skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've always thought of myself as being very lucky. When I was younger, I attributed this to the fact that my parents were Christians and that 'God was watching over us.' But in truth, my mind seems overwhelmingly to ignore the bad and remember the good. This is partly due to my narcissism. I'm special!

Now as an atheist, I've come to accept and indeed appreciate the role of pure, random chance in our lives. What happens to is is not determined solely by us, but but rather by our response to our situations, over which we have not control.

Thought experiment: Let's say that there is someone with whom you would be a perfect romantic match-your values align, etc. But let's say that on the day you meet them, they happened not to eat breakfast. They were so hungry, that just a minute before you saw them, they had to eat a biscuit, leaving residue in their teeth. "Ewww!", you say, in ignorance.

Thing like this happen Every.Single.Day. There are probably thousands of Einsteins who will die in poverty and obscurity. That's life. Failure to realize this is part of what causes Fundamental Attribution Error.
This reminds me of a recent study in bird personalities. It turns out there are very big differences from bird to bird in terms of curiosity and risk taking and other things.

And there is a huge body of scientific work about bird behavior EXCEPT that now it turns out the birds studied, trapped, tagged, etc, would have been a self selecting group of atypical super curious risk takers.

And all of this science is now suspected to be skewed.

And the fact that there are BOTH lucky and unlucky birds and people tells us that there's more than one way to optimize fitness.

Curiosity, optimism, luck work some times, and other times get you killed.

Now in the modern industrialized world, you're probably better of being open and optimistic and all the rest. But then again we've had an unprecedented multi-decade period of peace stability and economic growth.

If we are heading into a new great depression this might change.

Or imagine you're in some kind of accident or disaster, perhaps a building fire, and being a pessimist and super focused you bail at the first hint of smoke and single mindedly make it down the stairs as fast as possible and you're out and alive. Still a worried unlucky pessimist but alive. The lucky optimist on the other hand might have tried the elevator, when the heat expended both the elevator and the shaft, it got stuck, and the lucky optimists got cooked.

Just saying.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cell phone is going to be using about the same power when its plugged in and fully charged as it does when it is unplugged. The difference is only that the power is coming from the outlet, rather than the battery in the phone. Without some calculations on how much would be drawn from the battery, simply from having the phone on over night, its hard to say what kind of power savings are available. I would guess its next to nothing, even less than they make it out to be in the article.
TVA Open Source data collection software (OpenPDC)
> Well not everyone here is a programmer.

I'm sorry, that was a bad assumption on my part, it is just that I wonder why you'd be a member of a Hacker community when you're not a hacker...

> A lot of people are middling programmers but have a great career.

Ok.
>[Randi] decided he would make it clear at the end of every show that he was simply using illusions. But he was disturbed when audience members would insist he had paranormal powers — ironically ignoring the only bit of truth he'd spat out all night. People seemed to want to believe in the supernatural.

I think that says and explains a lot.
So if a competitor site is launching, shut down your site for the day and redirect all traffic to their site in an attempt to flood their server? Interesting tactic but I don't think it's gona work somehow.
I always appreciate transparency in support issues. I'm much happier knowing that an issue is being worked on than sitting in the dark wondering if anyone has noticed.

I also see that they host their status blog outside their core network. Good idea :)
I don't agree with the post because there are projects when you know in advance that the project will be big. You can probably avoid to make it HUGE, but you cannot keep it small. Trivial examples:

- Writing a web browser
- Writing a professional image manipulation software like Photoshop
- Writing a professional 3D modeler like 3D Studio
- Writing an IDE like Eclipse Idea or NetBeans

and so on...
Indeed.

"Forget Shorter Showers" (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...) points out that perhaps we've duped to think that energy shortages/waste are _our_ fault, when, in fact, it's industry, large-scale agriculture, and our military that are the biggest abusers. Of course, this isn't an excuse to not be lower impact ourselves (and perhaps not purchasing products that support certain industries), but we can't be fooled into thinking that changing our charging habit is going to save the environment.
At my local Borders, the checkout queue is lined with stuff to purchase. It isn't contextual, but it's an upsell nonetheless. Also, the book I want is physically next to other books I may be interested in - that's an effective cross-selling technique (it works on me, anyhow!).
Rails: Two years ago I switched from the standard shareware five-page-HTML-brochure site to the same site written in Rails, with the immediate goal of not having to do templating by hand anymore. It has grown organically since that, now boasting a CMS, a full-fledged web app, an API which interacts with my desktop application, copious reporting/administration/backend features, consumption of several web services for outsourced providers, and an A/B testing framework. You'd think it would be a staggering mess of spaghetti by now, but no, the MVC discipline makes it easy to maintain, easy to extend, and fairly easy to manage. Almost all time I spend in my IDE creates additional business value. This contrasts markedly with my experience with developing in Java, where frequently I have to mark off a week just to fight my tools.

Prawn: A maaaaaaaaaaaaaaajor pain point for me in developing my desktop version, and developing unrelated web apps for my day job, was laying out documents properly to be printed. Prawn makes it absurdly easy. For added goodness, throw in ImageMagick and you can turn the PDFs into GIFs for essentially no extra work.
Yeah -- and there also size (very small), weight (very light) and sound (coils hum at 50/60 hz, the switching ones "whine").

But I wouldn't think the lack of heat that I can feel means that it doesn't waste 2.3w?
Pretty interesting way to use multi-touch and control the ui, however, I have to wonder how having a flat surface will go over ergonomically. I wish they would have demonstrated typing.
While, unlike many here, I like Joel's posts, I do think he was exaggerating, slightly. The underlying point is that to do multithreaded in C is indeed difficult, and it is stated elsewhere that there are only a very small number of people who can make this work.

You are clearly one of them.
Damn the torpedoes and follow the fox. Truly words to live by :)
Much more commentary here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=877535
I have a home music production studio with 15 devices (mixers, synths, processors, amp, laptop, ancient PC). I used a measuring device and even though the PC is supposed to use 250 watts or so, the entire studio is only 468 watts! This is a cost of around 4.68 pence an hour (I think a kilowatt here is 10 pence), which isn't bad when a commercial studio costs at least 10 pounds.

I'm not a US citizen but this helps you calculate (each value is the cost of a kilowatt):

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_b.html
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

Even though "The Goal" is a story about process improvement for a factory, I've also used the thinking from it (basically, lean manufacturing) for software development.
it is just that I wonder why you'd be a member of a Hacker community when you're not a hacker...

Uh..... well it's technically a start-up community. plus hacker !== programmer. I know plenty of hackers who would be shocked by that statement :P
The value of time off
If you watch right until the end, they show a model of the computer. Basically, it's a giant touch-pad right underneath a keyboard.
> 'For fun, I placed a second large message
> halfway through the newspaper: "Stop
> counting. Tell the experimenter you have
> seen this and win £250." Again, the unlucky
> people missed the opportunity because they
> were still too busy...

Uh huh. Was this 'study' financed to the tune of thousands of pounds? Or were the offers rescinded from all those light-hearted, open-minded, happy, lucky people who are good and deserving in every way, especially when compared to bad, sick-hearted unlucky people who probably molest their pets and deserve to be poor because they're actually inferior in deep spiritual ways when you think about it, especially when you think about the matter 'scientifically', with like, stats and everything?

Or, was the offer of £250 not actually ever made?

The article reaks of a kind of manufacturable 'luck' that it nevertheless did not mention.
Are there any touchpads currently on the market that would support this?

I think I'd like to see the touch elements on each side of the keyboard rather than below—the positioning seems more natural and having to raise your arms to type seems like it would get really annoying.

Other than that, this looks like a novel idea for liberating ourselves from the tyranny of the mouse and window clutter.
he should make them bars available as an app online or something, I imagine other people would like to track their progress that way.
Out of your head: Leaving the body behind
...not anymore, it looks like.

(http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)
For more from the wonderful Jensen on how abusive our culture is, read A Language Older Than Words (http://www.amazon.com/Language-Older-Than-Words/dp/189395603...). If you can look past the absurd stuff about talking to animals, there is a lot to be learnt from it.
There are other reasons than carbon offset to shop at Whole Foods...
Upvoted. You don't even have to read the article, the title says it all, and it's true.
http://twitter.com/github/status/4835640473
Unlucky people tend to be more focused on whatever they happen to be doing because they're worried about making a mistake. But there's quite a bit of evidence that this sort of conscious, focused thought uses up so many mental resources that it can actually become a hindrance. Professional athletes perform significantly worse when they actively contemplate their behavior, and focusing on something prevents the mindwandering that's necessary for creative, insightful solutions. Your subconscious is a HUGE part of your brain, but focusing too hard on something makes it harder to use it.
> well it's technically a start-up community.

That's true, I think subconsciously I've taken the 'hacker news' a bit too literal.
This guy tested this, and found that chargers measure 0.0 watts. By plugging a bunch in simultaneously, he was able to get a nonzero reading, but still less than 0.5 watts:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/

(He is now Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in the UK.)
Yup, it's still down. If you get the page, at the moment, it's just server errors.

Edit: a minute later, and now it's back. Still, it's an interesting lesson about downforeveryoneorjustme: the server may respond, but for a web app, that isn't everything. The application may not be working (sort of a second layer of down-ness).

Here are some tips they have up, though I'm not sure they're current: http://github.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/down.html
* Using Protocol Buffers

* Amazon Web Services
...random choices have just as much to do with guiding our fate as our skills and work ethic...

I believe it.

Now I'll forget all about it and get back to work.
Dude, asking out of curiosity, could you elaborate on your experience?

Did your health literally get worse? Did you miss out on a lot occasions/opportunities during the time you read heavily? Was it too much of an information overload than one could handle?

Personally, I'm mainly curious about how another individual's brain reacts when dealing with intake of such huge quantity of data.
I think in your search for a contrary example, you're looking at it in the wrong way. The focus of the unlucky pessimist will lead them unerringly to the stairs, whether or not that's the best option. The lucky optimist won't foolishly do what no one should ever do, but instead notice that the open elevator shaft has a ladder that someone else just safely used to escape. Being lucky doesn't mean you have to be stupid.

The unlucky pessimist will stand in line while the lucky optimist will notice that what she needs is easily obtained out of the line.
I usually say native page; HN links can sometimes be a decent amount of traffic so denying the publisher any potential advertising revenue is, potentially, a little "rude" (IMO).

On the other hand if you get one of these sites with a silly amount of advertising that detracts from the content I personally find it ok.
Url routing with ASP.Net 4 webforms
SQLite's source listing is great. I learned a lot about good C practices and documentation reading it.
I am sorry, but this is a serious stretch--comparing the results of this simulation with a startup situation. I don't see a link to the original study, but my question with simulations and AI results is to ask to see your wastebasket--tell me also what did not work. It would be a little surprising if twiddling with some of the parameters in this approach didn't markedly change the result.
I was really really hoping the OpenMoko phone wouldn't have been such a flop AND cost a ton. My guess is you need the resources (more that just money) a company such as Google can provide to currently develop and popularize an Open Source phone.

Any genius here capable of shaking up that market?
Without solidarity of video format across browsers, Flash will still hold the embedded video market in browsers. Not to mention like all the other open standards, until Microsoft works out a way to get users to their most current browsers AND makes them fully HTML5 compatible, Flash (and Silverlight) will have a non-replaceable happy home in a majority of the browsers.
Yes there are projects that you know beforehand that will be huge, but that doesn't mean that they should be made or that that is the best way to go about them.

For instance:
Browser - if you're going to start to build a web browser, it doesn't have to be huge... unless you're going to have your own rendering engine, your own JS engine etc... You'd probably just be addressing some set of features that were missing/misdone in other browsers
Writing photoshop - what, are you going to remake all the features of photoshop? And do you think your software will be better? That's a fail. You'd probably be starting by doing some image manipulation program that does a limited set of features that photoshop can't do etc...

I get your point and I totally agree that if you _WERE_ going to remake photoshop, it's totally going to be huge... but that doesn't mean that it's the best path to go down.
My site was slow and support told me that this was due to the long travel the packets have to go cross-atlantic. Yeah.
I did it for maybe two weeks during a summer back when I was 14... Very gratifying experience, it's sort of like going to the theatre every night, except it doesn't get boring.

Now I'm lucky if I read a book a week, sometimes even a month, with the amount of work I have all these years later. But I still remember that stretch where Wheaton Public Library was my best friend and a little smile comes to my face.

Of course, ask me if I can remember the plot of any of those books, even in the most general of terms, and I'll be instantly stumped. Even re-reading them, sometimes I'm not sure if I ever read that book before. Apparently, the brain's simply overloaded with info and just commits everything to temporary short term memory, being unable to store it all for future reference.
Carter Ruck are a leading British law firm. Their lawyers probably read newspapers. Social media sites are very hot news in the UK, and Twitter is probably the second most famous after Facebook, which is ridiculously famous. Twitter isn't the domain of those who have protracted conversations on social news sites anymore.
Did you (all of you not just andreyf) seriously manage to degrade the discussion on the GUI into a OSX vs. Windows debate? Or perhaps my expectations are just way too high..
From my limited knowledge of Spanish I'd agree, but Google Translate automatically detects it as Spanish and it's likely to be more correct than me.
Chrome OS official build download?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=879059
If you're interested in literate programming: TeX
I don't know how good the fit is, but your suggestion reminded me of a start-up incubator based in Bloomington, IN called Sproutbox.com. Maybe there is some way they could assist the kind of organization you have in mind.
I'm so glad car manufacturers don't bother with airbags, or ABS, or traction control, or side impact bars, or...
Yeah.. true, but indeed the best scenario is not to hit the wall... Drive slower, more energy efficient and take the best route and try not to fall asleep while you're at it
OK, I like his notion that 'becoming big is failure'. But... what about websites like Amazon.com? That’s BIG with capital letters.

How did they lose? They operate successfully due to marginal costs on all fronts including their website.

I would like to hear some ideas out here on projects like Amazon.com.
I agree that it's a stretch, but the idea that wealth inequality is an emergent property of economies makes sense to me, due to the simple fact that money invested grows exponentially. If you make more than you need to survive, and you invest the money you don't need to survive, that money grows exponentially. You'll get wealthier and wealthier over time, while someone who makes just enough to survive will never "break out" of that way of living.
Analysis of opening chord of a hard day's night
Thanks for posting, it looks quite interesting. The interface is something that I can imagine myself getting adjusted to (for example, I am a big Opera user and use gestures all the time - once you get used to them they are phenomenal).

I had a similar idea a while ago and might try to implement it this summer as a side project using Johnny Wii's tricks perhaps + Windows 7 (not sure how much of the interface I can pull off). I would be curious to see in particular how tired I am (i.e. my hands) after using such an interface for a while.
I will second the recommendation of the "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air" book, and mention that it is free to download from the above site. It looks at the debate from a technical perspective, with extensive appendixes containing the author's calculations.

One thought from the book that struck me is that all the batteries in the (eventual) nationwide fleet of electric vehicles, could serve to smooth out the fluctuations from renewable energy sources. The author envisions battery-exchange stations as commonly-found as petrol stations are today.
"20 years ago, it was a guaranteed way to get a high paying job"

On what planet was that? I was broke most of my 20s.
This was prompted by jgc's item "Damn the Torpedoes",

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878919

which caused me to rootle a bit on his blog (fun - thanks John) and hence find this:

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/sum-of-first-n-odd-numbers-i...

So this item is partly in answer to his question at the end.

For reference, pre 9/11 this exercise would often get me an invitation to the flight deck.
I'm not so sure about Twitter's specific role, but the easy availability of online stories does make a massive difference. If you want to see a much more successful attempt to gag the British press, check out the Spycatcher nonsense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher

That was 1987, and the main difference was the lack of easy access to foreign controlled media from within the UK made it possible to prevent people reading anything about the allegations in the book. This latest attempt shows that's no longer possible.
Anyone willing to recommend a Java project worth studying?
Ask HN: Guide/Tutorial for designing a WebUI from scratch?
I am C/C++ programmer (system programming background), and was experimenting with Web Application development in my spare time (using Perl). Is there any Web UI development tutorial which you guys refer (or have referred in past), which teaches Web UI development ground-up?? Like making custom buttons, making custom menus, customizing backgrounds, screen resolution handling, in short everything...
Sounds like an awesome plan to me. I should be around at least 21st-28th, but I was kinda hoping to catch a football game (just because I've never seen a real one before) on the Sunday. Still, Tech Meetup would trump that if it did happen to clash.
We should pray for him ....
In the event of complete down-itude, they have a page with advice (which I was able to reach while they were down):

http://github.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/down.html

I can't say how current the advice is or how well it works, since shortly after I found it, they came back up.
It's more important as a mental exercise than as absolute advice. Some people put it another way: is your product a vitamin or a painkiller?

For a business to become successful, the product will need to become a must have at some point. If it's not right now, then you need to keep pursuing it until it is.
I would say even more, every product has to be first a "nice to have" and hopefully for you to become later a "must have". Nowadays in our society we already can live a very comfortable life, there is no real "must have".

I support my point here saying that we already have a product that saves you money, but not a single person that I have talked about it was impressed by this feature alone. Instead the other way round if they like the product and I tell them about the cost saving it is a serious factor for them to decide to adopt it.
I highly recommend both Paul Graham's source code for Arc (http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar), as well as the source code for Quake and Quake II (http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/).
A method for finding out if you have a painkiller or a vitamin
This a concise yet necessary shared observation on software design. The problem invariably becomes feature creep or inheriting someone elses working code.

Not every problem can be optimally fast, and also optimally sized for simplicity. As an alg coder of quite a few years of course I prefer and love simple easy to read, remember, and modify code. But then someone comes along and says, we need this fairly quick code, parallelized, ported to these other platforms, and faster than real time. Dynamically size and share memory as needed to scale to any number of available nodes, and have it driven by a GUI, but make those buttons overlay an elliptical earth model…..

As you can imagine, writing simple (and reusable) code is a desirable thing for programmers. Unfortunately we don’t dictate the terms and requirements, real physical systems do. Sometimes deadlines trump both of the above, and getting something to work, means messy throw away code. I guess we could all agree never to write software like that, good luck getting consensus (herding cats made easy).