skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Poll: How often do you get depressed?
I find my career as a developer to be quite rewarding both financially and intellectually. However, a couple times a year I find myself in a deep funk wondering what the hell am I doing with my life. How often do you get depressed per year?
Once per year
Twice per year
More than twice per year
Good on you. I hope it works out for you. Please do post updates here (to motivate yourself, and others :)) of your experience.
The thing about these studies is that while you can discover that one thing that is commonly thought-of as requiring willpower might indeed interfere with another such thing, the question of what that whole class of activities is has not been answered and indeed varies from person to person.

For one man, for example, approaching an attractive woman might require willpower while for another, it might just be a habitual response.

On the other hand, it's likely solving a difficult puzzle would requires resources on anyone's part.

This is a crucial concept and I hope that question of definition is worked on...
The average American commits three felonies per day
Price communicates value.

I could tell you some fun stories about charitably translating Japanese to English.

(We know the "document" isn't quite ready and is mostly actually handwritten in the margins -- feel free to rewrite the parts that don't flow right. Oh, and despite the fact that its on a technical field you're not expert in, we don't have time to answer your questions about the intricacies of steel smelting. But we need it done tomorrow, at the latest.)

I have never, ever had that sort of problem when somebody was paying $100 an hour for the work.
I, for one, am quite happy to see Java take a back seat. It isn't the ideal language to driving the future of the JVM. It's Scala, and Clojure, and Groovy, and JRuby, and and and so many others that should be the driving forces behind the JVM. Java can only benefit from those as C# has benefited from the DLR and F#. As long as they don't let it atrophy into nothingness.
Zipcar parks its iPhone app – finally
We have the same in web design. Grids, buttons, tabs, menus, font rhythm, etc are all considered standard elements for a website.

Tell that to a Flash developer. This is one of my pet peeves with Flash sites. No interface standardisation.
I'm doing this right now. We do have a product to display but it's not the minimum viable product yet - we hope to release that in about a month.

My approach has been to explain what we've got at the moment, what we're building and what we're capable of. The conversation is less about making a sale and more about getting an expression of interest. When we release this will you buy it? Why or why not?

Feedback has been invaluable so far and looking forward to following up with all of these warm prospects at the end of October. :)
I agree, and it's not just the MacBook Pros, it's also the keyboard that comes with the non-laptop Macs. My new Mac Pro came with a keyboard that was comparable with the keyboard on the Tandy Color Computer I had in the early 80s.

On the Mac Pro it is easy to change the keyboard; I replaced it with a Unicomp keyboard. However, that's not so simple on a laptop, and the keyboard is a big thing stopping me from getting an Apple laptop.
Theres Lots Of Money In Old iPhones
It works, but the sound is probably distorted.

A better way would be to use the ipod with a dock with a proper line out (the basic dock from Apple has one).
Pirate Party storms Australia
Tweaking Your Neurons
Melbourne Australia Hackernews/YC Meetup, this Sun 4th Oct
Apple purposely delayed the release of Snow Leopard so that the discovery period had ended, they then realised they needed it open and applied for it to be reopened. The judge denied this because Apple brought it on themselves, so how are there time frame problems? Apple fucked itself through its own legal incompetence, done and done.
I would also add that I use LinkedIn very effectively in this area. Keeping in touch with all your past colleagues / bosses serves you well. When someone updates their status, and you see they moved to a new company/position, it may be time to ping them and see what they are up to -- perhaps they are looking to hire contract work. Time and place...
For those not on Facebook...

By popular demand, we're inviting Melbourne's Y Combinator/Hackernews devotees to come together for a lazy Sunday afternoon of sunshine & startup talk.

Tom & Fenn, alumni of the Winter 09 Y Combinator program will be there. If you're considering applying to YC, either for the upcoming Winter 10 cycle, or in a future round, this is your chance to talk to Melbourne's only YC startup about their experiences and seek their advice.

But you needn't be a YC aspirant to attend, anyone who procrastinates with obsessive re-reads of PG essays and eloquent dissections Michael Arrington's character is encouraged to come along, as is anyone who manages to avoid such distractions in the pursuit of startup success.

Get along and help make Melbourne the startup hub we know it should be!

Details:

3pm, Sunday, October 4th

The Order of Melbourne - Rooftop

401 Swanston St Melb
> I might charge a reasonable amount to power users.

Fixed your typo. ;)
I have a D630 and I agree; it is a laptop and does all the right laptop things. However: I got my wife a Dell E4300 and had many problems. Other colleagues have got other E series Dells have have had basic problems like not being able to suspend/resume under Windows and being forced to run a single core to get basic reliable operation.

See, for example:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19245498.aspx?PageInde...

http://www.datapoohbah.com/tech/2008/12/16/dell-e4300-is-bit...

I don't know if things have improved, but based on my experience the D630 was the last good laptop from Dell.
Yeah got that. This actually is for a web app as ironic as that sounds.

I wondered if IMAP could be authenticated using openid/oauth without having to make the user fork over their credentials.
The amount of effort he was willing to put in to release free software amazes me.
Agreed. I type in Dvorak and have an iPhone. The brain doesn't see desktop and mobile typing in the same way. I actually type faster and much more naturally in QWERTY on the iPhone than on a proper keyboard.

I'd love to see Apple ship a Dvorak layout with the iPhone, but I think one of the big barriers is how the iPhone keyboard is normally laid out.

Dvorak has two extra letters on the bottom row and more punctuation on top. In QWERTY they get rid of the punctuation on the bottom row and put shift and delete in the extra space.

Look how ugly — and how much less usable — this is: http://kasperowski.com/2009/03/iphone-dvorak-for-real.html

To do it properly they would have to move shift and delete to the top row...
$99 bucks a year? And developers pay that? Damn... I didn't know. I, for one, won't develop for someone's proprietary platform unless I get free PR for my efforts or have my feet kissed. iPhone programmers have their relationship with a platform vendor completely backwards.

But in the end it is Apple who'll pay for this absurd, not them.
Oops, I misread. Speed limits are set arbitrarily low in some places compared with the design of the road, so I usually disagree with speed limits anyway. If you want people to drive more slowly, change the road to make them want to drive more slowly.
I've been considering that myself quite a bit, and I find that its a combination of things:

- Something where I can interact directly with the client/consumer. I dislike having to program by specs, when I know that they are written by someone who doesn't understand end users. Simple, effective touches are usually missing, and the feedback loop is so long that apps take years to evolve.

- Something challenging. I want to stay up at night visualizing possible solutions. That kind of excitement makes the time spent worth every second. And with the opportunity to think and implement a solution that works really well for the problem.

- Something that makes a difference. Doesn't have to be something ground-breaking, but it shouldn't be a CRUD front-end either.

This is harder to quantify than I thought. I guess it depends on the novelty of the idea, the silken smooth end-user experience (think iPhone- I own a G1 myself, but man does the iPhone provide a great experience), and the quality/succinctness/simplicity of the code.
Tip calculators have been best sellers on the apple AppStore. Just sayin'. ;-)
It also hasn't helped that Sun continued to do everything possible to make Java hard to get for end users, and to completely and hopelessly break Java on client systems. Java is relegated to server apps and cellphones now, neither of which have as strong a requirement on "write once, run anywhere". Other languages are closing fast on Java on server code and I've yet to see a mobile java app that was as good as a natively compiled app.

Java is no longer "write once, run anywhere" anyways. It's more like "write once, run anywhere that has the exact matching JRE with all the right updates, and the correct version of the JRE w/r to being either some standard runtime, or Java SE, ME, EE, ER or whatever the various versions are now."

Add to that a completely opaque and overly complicated VM distribution channel for end users, forced downloads of unrelated software and toolbars, constant barrage of update tooltips, a completely hosed standard library for developers of desktop/client apps, and a general failure to improve the language with age or listen to the community about language requirements and you have the makings of a dying language.

We have to beg our developers to even think about using Java even for server apps because the standard library and restrictive syntax is so lobotomizing to users of other languages.
I am always amazed by the lack of historical knowledge among large portions of the HN crowd (not knocking you, just amused). Read up on the story of how eGroups was created (by Larry Page's brother, no less).

Everything under the sun's been done.
With long enough yellows, red light cameras shouldn't be a problem. The places that shorten yellows to raise revenue are criminally stupid.

Anyway, this problem will hopefully be moot in ten years or so. If cars aren't driving themselves yet, just send a message to individual cars telling them to stop before the intersection. When the ones allowed to continue have cleared the intersection, give another direction a green light. No need to speed to make a yellow or slam on brakes.
I suspect if the lower brass piece were removed from the upper loop both pieces fit in. Then just reattach them. I'd do that with clever placement of tiny magnets.

Sure, it doesn't work as a lock anymore, but who can tell?

Actually, now that I think about it.. it does work as a lock. I mean, how often to people pull on a lock to see if it is really a lock? Plus, you can't forget your key.
and yet he doesn't fetishize the latest fads

If I were to write a blog post about jwz, that would be the core of it. Not anything about duct tape.

Our industry is full of insecure people who grab on to the latest fashion like lemmings. Inheritance is in, then it's out. Patterns are in, then they're out. SQL databases are in, then they're out. jwz's writing has, in a small way, contributed to my mental liberation from software industry group think.

Not that he's unique, but he's in the clear thinking minority and he's a good writer.

Linus Torvalds is also a good example. See any thread where someone insists he should have used C++ or a microkernel.
My painful experience also.

The principle of test-first also sounds appealing, the idea being to write the test code, and thus end up with an easier to use API.

It depends on the kind of project, how firm the design is, how much rework will be needed, how prototype-y it is, where the architectural divisions will lie => what's the most testable APIs, etc.
The cases are ugly as hell, though.

I'd rather build one myself with a nicer case.
Easy, the padlock used is a master lock type. By removing the bar from the lock (which easily fits through the neck in any direction) you can insert the mechanism half of the lock sideways (where it is narrow enough to fit through) and then you reassemble the lock inside.

It's certainly not easy to do, but it is do able.
I am also against a low initial rate. I did this when I started, and it was a mistake. My initial low rate often attracted clients who did not value your work. These clients have tried to squeeze every penny they could out of me with technicalities and ambiguities. They tried to add "small changes" all the time that are hard to say no to since taken separately they are minor, but collectively they are not. And even after all this, they still tried to bargain and get discounts.

Once I increased my rate, people treated me more seriously and valued my work more. People who will pay more have been more okay with hourly rates and realize that additional changes will cost more.
Seeing how “art” and “pharmaceuticals” are linguistically similar in web text
At least click the link. It is all done in ascii art.
I've dismantled a padlock before, different type, but it still worked. The one I dismantled I had to use a heat gun to expand the casing and a heat sink to keep the interior cool.

You can actually assemble things inside a bottle using callipers and dividers, they generally have much better length on them than a pair of tweezers and are much easier to pick up than an adequate pair of forceps. I wouldn't doubt some of the narrow necked items could be assembled using forceps.
I installed tmux, but have not yet played with it. I know I want to, simply because it supports vertical splits…
UPS does supply chain management. At one point, they were running the warehouse. Yeah, it looks like they don't anymore.
3 Ways to Get Discount Diabetes Supplies
You're our customer. We Hate You
This isn't a measure of gamers vs non-gamers, as the headline might lead you to believe.

The study shows that people are more aggressive when playing games against strangers and less aggressive when playing against their team mates.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=847620
Correction: UT2004 players are more aggressive to strangers. It's a bit of a stretch to extrapolate that to mean "every multiplayer game."
Facebook also uses Postgres and one of the nosql variants (hadoop iirc).

Also MySpace uses Aster Data's stuff, which is all built on top of Postgres.

shrug
That's odd. Dvorak is specifically designed to make you alternate between the two hands, so that one hand can get ready to hit the next key while the other is typing the previous one.

This is achieved mainly by having all the vowels on the left hand, and the most used consonants on the right. Natural languages take care of ensuring a good alternation between consonants and vowels.
The important thing is to understand your database's concurrency model. They don't all work the same way. This causes problems e.g. for SQL Server developers who are new to Oracle, or vice versa, and naively assume that everything is the same.
I don't understand tip calculators, and I suck at math. I'd feel like a cheapskate sitting there punching numbers into my phone. I divide by ten then double.
The expected answer for many participants here would be "never." Lifetime incidence of at least one period of depressed mood is fairly high across humankind, but that's over the course of a whole lifetime. If a young person is depressed for days at a time a few times a year, that young person has a clinical case of depression and is well advised to seek medical advice about what to do about. Both medicine and cognitive talk therapy can be helpful, often most helpful as a both-and combination.
It definitely struck me as faint praise. It sounds like he's talking about the village handyman who lives in the granny shack behind Jake Doe's place and whom no one is quite sure where he came from.
Thanks! I'm going to try out heroku as well.
Looking forward to it. Whenever someone's brought up the idea on here previously there's been a fair bit of interest, so hopefully we get a decent turnout.
They've owned BerkeleyDB for a while also, and AFAIK they have been good stewards.
Yep. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of (potential) victory. If I was in charge of Palm I would even let people email/mms/BT free apps to each other just to make it that much easier than Apple to install apps.
Use your gold to buy some potion then.
Ditto Windows Mobile. Just find it and download and install it, either on your desktop machine or via the web on the phone/PDA.
Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps---but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone. And the dev kit is $99.

There is, supposedly, another way: there is a program by which universities can get free iPhone developer kits for use in classes. Sounds great, right? Don't you believe it. The signup process is poorly conceived and a flaming mass of pain that, after a month and a half of trying, caused me to give up making an iPhone/iPod app be the final project in my HCI class. Good job, Apple!
Den-Mark: Inaugural Denver Mark Logic User Group 2009-10-12
Many programmers and entrepreneurs are bipolar or borderline. "The Bipolar Edge" is a book with some interesting research on this if you filter out some of the sensationalism.

I think one of the best strategies when depressed is to text someone and pair program. Also helps to keep the internet out of the house so you have to leave to get food eventually :)

The biggest thing though is remembering that it's biochemical, not "real", and that you'll snap out of it.
The final padding is never parsed if we put set them as (part of) the value of an unknown key, i.e., setting a=pi_key....<pading>
Nobody's happy in this town except for the losers. Look at me I'm miserable, that's why I'm rich.
--Ari Gold
Well, a native app might be cool here, because you'd be able to get at the Address Book.

If I gave you a list of my contacts, could you automatically call them all into the conference once I joined?
This sort of thing is unlikely on Android. As I understand it (I haven't actually put an app on the Android Market yet), the only cost or hoop you need to go through to put an app on the Android Market is a $25 one time fee.

Also, it's pretty simple for users to install non-market apps on their Android phone - instructions for doing so can be found here: http://phandroid.com/2008/10/17/how-to-download-non-market-a...
Statistics vs Machine Learning: The Two Cultures by Leo Breiman
The Next Admissions Challenge: Evaluating Online Education
eGroups was over ten years ago. Since then, a culture of VC reliance has been the dominant model, and now with increasing frequency, you're seeing bootstrapped companies emerge.

I think that was the point he was trying to make, not that it's never happened before.
Yep.. I think I've verified it is currently impossible to access IMAP without asking for user credentials.

It would be nice to though. I can see all kinds of use cases for web apps integrating with gmail and other email providers in this way - without having to ask the user for their login/password.
Steve,

Will there be much discrepancy between the manufactured parts if they actually get fabricated in two separate machine shops? How precise is the equipment used in most of your participating shops?

I see you're working on the "How it Works" section and I'd love it if you had some pointers to books or frequently used applications (hopefully low cost??) for this industry.

The premise seems solid and I'm looking forward to using CloudFab!
Don't get too excited, this requires unit tests to detect the bug. In other words, if you already have a pretty good understanding of the bug, this thing will evolve a fix for you instead of having to write it yourself.

If you can write an algorithm that finds bugs, then you've really got something.
Hey it's A crude but valid analogy right?
The simple answer to this post is that while services companies are concerned about churn, they aren't that concerned.
Yeah, I was somewhat puzzled about that title as it's clearly wrong.
I completely agree. This is a blog post I wrote on the subject: http://robotr.tumblr.com/post/189911981/following-trends-wha... (but you do a great work telling this briefly)
Converted by an Android. A short story of Gmail, in parts. (1)
Yeah, SolidSmack messed up. It happens to the best of us.
There're two kinds of depression, to me. There's the depression that's chemical, and that kind can be predicted and dealt with. Then there's the kind that comes from things not being right in your life, and that's the kind that both fascinates and consumes me.

I'm in the middle of one as I type this, actually. Sometimes when depression hits it's in reaction to a mania: There's a big high followed by a crash. But frequently that depression comes in the form of apathy; I'd even say contentment. I have periods of huge excitement, followed by much chiller periods that I'd call a biochemical depression. But that's a depression that doesn't have the pointed emotional aspects that I associate with the word.

When that second kind of depression hits, almost always it has to do with something mental. When those really bleak periods hit, I can almost always find a cause that's tied in with something in my life: Core situations and circumstances that are subtly bringing down other parts of the way I feel. And I've found that if I react swiftly to deal with whatever it is that's causing it, I can end the feeling quickly and get back to a more balanced state of mind.

Getting a balanced, "happy" life isn't easy, because everybody has to deal not only with all their many wants and needs but with the wants and needs they think they should have that they're given from other people. Growing up, I feel many of those problems are problems with actual, logical solutions, but that the answers are convoluted and twisted many many times over. So I'll feel as if I've figured something out, and indeed I'll have gotten farther than I had previously, but a year later I'll realize there's another, much subtler issue related to the one I thought I'd figured out, and then I have to rethink everything.

The result, I find, is that over my life I've managed to stabilize myself quite well. I now face these feeling much less frequently than I once did, and for less of a duration. The cooler, more casual depressions are frequent for me, but those are more relaxing and less worrisome. So in one way you're right, and depressions do snap, but in another way the content of the depression is what matters, not just the depression itself.
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I'm seeing some clever answers here.
Ask HN: Finding Developer/Engineer Co-Founder?
I was wondering if anyone had advice on finding the right developer/engineer co-founder for a potential start up?

I come from more of a design background, have been doing the freelancing thing for a while but I've been wanting to get more entrepreneurial... I have an idea cooking in my head right now for a potential start up, but I know that my own development skills are far too limited for it.

I feel like a lot of times, the situation is skewed and the engineer ends up doing most of the work initially, but the idea I'm thinking of depends heavily landing consistent sales (a role that I would undertake) right off the bat for this potential service, so I think that here the roles would actually would be more balanced.
One way to get customers is through open source (for eg memcached) http://danga.com/
Joel’s “Duct-Tape Programmer” is the only programmer you should ever hire.
Exactly right.

It'd been awhile since I downloaded Java, and I hadn't known about the Great SE/ME/EE switchover™ at the time. I literally stared at their web pages, navigated all over the place, and I couldn't figure out which version I should have. Sun (excuse me, Oracle) needs a big fat "Download Java 1.7" button, that has everything. They should fire everyone else in their marketing department.