skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Market data may suggest it, but it's not my experience. I've had an ebook reader for about a year now, and I can say that I have read many more books because of it. They were, however, almost all digital. The only times that I have read paper books have been when they were gifts.

I think that having nicely-typeset public-domain books for free is a major advantage of ebook readers that naysayers often overlook. (And while I'm at it, please don't tell me about the smell of books. My ebook reader has a very nice leather cover that smells great.)
Spot on, the site was inspired by Kontain.com. The actual design work was carried out by Brighton (UK) agency http://www.builtbybuffalo.com.
I found there to be a lot of Jargon. Keep a sales pitch simple. A good rule of thumb is not to say what your business does / what the script is, but what it can likely do for me.

As the script is complex simply ask users to identify themselves as personal, small business or corporate before entering the website?

I THINK I know what the script does but I'm not 100% sure, jargon heavy. A good resource for sales pitches is http://www.ai.uga.edu/mc/WriteThinkLearn.pdf (about the first half of the presentation).

Feel free to contact me on alexanderdblom [AT} GMAIL
I wish someone would make a toaster that had some sort of probe that could tell when the bread was actually toasted.
There's a difference between "Advisory Board" (capitalized) and "advisory board". The former is more for show than function. The latter is more for function than show and will make your business appear more attractive because it actually is more attractive. Skip the first and keep the second.

When all is said and done, you will have to perform and deliver. Embrace whatever you can to help that. If something is cosmetic and doesn't help you, people will eventually see it for what it is.
1. Silence. I'm not smart enough to get anything done with a lot of noise or music going on.

2. Distracting my mind. I read long, complex fiction novels for 30-60 minutes at night before bed. This is the most valuable part of my day because it acts like a shutdown script for my mind. Afterwards I feel completely disconnected from what I'm working on, worrying about, or struggling with. Some novels that I've used in the past: War & Peace, Ulysses, As I Lay Dying, Moby Dick.

3. Frequent breaks. While working I make sure to pause regularly and often stop altogether, walk-around, etc. This helps and hurts because it can interrupt flow, but the big benefit is that I find myself less tired at the end of the day when I stick to this.

4. Pen & paper. I buy spiral-bound notebooks at Walgreens for $0.35 and fill one every 3-6 months or so. I use pen and paper to plan programming projects, do class designs, brainstorm ideas, draw diagrams, almost everything.

5. Org-mode. I also use org-mode to more formally track things. I consider my notebook an "informal" workspace, while my org-mode files are more "formal". I utilize the agenda feature to produce to-do lists and calendar.

6. Diversity of projects. I try to always have some toy or pet project to play with when I find myself lacking motivation or hitting dead-ends on my primary work.

7. Try to keep it to 8 hours per day. This often seems (or "is" depending on your management) impossible, but it really does make an enormous difference in your ability to stay consistently productive and creative.
Then generate your own certs and self-sign.
I wanted to add a couple of nightclubs in my town (Kiev, Ukraine) but I was limited to London?
Yes, but knowledge about code is very transmittable. The fact that someone like cpercival can examine the code, and has, means that I can just freeride on his analysis, along with everybody else who has also read it. Only a fraction of users need to verify the code for all of use to benefit. And "only a fraction of users" for an open source project can still be a lot more users than Microsoft can bring to bear, and a higher caliber of users, too.

Of course, Microsoft could do most of the same thing if they opened their source. People would read that too. But that's another issue, of course.
Oh, I also call customers when I am needing more inspiration and ask them more questions about their product. Works as a double whammy, I get more in depth knowledge of their field, and they get what is basically a more in depth status message.

(I generally do not work with customers who cannot take hearing real status updates, ones who need lies and smoke I elect not to work with whenever possible, so I'm not sure this applies to everyone).

When working on things not for a customer, I talk to people who would be its perspective user base. For instance, board game selection app, talk to boardgamegeek.com users. Configuration file generator module for iphone apps, I talk to people in the local iPhone developer's meetup, etc.

Do not underrated human contact.
I'm just simply curious, not debating, so can you please elaborate more on "it's not terribly flexible"? Thanks.
'Amateur' IBM brings down Air New Zealand
Hey, that's my site! Thanks!

p.s. you might like this one on visualizing dynamic networks with movies - http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/08/08/visualizing-...
I'd like to see a feature where people could at photos from those buzzed locations. Integrate with twitter, facebook etc.
Get DosBox, http://www.dosbox.com/
http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/
Tips on negotiating a great consulting rate
Nowhere near as awesome as most of these, but I made a magnetic screw-picker-upper out of a broken pair of earbuds and a bottle cap.
I'm a little confused as to the workflow. Here's what i did, assuming I wanted to vote on a place I like:

1. Enter "fernandez & wells" into the name box. Hit search.
2. Two results are shown. Both have what look like votes already (+4, +5 icons). But my only action is "add this place." Where do I vote?
3. When I click to add the place, I'm presented with a big form, which I don't care about. I click "add place" anyway, and after clicking a couple of times with nothing happening, i realize it's trying to get me to select a category. I select a category (restaurant), click add again, and get an error "invalid username or userid in get_avatar"

So... hiccups aside, seems like a good idea. Execution-wise, streamline, streamline, streamline.
we differ only at #1, but i think this is a great list. if i may,

8. group tasks into small units and imagine the end result before touching a keyboard.

nothing revelatory, but i find it brings a bit of balance.
Appoint them very carefully.

Understand that it feels good to have an 'advisory board' but at the end of the day, the only person who's going to get your biz off the ground is you.

[EDIT: My own experience: most people are more than happy to give advice without being formal advisers]
The Hobbit,

I, Robot
I'm having a little difficulty coming up with a tagline for the site that isn't "It's Digg for Places". Any suggestions on this front would be hugely appreciated. As would suggestions of strategies for approaching new customers. It's brand new at the moment, I'm still working out some problems but once it's ready I want to be in a position to grow reasonably quickly.

Re. the business model - I have a few ideas in mind right now, particularly in the arena of local advertising/coupons/offers. Nothing fleshed out yet.
Although it's not what the site is talking about, I think it's often a lot more readable when many "if"s are replaced with "switch" statements or their big brother, ML-style pattern matching. Those make it more clear when conditions are mutually exclusive and help eliminate the error-prone simplification of boolean conditions in your head.
Of course - that's the plan. We're London only for now as we work things out. Once it's fairly stable we should be able to roll out to other cities pretty rapidly.
>a lot of noise or music going on.

Yay, someone else who gets destroyed by music. I thought I was the only one. I was told by a boss once upon a time to "put on earphones", but he didn't like the protective earwear I brought in (they were from home depot for using loud machines) and was unsympathetic to the fact music really makes me not do well at coding.

>This is the most valuable part of my day because it acts like a shutdown script for my mind.

You know what, I did not realize how the reading could actually be helping there. I like long series of works that are interconnected because they're typically much longer than even classics. The 1632 series is excellent and long, for that reason.

>Try to keep it to 8 hours per day.

Do you mean at least 8? At most 8? Exactly 8?
This is one of the more misguided ideas I've seen in a while, if I understand it correctly. The authors seem to expect that web analytics packages are integrated primarily by javascript snippets, which certainly has some truth to it (i.e. Google Analytics, Omniture, etc.). The problem is, though, that as we look for more analytical data, we end up tossing more and more crap into our web pages and hoping that it can be parsed out and send to some remote analytics service in time before the user does something to leave the page.

But maybe I'm jumping the gun here and am missing the point. Perhaps one of the authors can explain the use cases that they have in mind?
I clean.

First, I clean my room, so my atmosphere feels less cluttered and my mind is less likely to wander of to thinking "I should get around to this."

Then, I'll clean my desk, which usually means throwing everything away that is not 100% absolutely necessary (old notes, ideas, drawings, cups, etc.) These all make you feel crowded mentally and literally. A clean desk lets you focus on the screen without any distractions.

Finally, the desktop. I make a point to zero out my icons when I do this, only leaving My Computer and the Recycle Bin on the desktop, with a wallpaper that reminds me of what my current goal is.

This usually has me inspired to take advantage of the completely fresh atmosphere I've created and tends to be when I create my simplest and most effective work. It also works wonders for coming up with ideas, both creatively and on the business end. Basically, cleanliness helps me solve problems more easily.
I have no patience for these contrived dilemmas that few people will ever encounter. When humanity is done making war with one another then maybe we could ask these questions. But until then it is like treating someone's skin rash and ignoring that they are in cardiac arrest.
If you think that is bad try using the Java pattern for implementing delegates, outright nasty. Personally, I like languages that treat methods as first class objects and allow for the passing of them just like any other variable.

I think delegation is one of the least understood, but most powerful techniques in programming. Being able to inject functionality into another routing based on context allows for reusable work-flow while injected context specific work-flow into that routine, but still allowing that context specific work-flow to have access to encapsulated scope outside of the routine.

This is extremely powerful flexibility, that allows a developer to accomplish developing more functionality with less lines of code.
All of the benefits?

Does it help you when using someone else's framework that you didn't write and can't control? That being the key benefit that he started with then repeated over and over again.
Still pops up warnings for users in browsers.
Great idea - I also want to add Facebook Connect functionality to remove a barrier to entry for signup.
Sure apple promotes Objective C. But that just raises the question: What does Apple see in Objective C? What is its merit to Apple?
Everything is Unix
This is the reason I NEVER upgrade, always a fresh install.
This is the result of Objective-C's Smalltalk ancestry: similar design patterns are elegant to achieve in other Smalltalk-inspired languages as well, for example SuperCollider[1] and (to perhaps a lesser extent) Ruby.

[1] http://supercollider.sourceforge.net
Obj-C delegates look like how smalltalk does delegates.

(Obj-C is basically Smalltalk on top of C with a rocking API).
A mobile interaction is necessary, I agree. Without it we're left showing you what popular in the past day/week/month/all time as we have at the moment.
OP said it was London only at the moment while he's testing it.
Ah, right, yes, that's true, I forgot about the Currying bit (I read up on it earlier, promptly forgot it).

I'm coming at this from a 'coders' perspective, not the mathematical side of it, so the code example is much appreciated, that makes it much easier to understand.

The function 'foo' returns a function that has already 'bound' 'x' to whatever value you put in, the 'scope' then allows you to fish out the right 'x' when you're in the inner function doing the multiplication.

So, does that mean that as far as the inner function is concerned 'x' is 'free' ?

So far when reading articles about the lambda calculus it seemed like the 'free' variables where somehow magically present in the scope of the function without a hint about where they came from.
I also think Objective C is quite a bit better than C++....and hope they share that same opinion, as that would be the logical replacement language.
yes, but you don't know which program calls this script and what for.
Hmm... what about working?
I hate code like that. A lot.

It means that you can never trace control-flow. You see a function call you don't know where it goes. And all the underlying logic is hidden. There's no telling how many files you'll have to dig through to find the callee.

It also means there's no locality. When you have an if statement, the condition, action and alternative are all right next to eachother. With virtual functions, there in at least three different files. By the time you find one, you've forgotten the others.

Finally, it bulks code horribly with boilerplate. You can see that just with the examples on the site. This means less working code fits in an editor window, which means more bugs.

Anyone who believes this should try maintaining some low-if code of reasonable age. That will cure them quickly.
I make sure my work motivates me without any extra effort.
Honestly, the psychiatrist didn't say, or I forgot it if he did. I am certainly hyperactive at times, but the inattentiveness is the major problem in my life.

I am not taking anything for this (besides caffeine at the moment), I've been rather against it as mentioned above. Thinking about starting. What I was getting at was that it seems that the risks seem temporary. One could try it, determine if the benefits are worth the risks, and if they aren't, simply discontinue with no lasting effects.
Things Businesses Must Know Before Switching to Linux
And even in those cases, it isn't cut-and-dried. They claim "The advantage is that tomorrow, we can fulfill the request for a new type of bond by simply creating a new class, with the single required logic to calculate the value of that new bond."

Simply? I'd say that creating a new class is a hell of a lot more work than creating a new elseif branch.
These tests just annoy the crap out of me. I put up with the first few questions because I wanted to see if they would do something novel. But no, they had all the standard problems of morality tests:

1) False dichotomy. (There are exactly two actions you can take, no more.)

2) Unrealistic foreknowledge. (These are exactly what the results of these actions will be.)

3) Unrealistic scenarios. (How many of us are ever going to be standing with our foot stuck in the tracks of the sideline right near the switch when five other people are...blah blah blah.)

This kind of test is exactly what gives philosophers a bad reputation. They are studying important issues; could they /please/ take the time to build a test that respects the intelligence of the testee?
OK - this is a product of it being somewhat rushed to get something out the door.

The workflow does need to be trimmed, let me explain a little of what went on there.

1) You entered "fernandez & wells" we check our DB, found nothing then went off to check Google
2) The 2 results were from Google. The +4 icon is confusing here, it's a half implemented feature. It's actually there to show how much Karma a user would get by adding it.
3) I should make the error more prominent. As for "invalid username or userid in get_avatar" - basically you shouldn't have got to this screen to be able to add a venue without being logged in. I'll make the user check early and redirect to the login/registration screen.

Thanks for the feedback.
Cheat Sheet Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, LaTeX, Ruby…
There's also a subtle point that lots of people have looked at OpenSSL and trusted it, but not everyone knew that Debian-SSL was just a little different.

Lots of people have looked at the Windows number generator (or its results) to see if it's wrong. Lots of people have looked at OpenSSL too. But the place they are likely to look is the official releases, not the distro forks.

Being open source allows many small variations to exist. It's not enough to know you're using open source and that a million eyeballs have looked at it. Have the million eyeballs actually looked at the exact source you are running?
Not to discount this specific tidbit, but perhaps as a rule, it's not the best practice to hold the wisdom of someone in this state in high regard. On the other hand, there seems to be a propensity for humans to do so, dating back to the Oracle of Delphi, so you are in good company it seems.
This actually appears to be a bug my girlfriend runs into with Spaces and Office 2004 and Snow Leopard. But yeah, I've never seen it anywhere else.

(word window on top, spaces out, spaces in, word window draws below the top, but in every other way thinks it's on top. An expose fixes)
Swarm: Ian Clarke's distributed computing framework [video]
HN review: thoughts on Blue Frog Gaming's new Twitter game?
Ok, be brutal.
I am an embedded developer by training, and have been doing it for my entire career.

I've done C, Assembler, C++ and even python on some embedded devices, as well as the occasional javascript or shell scripts running the show.

Objective C, hands down, is the least hellish language I've EVER done embedded development in. Would I take a python runtime on the iPhone? In a heartbeat. Barring that am I okay with Objective C: Oh hell yes.

It has all the access you may want to C (libraries, certain operations), along with a bolted on smalltalkesque object system that is not overly templated (like java) or overly fiddly and easy to break (like C++) or just plain added on poorly (like lisp).
I feel like everyone thinks 'man you need an advisory board to be considered real.' Most meetings with anyone investing in you they ask 'who is on your board.' Even with all that being said, I just don't see the value. Most people will help you along your way because they care about what you are doing. The ones that want something from you in return, I would stay away from anyway. Either way, like hwijaya said, its all up to you.
As with everything in programming, it's about tradeoffs. Should you complicate your class hierarchy just to get rid of a lousy if statement? Probably not.

Should you make that gigantic switch statement be polymorphic? Definitely. Should you replace repeated if statements with polymorphism? Probably.

Locality of reference is a good thing, but there is a point where you need to break things down in to smaller, more understandable chunks. And if statements are no different.
Yes! I'm a huge fan of 960.gs and also Blueprint. Both allow me to focus on aesthetics as opposed to, say, how to make a 4 column layout work in IE6. It's probably cut the time it takes me to layout a page design in half.

This may not be as popular but I also started writing my styles on a single line (eg #header {height: 100px; background: silver; padding: 0 0 20px 0;}). I've found it much easier to scroll through my stylesheets and find the classes I'm looking for.
IPhone auto-rotation: out of control
The overall idea is that currently there are multiple pieces of JavaScript being used to gather data on web site usage for a variety of reasons (could be web analytics, could be targetting, could be testing). This is wasteful (in terms of page weight) and error prone (n different pieces of code gather the same data and then you end up with a mess of trying to correlate between different products).

The obvious solution is a single piece of JavaScript capable of gathering for all products and then sending common data to each of them. That leads you to define common data, hence this standard.
MIT Startup Bootcamp (live @ justin.tv)
> ... the guy can't spell "apologize, ..."

What?

I've worked out that this is supposed to be humorous in style, but it's impossible to tell how much is satire, how much is serious comment, and how much is self-aggrandizing ranting. There might be some serious points, but having got to the end I've deciding that the facts are available elsewhere, and this guy has added zero value.

Too long, did read, wish I hadn't.
Starship Troopers

Day of the Triffids
Agreed. You get $200m for passing go :-)
> Because Apple makes it tough not to use it

That's not very accurate. Apple has gone out of their way more so than other companies in giving you options. Apple has always provided the Java bridge for their entire Cocoa API which exposed all of its functionality to the JVM. Apple also ships Python and Ruby bindings and provides documentation and sample code on how to use them.

I have limited experience with all those bindings, but I choose to use Obj-C. In my humble opinion, it's an excellently-designed language that mixes low and high level concepts with great success.
That depends on the context of course. What if that elseif branch needs to be created in two places? Or 20 places?
It's messed up for me; I'm using FF3 on Ubuntu with Flash 10 (64bit beta). The full questions aren't displayed.
Just an FYI, I didn't post this because I agree with it 100%. I just find it fascinating that there's an entire campaign against removing if statements.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.h... suggests your fervency is misplaced.
This isn't suprising when teachers are required to ignore "teaching moments".
I'm amused by the number of commenters who are jubilously vindicated that OS X has a nasty bug, as if that somehow makes Windows better.
I like this idea. It does need to be a system-wide thing really, and while this does add a bit of settings and UI clutter it’s a common enough problem that Apple should be doing something to address it.
Yeah I think the ussage would really benefit from tailor made mobile apps.
or better use the 'size' program to give how much each .o/.obj file takes.

You can also use 'strip' to remove debug information not needed (normally appended to the end of the file).
I too have found the Pomodoro Technique fantastic, especially when combined with a GTD-like list of tasks for the day, broken down as atomically as they can be.

It's really helped me get through some of the most mundane work I've had to do on almost no real deadline (which is completely toxic to productivity), where I was the least inspired to work.

As a bonus, it helps make the workday pass very quickly, as you tend to focus on the current Pomodoro, instead of think about all the hours ahead of you.
I don't think websites like this will make any difference. People who misuse if statements are either beginning programmers or people who don't want to learn new stuff anyway.

Another problem is that if you only read the front page it only says if statements are bad. If you are a beginning programmer it probably sounds like nonsense if you don't get a reason.
I could easily be wrong, but here is my understanding. Consider this snippet of JavaScript:

function foo (x) { return function (y) {
return x*y;
}}

bar = foo(5);

Within bar, x is bound and y is free.

Does that make sense to you?