption) in Sahara, or 125x125 km area for Europe. Dunno about credibility, was in a newspaper article related to some German investors building large solar farm in Sahara.

I actually think that the 125x125km area should be doable. Its not like we don't have space in Sahara. US is more difficult as its probably not practical to transfer electricity as it from Africa. Maybe as hydrogen, dunno.
Holy crap, I used to work at that store!
Is this a joke? That's nowhere near as simple.
I'm flattered...I've never been the subject of a blog post before (even anonymously).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=802803
This is a case where I think it would've been good to edit the title.

This post is about how they used HTML5 to enable drag and drop between browser windows. Pretty nifty.
Things Every Programmer Should Know - Edited Contributions
I know YouTube has TV shows available to watch, but it does not and I am thinking due to exclusive deals will not have any ABC, NBC or Fox shows due to Hulu. Thus for me I associate TV showing watching with Hulu and go there daily to catch some shows. When I want to watch a news clip or hear a song or watch a music video I search & go to Youtube.
I wonder how many other HUlu users know TV shows are on youtube & whether they bother using YouTube for such?
Python used to be available as a client side scripting language for EMCA but I can't find that project these days.
I don't really understand the scorn that people pour on the snuggie. Every time I've bundled under a blanket in the winter I have to either expose my arms (which means exposing my shoulders and half my chest in practice) or not do anything with my hands at all. It sucks, and sleeves are the one thing that makes blankets usable.

My working theory as of now is that the mockers probably live in warm West Coast cities where there's no need for a blanket at all, ever, so they've never personally encountered the problem.
No.

Solid biological and chemical backgrounds for research, analysis and quality control. Engineering backgrounds to design, build and maintain facilities and infrastructure including IT and automation. Business backgrounds to develop new markets, manage finances, employees, operations, etc.
I didn't say he was only interested in promoting Vault, or that he was being dishonest. Conflict of interest doesn't have to be some evil shadowy plot. Given that he's spent years working on his system and convincing himself it's The Right Way, DVCS probably is more difficult conceptually to him. That doesn't make him bad or a shill, it just means you shouldn't necessarily take his word as the authority for vcs newcomers.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority...
Ravelry - a very successful deployment of Ruby and Rails
My native language is spanish but I think in german (my partner is from Switzerland) so I read and speak (not always) in german.

In programming languages I think in Python and then translate according to my needs.
Much more than UI difference. It's seamless and automatic. That's what makes it different. You CAN do this in any environment, but you might not. I've quite often done some work, decided I didn't like the way I did it, gone back and done something else (never committing the first method), then decided I wanted to original way back.

No one has time to commit EVERYTHING they may want to undo. Also, browsing through history in a version control system takes much longer than dragging a slider.
My favorite distro for a notebook - CrunchBang
I think in the language i'm currently working on
I'm motivated to do things as a means of not doing ostensibly more important things:

http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
Yes, I do mean other than apart from the original definition which, after all, is not the current definition. (You could say "but everyone knows ...", but then you could equally say that "everyone knows" g ~= 9.8m/s^2.) The Eratosthenes method is lovely but surely rather difficult in a classroom. (Am I missing a trick?) All I know about the al-Biruni method is a couple of sentences from Wikipedia, but it sounds as if it effectively needs some external (geographical) data that you can't measure in a classroom. Hmm.
How do you know you're not infected by Conficker?
Tons of stuff I never saw before. I better be careful or I'll lose the whole day.
The list is shorter than that, though.

How we'd override "pass" boggles my mind. Same for break and continue, and mostly raise (though you have control over the exception hierarchy).

del can be modified to some extent by changing the "del" double-underscore method of the target. import can be modified in several ways, which is how the zipimport is implemented (not an atomic capability). if, while, and try are effectively atomic, but "for" loops can be redefined by defining an iterator, and with is specified entirely in terms of an interface that allows you to affect what it does too.

Personally, I don't think the right way to phrase it is as "everything is first-class in Python", though. I see it as "when the language designer wants to put a capability into the language, like, say, importing from zip files, instead of hard coding it into the interpreter, an interface is coded into the interpreter that anybody can use", which unfortunately I don't have a snappy word on hand for. Looking over the history of Python you can even see this evolving, with the increasing openness of "import" and metaclasses being the most obvious examples.

"Everything is first class" would lead you to something like Lisp macros, which Python eschews. (For better and for worse.) However, I for one would wish more languages would learn the Python lesson above; it's so frustrating to me when I see a language implement something like "import from a different source" but still give you no way to use this new capability yourself. If it's convenient and powerful to you as a language designer, it'll be even more convenient and powerful in the hands of all your users.
I'm running Linux; that's how.
It's not going to happen overnight. The value of nearly all commodities will become suspect the instant energy/electricity approaches the cost of zero. This means global market volatility will surge as countries/investors figure out a new means of evaluating worth. Free is good, but not if it causes a global panic.
My working theory as of now is that the mockers probably live in warm West Coast cities where there's no need for a blanket at all, ever, so they've never personally encountered the problem.

Or in heated homes... but yes, I think your working theory is spot-on.
Automatic versioning with an easy interface: I sure wish Word had this.
Yes, that's right. The project being proposed is merely several orders of magnitude larger than all existing infrastructure created up to now.

That's exactly my point; I do grasp how much that took, and then to propose that we could solve all our problems by just doing a thousand times more work (or more) is just silly.
“So...what do you do?"
Depends on your style of writing. Maybe we don't only because we don't delete enough. And maybe we don't delete enough because we didn't have the tools to let us bring up any revision before.
Beware, VCs are all Schemers
In my experience, the #1 attitude is required for academia - you want a fully general theory of Roast Heating, not a practical answer right now.

The #2 and #3 attitudes make the best engineers - ideally you can switch between those two modes depending on the problem. If you can only get one, take someone with attitude #2: startups need the roast beef sandwiches[1].

The #4 attitude I've actually found to be anti-correlated with engineering talent in general; the people who are best at that tend to be in business development or sales.

[1] Often the most important thing you get out of tackling a problem is the side product, not the thing you thought you wanted. PayPal thought they were working on secure transactions between PDAs; while solving it they made The Roast Beef Sandwich of Web Payments.
I scorn the Snuggie because those who own one are poor consumers. The Slanket is the better buy.

"Get the Slanket if you're serious about staying warm while lying on your couch... Nobody anywhere should buy the Snuggie." (From Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5190557/ultimate-battle-the-snuggie-vs-sl...)
Sure, developers have this sort of power. Lay people don't. Their target audience is more than just devs.
"Great companies make lots of money but leave even more money on the table for their users and partners."

Alternative phrasing: Great companies ride waves so great they can generate unprecedented revenues without being too much of an asshole. At least at the start. (I'm thinking of Adsense.)
It's like they took the design for Obi-Wan's jedi robe and made it blue.
How does this differ from 'undo' with a slider bar interface and auto-save?
Moonbell: Lunar music generator
Interesting. I'm surprised to hear people can effectively think about code in a language at all. Code is an abstraction of an essentially physical process (the computer doing things) so it seems rather odd to think about the problem at one level removed. I don't think in language generally unless I am intending to speak to someone. I tend to think in terms of motion through a physical space. Imagine yourself playing tennis and feeling your motion across the court. The algorithms in my head work the same way. All the pieces are sort of thrown on a table and I feel the paths between them, the 'forces' of contention and flow. The closest I've seen to describing it is when really advanced chess players talk about how they see the chess board as lines of force and weight.
So then you didn't really mean the talent part of "the reality is that Shotput's starting pool is..shall we say less..talented and motivated" ?
It seems pretty obvious to me that subversion's program model is way closer to the naive user model than git's is.

You assert this without saying why, except to say Eric Sink said it first. You could at least provide a link to his explanation, I couldn't find the magic Google incantation to find it myself.

He doesn't need to do that at all - for example, if he's running a windows machine, he can just install TortoiseSVN and set up repositories on his local machine. Dead simple.

My bad, I misused the word server. I meant that best case you're still setting up the repository in one folder and then doing all your work in another. On the premise that managing and understanding why you're managing two places is harder than just working in one, git is simpler. I didn't just make that up, that's how the systems work.
Io has no keywords; everything is a message. This includes return, break and continue.
What's the advantage over a sweater/sweatshirt?

And a sweater/sweatshirt is more 'flexible' since I can wear it outside of the house too ...
Interesting--just like the Google Wave feature. ;-)
I'm obviously not arguing in favour of replacing git, hg or svn with this. It would be a fun, additional feature to have. You could then watch how the code evolved over time, easily move step-by-step, hand it over to a less experienced developer to teach him how to refactor code, and so on. I would find it useful.
I do not think that teaching genetic algorithms will help. I think that the question we ask has become so completely infected by politics and religion right now, that it may no longer be a good question to ask. Currently, we ask people whether they believe in evolution and I believe that a substantial majority instantly translates the question in their heads to, "Do you believe in God?" Then they answer no. Likewise, I think a great majority instantly translate the question into something like, “Are you a democrat or a republican?”
Regardless of the agency, such as Gallup, posing the questions and regardless of how carefully the questions were prepared, it just seems that these type of questions have been biased beyond use. In short, I don’t think that the rates for evolution’s acceptance are as low as they appear to be.

Lastly, most scientists, programmers, and etc that I know already accept evolution. If genetic algorithms were to be used to enhance the understanding of evolution in the general public, you would also have to teach the general public more about computer programming, algorithms, and math in general, and none of those are trivial things to do.
Just imagine how much money a solar electrician can make servicing rooftop panels in a large middle class area. It may be more efficient (overall) for utility companies to build solar farms rather than leaving it up to consumers.
IntelliJ has it. It's called local history:

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/local_history.html
Yes, but late-binding everything is not free, or even always a clear win - it's a major language design trade-off, with implications for both performance and compile-time analysis. What happens to existing code if someone changes the meaning of 'return', for example?
I think in messy pictures. Strangely, the pictures are as poorly drawn in my sloppy style as they are on the page. For example, a loop is an ugly circle with a downward facing arrow on the right side and it looks just like something I would have drawn. Object stuff tends to look UML-like and functional stuff tends to look flowchart-like. And they are messy whether in my head or on the paper. When I need words, they usually look like/start to follow the conventions of the language I'm planning to write the code in.
Book Review: The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
>It's the same reason that VCs are willing to invest millions of dollars in nascent companies which will, in all likelihood, fail in the near future.
...
> The reason is scalability.

Very high risk / Very high returns

Like Gambling ?
Coming from Chicago and living in a country that has toilets which talk to you but has yet to figure out central heating, every time I see the Snuggie I think "I should buy one for, hmm, everyone I know."
You should be straightforward and honest, but you shouldn't judge him. You don't need to give him a list of his faults. Simply tell him, "It's not working out; I'm letting you go. Best of luck in the future." IF he asks for more detail, give it, but criticize his performance NOT him. Do not tell him what he is ("you're a software processes zealot"). That's for him to figure out. Do not asses his motivations (something like, "you don't seem to care about...") or his experience ("you've never shipped software before"). Assess strictly his performance. Period. Even if he asks you to assess him. It is not your place to judge who someone is, what their values are or what they would be good at. It's your job to assess whether they are doing what you hired them to do.

On a further note, if this surprises him in any way, there's a deeper problem. Employees should know at all times whether they are living up to expectations. If he wasn't, he should have known and had a chance to fix it.

Further, I agree this should be done in person, and another more important point, it should be done privately. Do not call him out in front of his coworkers. Give him a chance to leave quietly without embarrassment.
There's just something nice about a blanket that feels better than heavy clothes.
I wouldn't be efficient wrt space to keep copy of every version of the file. Instead I suppose they keep the actions of the writer(s).

Algorithmically it shouldn't be complicated. Maybe they just keep history of what happened in the environment and reproduce it. Maybe they even have some checkpoints saved so that there is no need to reconstruct it from the beginning every time. And maybe they can compress events. Instead of:
(type a),(type s),(type k) they have just (type ask) and in case you want better granularity they have it recorded somewhere.
wow, that needs way more explaination
If it was important, then I would buy the roast, thermometer, and stopwatch (#2). While the thing was cooking, I would work out a formula or simulation for the process as in #3. Then when finished with both, I would make a series of calls as in #4 to see whether the common wisdom matched up with experimental and analytical reality.
ASP.NET MVC & Twitter Integration
One of my favourite interview questions to ask is, what version control systems have you used.

I always ask what the applicants favourite editor is. Not because they have to use The One True Editor, but because they definitely should have one they prefer (which implies "know"). Craftsmanship warrants knowing your tools.
Atwood's formula lets him make posts when he has nothing to say: http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say/
Sinclair BASIC forever! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_BASIC )
Ask HN: finding a cofounder or two
Are there any sites for finding a cofounder or two? I'm in the middle of NE, so it might have to be remote cofounders although if anyone is in MHK, that would work as well. I'm actually not looking at starting anything until Jan although I have several ideas for project.
Man, I'm not getting an upscale sleeve-blanket until my student loans are paid off.
How ambient visual data can make news sites user friendly
This is one of my favorites ("How I Hacked Hacker News"):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976
I would've given #4 an F for using a cell phone during an exam. ;)
This is all taken care of using Amazon S3 services.

Interesting read. I wish dropbox had gone ahead with their initial plan to charge $5 a month for individual users. I would happily pay for this service, but $120/year for personal backup is too much. Something in the $50-60pa mark sounds better. Instead I use dropbox all my shared docs, and backup to my own S3 account for larger backups and one-way sharing of bigger files.
Albert is awesome.
Create And Secure Applications With BIG-IP v10
Is free will an illusion?

Yes! \

Let these two asses be set to grind corn!

No! /
> As an Albanian, I take offense at what you are saying. Serbian regime has always been represessive and very similiar to the Apartheid, where 10-15% of the population (Serbians), rule with the iron fist over the majority.

I agree with that. I never said that Serbians didn't commit attrocities. What I a blaming here is the Western propaganda machine (well ok, not Western, mostly NATO i.e. American) for lying.

Would you deny the facts that Serbian paramilitary forces intensified their attacks greatly after the bombing started?

I am not saying there we no masacres before, it is just that US knew it would get worse afterwards, they knew international observers would withdraw, but they decided to bomb anyway. Then they lied through their teeth when they used the victims of the retaliatory attacks of the Serbs to justify the bombings.

Yes, it was Serbian army who killed, but US (a suposedly rational country) knew that Slobodan would react in that way, and they didn't give a fuck. So it wasn't about humanitarian help, it was about saber rattling and not letting NATO get embarrassed in the middle of Europe.

It was not too long after USSR fell, European Union was gainging strength and US and NATO had to show the world who is boss. Yes, as a result they helped Albanians, and it is hard to play the "what if" game and guess what happened if they never went it. But they definetly didn't go in because they love Albanians or they cannot tollerate attrocities in the world. Look at Turkey and Indonesia -- both US clients that committed attrocities and nobody in US is bothered by it.
I think you can see an example closer to the disaster in the comic with the attempt to standardize a required video format for HTML 5:

http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-Jun...
Note to web developers and bloggers: Even if I enjoy an article you wrote I still don't want a lightbox frame to popup asking me to subscribe.

I'm more than capable of adding you to my RSS reader myself without popups k thx.
> ... and an 'enterprise' plan that features, well, a really high price.

I love this part of the plan.
Groan, but I gave you a bump up anyway.
Something I just thought about...I wonder why Apple/Sony/Microsoft/et al haven't tried the "console strategy" with music players. (The "console strategy" is where gaming console makers sell their hardware at an artificially low price, then make up the cost from software sales).

For example, Apple could tie an iPod to an account so that all songs are $1.29 on the iTunes store (instead of varying prices), then sell the iPods for very cheap. I think it would get more people hooked on the cheap up-front price, which would eventually be recouped from the music/video/software sales.
loving the examples
Same as this one in different language, interesting that people keep rediscovering this.

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/03/is_yo...
I voted this one up, because I found two links in the comments that are worth checking out:

Entertainment: http://www.despair.com/index.html

and one that looks like it may be generally interesting or even useful: http://www.zx81.org.uk/
More advice for new Y Combinator founders by Sam Altman

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95857
de gustibus pravis? What is pravis?
Analyze Crashes to Find Security Vulnerabilities in Your Apps
Pfizer to pay $2.3 billion, agrees to criminal plea
Excellent article about creating a niche community within an underserved market. I'm not sure the success here is as much about the platform as it is about the brilliant utility of the site to its members.
How To Add 8-Bit Flames To Your Toyota Prius
If you want a mantra to remind yourself of this, I like "fast is slow and slow is fast".
Having actually helped to write some standards (W3C, BSI, etc) I can say this is occasionally true, but mostly false, in my experience.

It's a cute cliche, but I think there are other issues behind the apparent grinding pace of standards, particularly web standards.
"Empties store"? I suspect the writer has never worked in retail electronics or even bought anything from an Apple store. Display models are a fraction of merchandise on-hand.
Almost all of these examples go back to one major attribute: persistence.
It looks easier to put on and take off and it looks like it keeps your feet warm...

The only reason I wouldn't buy one is: I do live on the warm West Coast and I hate accumulating more junk.
When there is a miscarriage of justice, those responsible for it must be brought to justice.
wow :)

"So for a start, I thought, perhaps I could determine the server's start time to within a few seconds or minutes. A boring way to go about this would be simply to monitor the server for downtime, and record when it became accessible again. But impatience is one of the three great programmer's virtues, and the best way to predict the future is to create it, and so forth, so I decided on a more proactive approach: crash it!"

A nice reminder to stay on dfranke's good side.
Great preview of an upcoming feature. But how long will it be before this will be able to go into production as relatively bug free? Years?
Creately Launches with Pay What you Want Plan
Interesting pricing experiment from Creately
No, no they don't.
I'm going to call BS on this one. As a business owner, I realize that sometimes there's a balance between "perfect code" and "getting to market." You can't be a pragmatic business owner and a perfectionist.

Artists can afford to be perfectionists. A software artisan may wish for perfection, but this sort of tripe is exactly what I was referring to in this post:
http://dailytechnology.net/posts/3

If you want to perfect software as an art form, then great, take this advice. But if you do it for business, then you realize that there is a trade-off when you aim for perfection. You may write the most stable, secure software in the world, but if nobody uses it, then who cares? You painted the Mona Lisa, and it's in a basement somewhere. Congrats.
YouTube In Talks To Stream New Movie Rentals, For A Price
I haven't used any of these following sites, but they may be of use to you:

http://cofoundr.com/

http://www.partnerup.com/

http://collabfinder.com/ (more designer focused)