skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the fun writeup. Come back and describe the rest of them later. :)

I'm in the middle of reading High St@kes, No Prisoners (though it's been sitting idle for a couple months as I haven't had time for non-technical reading). Actually, I realized a quarter of the way through that I was re-reading it. I must have read it when it came out, because a lot of his stories and even particular phrases are coming back to me. It's certainly a good book for anyone interested in startups, and is refreshingly witty and candid.

I noticed an interesting difference in my response to this book from the first time around, though. In the author's descriptions of his frequent battles with VCs, the VCs don't come off nearly as bad as he wants them to. For example, Andrew Marcuvitz, whom Ferguson depicts as basically a reptile, doesn't actually do anything bad. Mostly he just patiently explains things to a screaming Ferguson. Perhaps he turns evil in the second half of the book? I can't remember.
To anyone else at the event: I'm in the sixth row against the right wall, probably furiously taking notes on my Macbook. Feel free to say hi before the evening is over.

Aaron Swartz now...
I love the line about how they can't find a designer who can follow directions. Ah, creatives.
#4: Sometimes transforming your data so that it's in an "optimized" structure requires a significant upfront cost. If the processing on that data is comparatively small, it might not be worth the effort. I'm going to guess that the import and load functions had n^2 algorithms in them.

#2: Assuming that no objects go out of scope, memory corruption. If objects do go out of scope, I'd still suspect memory corruption, but I'd check the destructors first.

#1: He already answered it, really. The caching mechanism was probably maintaining references to the objects, while still allocating space for new ones.
This is by Frans de Waal who wrote the fascinating book "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals". http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp...

I picked this book up for like $1 or something at the annual Penn State book sale (all books not sold are pulped) and it's been very influential for me.

He has a fascinating discussion on the "circle of empathy" and how it widens as our resources increase (from family unit, to tribe, clan, nation, world, and finally non-human animals...).

Great read!
I've found lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/publish/cd_dvd/?cid=us_home_nav_disc) but they're crazy expensive, charging 4.50 a CD (for a bulk purchase of 1000, compared to 5.00 for up to 5 CDs).

On the other hand, there's Kunaki which will press DVDs for a dollar a DVD complete with Jewel case and paper inserts... But they don't provide a marketplace.

I keep seeing references to CafePress doing CDs, but I guess they stopped that particular business because I see no reference to it on their site.
Seattle's Swedish hospital is offering a similar service at their Ballard Campus.

http://www.swedish.org/body.cfm?id=2907&oTopID=1050
I suppose I should have said "be brutal, but helpful." A bunch of people telling me the same thing, then downvoting me for simple explanations due to nonagreement is pretty useless.

Guess I learned my lesson.
Is this unethical?
I'm a little skeptical about the role of snobbery in this. It's impossible to do a properly blinded experiment, because the folks with the necessary knowledge already are able to identify any Chopin (or Bach or Beethoven) piece, and thus know a priori which is the synthetic piece. This seems rather too similar to the story about winetasters (e.g., here, sorry for the cache link: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:SB6S068de0gJ:www.latimes... )
The really disappointing thing here is that I don't doubt for a second that there are horrible, horrible iPhone apps for men centered around dating. And this author found... this kinda lame one to complain about. Put a little work in!
Agreed! This is a perfect market for innovation to succeed.

If a quick Google is to be believed, Norm Wu is a EE+MBA.

I think healthcare is a field where some smart people coming from outside the industry can make some big improvements on the way things are done, especially when they reinvent the model.
Richard Dawkins at Berkeley: The Greatest Show on Earth
Now if they just created a decent file manager that would allow me to managed all the attachments in my Inbox, I would be a happy man!
I'm looking forward to use a multitouch touchpad with my desktop keyboard just as I currently do with my laptop. However I will definitely want to keep a mouse also when in need for more precision for tasks like photo editing etc.

10gui seems to be a very cool prototype and I guess that Apple and Microsoft are already working on things like this. I also spotted a weakness of this demo: 10gui uses the little finger to invoke contextual menus. Most of the people who cannot touch type with all ten fingers (and my guess this is about the 99% of all computer users :) will find this uncomfortable.
I'm wondering why it's sexist (devaluing one sex) to ask who is going to take care of the kids. Isn't it quite possible it's concern for their family situation (because work affects family)? A guy probably wouldn't be asked this simply because it is much more common for the mother to look after kids.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if my wife were being interviewed and they asked her this: "Does your husband work from home? We're just wondering if he's the one who's going to look after your kids, because we're happy to be flexible with your work hours if you need that. Even bringing the kids in here sometimes would be fine."
The Secret About Amazon's API it Doesn't Want Distributed
It certainly looks cool. I am just not sure about the ergonomics. What would really be awesome is not having to lift my hand at all by switching between touch mode and keyboard mode at a flick of a finger.
Google’s Board Member Arthur Levinson Ditches GOOG, Stays At Apple
Arthur D. Levinson, former CEO & Chairman of Genentech is resigning from Google’s Board of Directors. Google did not give any reason for his exit but ...
tl;dw

30 seconds in and they haven't shown it yet?
The video mentions the problem of always having one's hands in the way with a direct interface. This could also be alleviated by moving the hands underneath the display ala the capacitive mouse from Microsoft Research: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/10/video-microsoft...
Fortify Taxonomy: Software Security Errors
Or maybe popular music is simplistic and this is impressive compared to it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

The footnotes are richer in information on this.
Phenomenal video.

The ideas are definitely interesting, but I am amazed at the clarity of the presentation.
Snobbery is not the right word, but you make a valid point.
Yes - the reason why health insurance is so pervasive as an employee benefit is that it can be written off with no taxes, whereas currently this kind of monthly-fee unlimited visit medicine can't. That's asinine from a tax perspective, but that's how the current system works.
Really, it's like insurance in the sense that you're paying a monthly fee for access to the doctor. However, the relative cost is significantly lower than it is through insurance providers. Who would have thought that eliminating a middle man from a business transaction would mean better prices for a consumer and more profits from the service provider?
The page he links to 50 Strategies For Making Yourself Work, http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/50-strategies-for-making-yoursel... , is even better.
The Web’s Inventor Regrets One Small Thing
See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=877307
Then there's the whole discussion about whether being good because you're afraid to be punished is actually being good at all. Related to this, wouldn't a person who honestly agrees with their actions be less likely to have a momentary deviation?
I think they've finally switched to the Java version across the board (from an Apple employee friend of mine) but it took a long time to get there.
That's cool as far as it goes. But what about the keyboard?

The mouse is just one aspect of the computer interaction. I can't remove my keyboard from my desk just to make room for this mouse replacement. The keyboard seems a big barrier (literally!) for getting this device on the desktop.
"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."

I up-voted you even though I was unable to parse this sentence.
Random trivia. Statistics show that atheists are under-represented in prisons, and are less likely to divorce than the general public. And the general public has lower divorce rates than conservative Christians. (It is no coincidence that Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia all are in the top 10 states by divorce rate. See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923080.html for confirmation.)

Yet somehow it is the conservative Christians who try to lecture the rest of us on morality, and frequently claim that atheists have no morality??

Pot. Kettle. Black.
You shouldn't have to call fork() yourself. Most languages have either language level or library level solutions that abstract that away for you. You want to abstract it away because very soon you'll find yourself wanting to manage the forked processes in much the same way these other facilities do it for you. Even when I'm working in C, I almost always use Pthreads instead of calling fork() directly. The only time I call fork() is when it's soon followed by an execve().

The same goes for file locking. Using files for synchronization is primitive, error prone and slow. As soon as you find yourself managing the lock files to deal with crashed programs ("stale locks" as the author calls them), you might as well trade it in for better abstractions.

Perhaps the most valuable part of implementing this kind of stuff by hand, using only systems services, is the appreciation you gain from having access to the same functionality in your language or from well designed libraries.
i'd pitch your best non-cofounder option first. it sounds like your offer is an appealing one, and something that i don't think anyone would be offended at receiving.

if they reject it and push for cofounder, sit down and figure out which one you want more -- to retain total control or to have this person on the team.
Because they ask the woman that, not the man.
Whatever else you might think about how reasonable this question is in practice, you should also know that it's unlawful to ask it.
don't give in, ask him why he thinks he deserves co-founder status. If he is being reasonable he will realize you have done far more than what him walking in the door offers.

co-owners brings more issues than you may expect
World Won't End in 2012, Mayans Insist
Great, now Hacker News is devolving into religious flame wars too. :'-(

STOP PROSELYTIZING ATHEISM ON HACKER NEWS!!!!! It's annoying!
Though I'm not a huge fan of Trump, I somewhat doubt he would associate his name with a pyramid scheme.
This is more likely a group which will sell you on his philosophies, get you to buy his books, sign-up for seminars, etc.
Think O'Reilly, but less respectable/reputable/technical/beneficial... feel free to add your own.
I suspect they are just setting up a new sales channel for some of his businesses. Probably not directed at the HN community either.
Thanks for the great comments. I particularly love perpetuity's comment ;)

@rmason. Thank you. These are exactly my thoughts. I hesitated writing this post because I have not had that 'big success' yet.
Sometimes when I'm feeling unmotivated or depressed, it helps to remind myself about some of the struggles that other people around the world are dealing with.

For example, I'm sure the average teenager in Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of Congo would love to trade places with you. Did you know that 80% of humanity lives on less than $10/day? A shift in perspective might make your problems with school seem a bit more manageable.

You don't have to apply yourself in school, but try to remind yourself that it's an opportunity that relatively few people in this world have access to.

(As a side note, this highlights a failing of the school system itself -- they should probably put more emphasis on broadening your perspective. It's sad that so many people go through the school system without understanding why they are there in the first place.)
WhoCanISue.com's profitability is another data point in favor of the hypothesis that there are corruption problems in the justice system. The obvious example is the well-known correlation between having deeper pockets and winning in court.

We shouldn't be "mad" at this business, they are just exploiting an already-exploitable system.
Apple, for a while, tried pretty hard to make Java a first class citizen of the Cocoa framework, but it just was a bad fit. Non-dynamic languages don't really do well with dynamic frameworks.

It is interesting that the drop in love for Java occurred around the same time that Carbon was shown the door.
I've used it some, it is what I think of generally when I think of OOP that what is going on is visually like Pipes, or other visual languages like vvvv, or Lily, etc... here's a pipe I made for the buses in and around Columbus, OH http://pipes.yahoo.com/th0ma5/cota1
[Edit: Sorry - this probably won't apply to the OP's specific problem, but it will apply to others facing un-motivating work (assuming they have an hourly rate that will allow them to do this)]

Answer: oDesk, eLance, etc...

Seriously, my life and productivity have improved dramatically since I started outsourcing the grunt work I used to dread doing. For me it's well worth it to pay someone else 1/2 or 1/3 of what I make per hour to do something I would just stress out over and procrastinate.

With my money I'm buying: 1) Time (a scarce resource) and 2) Will-power (an even scarcer resource).

For instance, I have a side project that requires a lot of web scraping. I found a great scraper guy in southeast asia that is a much better scraper than me and is happy to work for 1/10th of what I make per hour. It's a great trade off.

I can then use the time and will-power to do all sorts of more important things to me - exercise, intense learning, systems design, etc. Specifically, with my extra time lately, I've worked on marathon training, speed reading, learning short-hand, esoteric ruby concepts, practicing the ukulele, etc.

If you are getting stuck on something you don't want to do - outsource it. Even if a poorly skilled outsourcer makes it through my hiring process (rare, but can happen) and they churn out some crap - it is oddly motivating for me to go and fix the issue and get it right. For some reason I get a mental block sometimes when starting a project from scratch - but if I hire someone else to take a stab at it and they fail horribly, I'm like "Wo, that sucked, you really should have done it this way...." My motivation is then unblocked since I'm 'fixing' something, not 'creating from scratch'.

oDesk is basically a store where you can go and trade money for time and will-power. Seriously, how cool is that ;)
Yes, but two things: 1) as I mentioned, the fact that they might ask the woman and not the man is simply due to the fact that more mums stay at home than dads, and 2) why is it devaluing her to ask that?

Anyone who's got kids knows that raising them is much more difficult (and rewarding) than most other day jobs.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the most efficient and intuitive way to manage windows is just a boring list at the bottom/side of the screen, but I do hold out hope, like everyone else, that it turns out to be some flashy zooming 3D multitouch thing.

It is refreshing though, to see research that dispenses with the legacy of GUI convention we've built up over the years, instead of just piling on new features.
I think you can still make him a co-founder without giving him a 50% stake. Give him 10% and make him a Director of your company (or whatever works).
Without God, you can have rules, conventions, and laws. You can have feelings of guilt or satisfaction.

What you can't have is true right and wrong. See if you agree with this statement: "Certain things, like murder and genocide, are simply wrong, even if individuals or even whole societies were to decide otherwise."

If you agree, you believe in objective morality. If not, you don't believe in morals at all. You believe in feelings or societal agreements or evolutionary advantage. But that's not the same thing as right and wrong.
They've certainly put lots of thought into the design of this device/software. But the whole time I kept thinking: "what about the keyboard?" (Eventually, at the end, they showed the device in a traditional trackpad position below a keyboard.)

I wish they had considered a way to make the keyboard a part of the device. Perhaps an on-screen keyboard, some haptics? The challenge with that part of the input device is that to touch type, you need that spacial reference a keyboard gives you.
Personally I think it would be crazy not to start with putting fake screenshots in front of users to get feedback before you invest development time and energy on what is likely to be the wrong thing. Iterations with a graphic designer are a lot cheaper than iterations with a development team, and are nearly as effective for identifying large usability issues.

The trouble with user feedback normally is that people can't get a sense for how it would work unless they can see it. Sure you can make them put it in writing, but if they haven't seen it they almost surely asked for the wrong thing. So you really need to get them something they can see before you get useful feedback. And you want to do that in the fastest way possible. (Albeit while generally making it clear that actually getting it will take time.)
I am okay with a discussion on morality and God on HN, but I would have hoped for a more engaging source -- or, at least, just the naked YouTube link.
Ask HN: Health insurance in startups
How do you handle health insurance during early stage startups? Do you pay for it as an unavoidable expense? Forgo it entirely, or look for more creative options? If they go into effect, would proposed mandates change the answer?
I didn't realize you expected a tutorial in aspect orientation!

The gist: byte codes are transformed ("weaved") on load. Its irrelevant whether you have the source or not.

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/0596006543/aspectjckbk-CHP-1...
moosecake, You need to ask yourself what motivates you. Why do you find some stuff more worthwhile than other stuff? When you work on something that is not worthwhile, can you find the bits that can be worthwhile to you?

In my case, even the most mundane work has something to teach me. If it's not by doing it myself is by doing it with other people (I like to see how other people solve problems). So here is an idea, get together with friends and work on the stuff you find unappealing. That way, you'll throw two birds with one stone. You'll learn to work better as a team, and you'll get the unappealing work out of the way. Also, I find it better to finish the boring work first thing, and then move on to the cool work (that way the cool work seems like a prize). Good luck, and don't forget to have fun, you are still a kid above everything else.
That's interesting, but irrelevant. The question is not "what group of people is nicest," but "what are solid philosophical grounds for morality?" Ad hominem fallacies do not clarify the issue.
The end of the presentation had an image of a possible solution - basically having the touch pad exist right below the keyboard, just like it is on any laptop built today. Definitely makes the keyboard/touchpad area quite a bit larger though.
> Even if a poorly skilled outsourcer makes it through my hiring process (rare, but can happen) and they churn out some crap - it is oddly motivating for me to go and fix the issue and get it right.

This is KEY. There is something about editing and feedback that kicks in. It's the same "someone on the internet is WRONG" impulse that drives so many Hacker News posters.

I think it is related to the fundamental distinction between "multiple choice" vs. "fill in the blank" questions. Prompted recall is so much easier than unprompted recall.
"My suspicion is that Obj-C's unique combination of features plays a large part in NeXT/Apple's success in producing a set of frameworks that are high-level enough to allow for rapid development, but are also able to create responsive applications on the desktop AND be able to scale down to mobile devices."

This does not get nearly enough attention when people think about the successes Apple has had over Microsoft since OS X. The sweet spot of a fast, compiled, dynamic language and tools built to leverage those strengths gives Apple a lot of flexibility and productivity in design and implementation, from the OS level to the GUI tool kit level. I think that where Microsoft increasingly found themselves pushing a ball of mud uphill with the Windows code base, Apple was able to do a lot of clever things with their software stack without changing the underlying design and architecture. Like porting their PC OS to a cell phone and allowing their developers to leverage much of their existing skills to make apps for it.

During Jobs' Nexodus, the NextStep environment became the main product because it was such a productive way to build software. With the return to Apple, it stopped being the product and started becoming a competitive advantage.
Converting you calendar data into a project plan
Is selling any unrealized concept unethical? Is pitching you an idea for a company in trade for your money wrong?

I think it becomes unethical when you begin lying: "Production of the app is coming along nicely! Here are a few more screenshots from development this week."

So the question might be more accurately: do you position this so you don't have to lie to a potential customer, but have them assume it exists? Is that positioning unethical? What do you say if they ask you point blank?
P.S. I can't stand Bill O'Reilly - I think he's rude and annoying. So I'm not following the link. But I think this question is an interesting one.
True (thanks). Though illegal != sexist. Also: asking it might be many other things, but why is it "unreasonable"?
If you imagine the touch pad being wide but not much taller than the one on a laptop, it starts to seem more practical.
Not for me. I actually LIKE the loose fit around the thighs. The pant pics on bonobos look really uncomfortable.
I run into this all the time and have two strategies.

1) Pair programming. If you can find someone to work with you on this, it's much easier to get rolling and to stay on task.

2) Overkill it. Approach the task as if it were Mount Everest. Assemble food, water, energy drinks. Go to a place like a library or conference room where no one can run into you. Disconnect the internet. Block out all sounds. Play Rocky on your headphones as you're unpacking.

Just approaching it as if it were a difficult task helps.
City by Clifford D. Simak

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Given its evolution, you might want to take a look at F-Script http://www.fscript.org/ - it is basically a Smalltalk-derivative with some unique array-oriented additions. In version 2, you can now create classes using F-Script.
FTC Guns for Blogger Shills—and Misses
Seems so to me, and somewhat pointlessly, too. You're working closely with companies who are willing to sign letters of intent and stick with you after a botched install, but you think you have to lie about having code written? There's a disconnect there...
A relevance rank for communication
oh, I see. I agree, but my parents don't, and I can't support myself yet.
"I have to do it. There is no way I can avoid doing it without unappealing consequences. I will do it now and then move on, do the interesting stuff."