skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I must admit I can't help feel a little cynical about this project.

If an unknown company had launched this website I doubt it would have made anyone's radar, let alone have found a willing group of companies to pay $100/month. If it only works because 37 Signals made it and promoted it (as opposed to being an elegant solution to a problem) is it not a little exploitative?

Haystack's simplicity comes from a dearth of functionality and a small number of users -- neither of these are sustainable in the medium-term for the project to remain viable in its market (which, despite 37 Signal's claims, is pretty well serviced).

They risk damaging their brand by creating a feature-light product that doesn't exhibit any capability to grow beyond a small number of portfolios. They could well find an increasingly dissatisfied group of customers demanding features and results for their $100/month. It will be interesting to see how they keep these people happy while continuing to look after their other interests.
A Writing Revolution
Good luck to you guys ^_^. Nice to see another vnmese-north-american person around o_O
http://www.youtube.com/education?lg=EN&b=1 might be a good start.
I've seen this guy in Flagstaff; I had no idea he was so cool!
Instead of helping to solve your problem ..

What problem are you trying to solve? Look at the manual and search Cliki to find what you need.

http://www.cliki.net/index

I really wish programmers would stop acting so helpless and fetch for themselves.
It's not bad, but the organization is lacking. Where is the "OpenCourseWare of OpenCourseWareS"?
Jennie, could you be more specific? I know I have a lot of room to improve. That's why I ask for feedback at the end of most of my videos.

I know you work. You have a good sense of style. I'll take all the advice you're willing to give. mail at awarner dot com is my personal email address.
While that's true, it seems that a function call maps precisely onto request-response: call a function, get back a return value. Statefulness isn't a problem for REST or HTTP either, because it's the communication protocol that's stateless, not the resources. For example, websites are REST services, the pages on the website are the resources, and they certainly exist: that's their state. What's stateless is that it doesn't matter what order you retrieve the pages; you'll always get the same page for a given URL. The only exception is when the request is intended to change the state of some resource, such as this thread changing state when I submit the comment I'm writing.

For a RESTful function call service, each function would be a resource, and the functions would be required not to have side-effects (eg: don't change the state of the service). That's often good design for any API, not just RPC-type services. Again, the exception would be function calls whose purpose is to modify the service state in some way.

When the service state is intended to be different for each user of the service, HTTP has a solution for that too: a cookie which contains a token identifying the session. Any state changes can be associated with the token.

Now you mention bi-directional. If you mean that either side of the interaction can initiate an exchange, then you're right; HTTP is no good for that. Not many RPC services work that way though; it's more complex to design. It's much more common and simpler to have client/server interactions where the client initiates every exchange, and the server listens and responds. You can do a lot with that model.
That sounds very interesting. I guess you'd need some kind of abstraction layer to bridge the app and the individual websites, with one implementation for each community.

What would that API look like? getListOfTopics, getListOfCommentsForTopic, and submitCommentToTopic are the primary methods, I guess.

But some forums have hierarchical topic-trees, some sites have nested comments, some sites are so high profile that you'd need some kind of filtering, etc.

I can't think of any abstraction layer that would work for both Twitter, Google Groups and StackOverflow.
Try thinking a half million lines of C++ code into an existing enterprise architecture with a staff who's native language is not English in English without drawing a picture.
Web site design florida 
Web Design Florida! Web Design Florida HQ offers effective and functional web sites for Florida Companies.
I Was Told I Was Very Smart
Active - Only my own projects

Patcher - Doctrine ORM, symfony framework, Gearmand

One-off - Drupal, Wordpress, Trac

Curios - Many different projects. Some recent examples: Apache, Git, PHP
http://search.trendistic.com/ac-milan

Or if you prefer a chart

http://trendistic.com/milan/_24-hours
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/28715/1141/ is a rebuttal by someone with some actual technical skill (eg, he knew how to restore a database backup)
http://github.com/mojombo/bert/blob/master/lib/bert/encoder....

http://github.com/mojombo/erlectricity/blob/master/lib/erlec...
I wonder if he is being offered any equity.
To put the API to the test, HeyZap built a game called Balloon Boy Game (in honor of last week’s horror story-turned-scandal)

To the extent that the Balloon Boy story was entertainment spun as news -- a meme parasitizing the sense of virtue some people get from watching 'news' on TV -- building a Balloon Boy game is actually a form of meta-parasitism. This also occurs in biological systems, e.g.: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2006/05/4035.ars
You might like http://academicearth.org/
Summary:

Don't put your money in a bank, they're just profiting from your capital.

Give your money to a broker instead! Then you can "play the game" and not be a sucker!

From the article:

"Adding sectors and specific regions will increase the complexity of your portfolio but probably won't add much more in returns, which could well exceed 15% per year after the recent crash in value."

Could well exceed 15%? Holy awesome, that's great! Because you know, right? You're not just making numbers up?
Isn't this essentially a more fully developed friendfeed?
Neat. Let me know if you get there :-)

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1234 is handy.. You can also script vim with ruby and more..

http://www.vim.org/htmldoc/if_ruby.html
Facebook is a usability nightmare. Hide someone in your newsfeed and then figure out how to unhide them.. you'll see what I mean.

Here's a Facebook facelift: http://www.aguynamedvernonmac.com/2009/10/17/facebook-faceli...

I can only dream Facebook would look like that.
No, because the loans have to be repaid in USD. The only "risk" then is the opportunity cost of not investing in other capital classes.
What's the giveaway that it's Drupal?
I love how effective APIs are for developing not only the size/business aspect of sites but other things like pretraining developers and finding the best and keenest developers.
Yes.

Another problem with the quarterly focus is that companies end up gaming the system (not in an entirely malicious way) in order to make the quarterly and annual results look good, almost like cramming for a final. It can detract from focusing on healthy long term growth.
Well, I stopped by the store today, but they don't have any samples yet.

They will have the new iMacs on display tomorrow, so I'll be able to really try it then.
Those shortcuts are cool, but for programs in the path, you don't need to wait for search. You can hit the Win key, paste a long command line, and press Enter immediately. Or just throw down "cmd" or "regedit" before the menu has finished fading in, it still works.
comments on the article at the author's blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/10/21/why-cant-i-che...
Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter
Lost Work of Shakespeare Confirmed by Anti-Plagiarism Software
Actually, that "law" is a "Voluntary Voting System Guide".

I can't download that guide at the moment, but the part quoted says:

"Self-modifying, dynamically loaded, or interpreted code is prohibited, except under the security provisions outlined in section 6.4.e [sic - see note below]. This prohibition is to ensure that the software tested and approved during the qualification process remains unchanged and retains its integrity. External modification of code during execution shall be prohibited. Where the development environment (programming language and development tools) includes the following features, the software shall provide controls to prevent accidental or deliberate attempts to replace executable code"

and

6.4.e: "After initiation of election day testing, no source code or compilers or assemblers shall be resident or accessible."

I think that most readings of that would interpret it to mean that SQL statements to create tables would be permitted, but that the interfaces to the databases should be secured.

The whole thing is a beat-up.
"We believe that developer happiness and Platform success are strongly correlated."

See Apple's iPhone development platform. There may be some anomalies.
i am even more anti-xib/nib when it comes to the iphone. they are almost always useless in that case. i've written three fairly substantial iphone apps so far, and i haven't used a nib yet.
Ikarus Scheme compiles r6rs to native code.
http://ikarus-scheme.org/index.html
Twitter is an anomaly too - read http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/brow...
I've been in an isolation tank, too. The most noteworthy aspect was how, after a time* , my sense of balance / spatial orientation had gotten enough repetitive input that it checked out. At the same time, my body had gotten used to being supported fully by the water, and I could feel muscles in my back, shoulders, etc. relaxing that I didn't know I had. (Sometimes the same thing happens when I do zazen, though that usually focuses more on letting my mind give up on its chattering.)

A flotation tank is a bit different than what's described in the article - if you move, you feel waves in the water, hear splashes echo, etc.

All of this focusing on hallucinations seems kind of odd. People hallucinate all the time, they just rationalize it as misreading signs and whatnot. Big deal.

* I'm guessing half an hour, but the isolation unsurprisingly made it seem far longer. Isolation without control would be terrifying.
> If an unknown company had launched this website I doubt it would have made anyone's radar

I think that's one of the perks of becoming successful ;) The app rides on the fame that comes with Basecamp's success and there's nothing wrong with that!

I agree, though, that US$99 is quite pricey considering that you'll still be a needle in a haystack (albeit a smaller haystack). If I paid that rate, I'd want more tools for my profile of clients to narrow down on me.
Verizon's network is larger.

I have an BlackBerry with AT&T and a Verizon Mifi that provides 3G internet to my laptop. When traveling, the BlackBerry is pretty much useless here in Texas because there seems to be a lot of holes in their network--but I can drive from Austin to Dallas connected to the web with the Verizon mifi the whole way.
Performing automated language translations with Flex and Google
I think I'm missing something; why is this interesting?
Embedding Ogre3D in a web browser.
If you're in the robotics space, you should seriously consider the Robot Operating System: http://www.ROS.org

You'll find their publish-subscribe message passing is quite simplistic, and the support is great.
I'm starting to see the beginnings of an new trend here. Since Google Wave does everything and replaces everything on the internet, I have a feeling that all new startups and business ideas will garner the response, "Doesn't Google Wave do this already?"
I don't think the abstraction layer needs to be tough at all. To make things simpler, you'd only tackle a small problem first, then incrementally move towards the uber-app.

For instance, as a first pass, you'd just allow the user to post to various services and retrieve comments on their post in one place. So you'd have getPostLength, postMessage, and getReplies

I think that'd be about it.

Ideally you'd have a meta-language that described how to find things on each service. I've already done some work with that as part of another project, so I know it's workable.

Like I said, this is so easy a caveman could do it, which leads me to think that the gnarly part of the problems lie somewhere else besides the technology -- perhaps finding the right initial niche for growth or dealing with lawyers from the social sites.
Quick Tips on Weight Loss
I can't say this is a universal reaction. As a child I was told I was smart, and subsequently wrote off all my failures with the flippant "I learned something here, and have become even smarter." Insecurity exists regardless of intelligence or hype.
No. Twitter is one of the most bizarre tech fads I've seen in ages - and not in a good way.
Masuk | Facebook
I think you are an exception to the rule. Lots of research and similar anecdotal accounts support the article (kids who succeed early self-sabotage for the rest of their life).
I don't think anybody has much interest in random people talking about software that hasn't been written yet. I barely keep up with sites that are already up and I'm pretty interested in the space... Where are you looking for the contracting work? elance/odesk/etc?
I'll jokingly point out that any 4 year old that's scared of the the monster under the bed, the scary man in the corner of the room (coatrack), or the noises that those monsters make (creaking floor/ceiling, etc.) is well aware of this discovery.
The most famous study confirming this is the one where they give two groups of kids relatively easy math problems. The first group they tell "wow, you must be really smart to complete all those!", the second group they tell "wow, you must have worked really hard to complete all those!". They then give them another set of problems far above their skill level. The second group of kids, the 'hard-workers', work much longer at the problems before giving up on them. And when both groups are given another set of relatively easy problems, the first group's performance takes a nosedive.
> Insecurity exists regardless of intelligence or hype.

Author is probably referring to the study that kids who are praised on being "smart" do less well than kids who are praised on being "hard working".

Here's the first google result, looks like it:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-...

Jives true to me as well. Most of the people who have identities based on being smart far underperform their intelligence. I was praised for being smart growing up, I fight that off like crazy now. "Me? Not smart at all. Just curious." "Nah, I'm dumb as a box of rocks. I just keep going." And so on. It's done wonders for me. (Also, realizing just how much I didn't know was pretty humbling - and the scariest is realizing how much that I'm not even aware I don't know...)
Daniel Drezner: The dollar ain't going anywhere as a reserve currency
thx for pointing out my oversight .. 'User' category shd also be included
I've wanted something quite like this. I want to be able to discuss any topic with a group of thoughtful people. Most communities instead restrict solely by topic. Basically, I want the old usenet back.

I'm not sure if the best solution is to scrape a bunch of communities, or just create one central site, that becomes so powerful it sucks in all the great/people conversations (eg wikipedia).
I think I must have missed something. This doesn't seem like a new idea at all.

The existing methods are described as either RSS or one giant site (ala Facebook) and the solution is described as a giant news aggregator (with some social based filtering) coupled with each community site integrating OpenID.
I was always told that I was very smart and, at least when it came to computers, I was generally better than every one around me. I never had to try very hard in school to get mediocre grades, and never felt the need to try harder.

Then I went to a top university in Computer Science. I was suddenly surrounded by people that were orders of magnitude better at computer science than I was. I had to study for hours to understand something they seemed to understand implicitly. It took two years of struggling to finally reach a point where I considered myself "good" at computer science. After that, it came fairly easily but I still had to work much harder than my friends who did it effortlessly.

I learned over time that I am fairly smart. Not off the charts smart, but I've got my strengths. I still have to work harder than those in the top of my field, but I'm certainly on the down slope of the bell curve.

But the most important thing that I've learned is that it doesn't matter how smart you think you are. There will always be those more or less smart than you. What's important is what you do with it, and how hard you work to achieve what you want.
That may be a separate factor: that people who believe intelligence is malleable tend to recover better from failures - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/1838571/

If you've been taught to judge your worth by your intelligence, and simultaneously believe intelligence is fixed at birth, it's a logical consequence that you might do a lot of dumb things to preserve your internal belief that you're smart.
5 Years Later, 5 Ways Ubuntu Has Made Linux More Human
Try http://videolectures.net/

Peteris Krumins collated a set of Science and Computer Science lectures - http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/

He blogs from there too although the catalogue is not huge.
The trouble is that really smart kids quickly figure out that they are smart without being told. (Or, equivalently, that the other kids are just kind of stupid.)
Smug? Confident, perhaps, but I don't see smug. I see a guy who makes no coin from something he see as his gift to others just like him.
Which part of your argument cannot be used to argue against the use of machines instead of physical labor? The machines cost less, ergo they push current workers out of jobs, US citizens suffer, businesses benefit. Do you want to call the industrial revolution off?
I don't buy the connection between being told you're smart and having a fear of failure. Just because many people have been told they're smart and many people fear failure doesn't mean that there's any relationship between the two.

And I also don't think the second one is necessarily a new phenomenon.
Dynamic DataTemplates in WPF
I know the curriculum well. He won't pass if he doesn't change.
A moments thought and they would have realized that Apple will do all the work for them.

Huge waste of time, money, energy - and basically the things they dont want, wont be filtered out by this [ eg. uncategorized porn on jailbroken phones, if there is such a thing]

Australia is a wonderful country, but we need a bit more clarity in such things as net neutrality, censorship and separation of church and state. [The latter is only hinted at in the constitution, and has been interpreted very weakly in court judgements.]
VCs fund art startup
Telling others about a game isn't the only part app developers need to do.

Heyzap should also build a friending tool to make games that actually use friends in the game mechanic, not just for distribution.

If they've already got things like facebook connect, they are half way there, right? They'd do well to make a unified api so that app developer doesn't need to know the platform used to sign into the game.
How did you finance the café initially, as a college student?
It's not a random correlation based on observations of adults, it's studies that show small children behave in the mentioned ways when told they are smart, when compared to being told they are hard working. A lifetime of this can ingrain certain behaviors.
Because a member of the Classification Board sent a letter to a Government Minister?
I have a few ideas, Switzerland looks quite nice, but I don't think it's really the hot bed of technical innovation I'm looking for, I'm apprehensive about the states, but I think it's ignorant to be so until I have at least visited it, my travels thus far are restricted to South East Asia and Europe.

What I really care about is getting away from the cloying nanny state come cut your tall poppies down culture of this place, it's stifling and I see a pattern of it not only continuing, but getting worse, based on my current twenty nine years living here.
I agree with you. I've never really managed to use whiteboards effectively, and people who jump up to the whiteboard at every hint of trouble eventually get on my nerves.
This was in my blind spot, but it's clever, thanks for pointing that out, I couldn't agree more.
I am embarrassed to be among the crowd here that will all chime in and say, "I was told I'm smart too". And I, too, was a thoroughly mediocre student.

But the reason had nothing to do with fear, and everything to do with not seeing any value in what I was being asked to do. I knew the amount of effort that would be needed to slide by, and that was all the effort that I put in.

Nor do I shy away now from being "smart". My intelligence is a tool, and I should use it well, and I am not ashamed -- or afraid -- of it.
If you want your education to be about only what you will use at a job, then go get a degree from a technical college that has a programming degree. If want to learn computer science, which truthfully is more a math degree than an engineering degree, learn to love new things.
I started on a Lisp interpreter in Scala but only got as far as a prefix notation/sexp parser: http://gist.github.com/215712

You can load it into the REPL with scala -i PNCalc.scala and try an expression with PNCalc.test:

scala> PNCalc.test("(+ (/ 3 1) (- 10 5))")
Tree: ESum(List(EDiv(List(EValue(3.0), EValue(1.0))), ESubtract(List(EValue(10.0), EValue(5.0)))))
Eval: 8.0

The Scala parsing stuff is really nice.
Cool story. Also another good example about getting the job you want by making yourself valuable through personal interest.
It was a general comment about the current state of censorship at a federal level.

This specific issue may be a fair question to ask, but within the web filter debate, lack of an R18+ rating for games, and an inconsistent censorship regime throughout the country, I feel the questions being asked are at least ten years too late.
I think I was lucky enough to have gone from "wow, you're smart" to "what do you mean you're struggling to catch up?" relatively early on. Also, joining the debate team and getting quashed repeatedly the moment I stepped above Novice rank helped sandblast apart any lingering arrogance I might've had. /Being/ smart is hard work - discovering that was a little painful, but at least I /did/ learn that lesson.
Maybe I'm just in a bad mood tonight, but I really envy the fact that this "student" is learning scheme. My college used Modula-2 on an IBM 370 for all the mainline classes.