skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Consider getting your people used to your being remote one day a week -- make it consistent. Speaking generally and anecdotally, a lot of "panic" seems to actually be somewhat schedule-able; it adjusts to circumstances.

Keep the option open to drive in when it becomes necessary. Whether a "must be present" meeting, crunch time, or the shit hits the fan and being onsite outweighs the drive time.

If you can't make the timing regular, you may be screwed. If you're remote on random days, people are less likely to adjust well.

I worked with a fellow who, due to his brilliance and historical knowledge, often ended up being THE go to guy in such scenarios. Nonetheless, he made remote days work. (It helped that our team was becoming increasingly virtual, anyways, as we absorbed new members from an acquisition, etc.) People learned that if they needed him face to face, they'd better bring the topic up before his remote day (or wait).

He loved how much more he was able to get done without people stopping by his cube multiple times each hour.
If you look at the way the Android SDK handles device differences, it's really much less of an issue that most people seem to make it out to be. Accommodating different resolutions, for example, is pretty trivial for an Android app developer. The only (IMHO) that might be an issue is the differences in input capabilities (ie, hardware keyboard or no hardware keyboard, trackball or no trackball, etc). That should no be an issue at all for productivity apps, but I do see how it could be an issue for games. It's hard to balance your level difficulties and design your play mechanics if you're not sure what kind of input device your players will be using.
Assuming zero opportunity cost...
The navigation app is only available for the US, where data plans allow unlimited data so price shouldn't be an issue.
Ah thanks. Makes sense now.
If it doesn't work off-line then it is far less useful. The problem is not so much that network connections are hard to come by, but that once you leave your little corner of the world they become stupidly expensive. I dare not think what the the bandwidth bill for using something like this for week abroad would be.
Droid Phone Arrives November 6th on Verizon
I went through a somewhat similar nightmare with Citibank years ago, which prompted me to switch to a credit union. I've never regretted that decision, they've been great:

- There's real, trained staff both at the branches and manning the phones. They have the authority and motivation to sort out problems for you.

- I can use almost any other union's ATM with no fee, they're in a cooperative network, I don't even have to get a refund.

- I know my deposits are funding straightforward loans, not financial shenanigans or empire building by bank CEOs.
In addition to the ideas for what do to while driving, consider avoiding driving during rush hour to cut down on the time it takes. Even if your work schedule isn't flexible, this might still work for you. Depending on what kind of exercise you're into, maybe you you can do the drive earlier to avoid rush hour and then spend that pre-work time at a gym near (or, if you're lucky, on site at) work. I've worked at companies that had on site gyms and showers. One site I was at had a huge building complex large enough that just walking different routes in it, including stairs, etc. was a viable exercise option, and quite a few people took advantage of that, particularly when the weather wasn't good enough to walk or run outside. You could do something similar after work, too, depending on how desirable that is with respect to your personal life - spending time at or near your work location while the evening traffic gets past its worst. Doesn't have to be exercise - could be reading or working on some personal programming project on a laptop at a Starbucks or some similar place near your work. Maybe you could find (or start) a chess or go club that meets some evenings near your work, etc., depending on what you're into.
In my last position, I worked a somewhat later schedule for precisely this reason. My communte wasn't as long as yours, but it still saved me probably 15 - 30 minutes each day.
A/B Testing to Increase User Engagement
It's about Dilbert. If I have the skills to go into a profession where I'll be respected or into a profession where I'll be treated, well, shall we say not so well, which will I pick?
Thanks! You can also feel free to mine http://github.com/osteele/collections-js, which is a version with just the collection functions (but still modifies built-in objects, so may not be to other people's taste), that I've been using in conjunction with jQuery. I haven't finished looking over your library, so I don't know if there's anything in there that would still be useful to you. There's a set of unit tests, which might be.

I eventually found that I was accumulating so many string functions that, in a version of this for OpenLaszlo here http://github.com/osteele/lzosutils, I broke them into a separate file.
Are the folks who'd want a free iPod the folks who you want?

Seriously. Who do you want using your site? What do they want? You need answers to both questions and then you need to connect them.
Thanks for the suggestion, Simon -- It's done.

The Underscore page now has the download for version 0.1.1, with a noConflict function that returns the "_" variable to its previous value.

var myUnderscore = _.noConflict();
And Netflix just announced that their stuff will be streamable to PS3 - http://www.netflix.com/InstantStreamingDisc
Yeah, because making obscure nerds feel miserable by ignorantly misrepresenting their work in public is always good for a laugh.

I mean, it's not as if this is one of the very few times that my non-nerd relatives have ever seen the word "Drupal" in print, or anything. I'm sure they will all get the joke. And, if not, I'm sure the next few thousand-word popular-press articles on CMSes will clear up any misconceptions that may have arisen.
I can't wait for my Droid! This is going to be awesome.
Ares 1-X launch successful
Stop the bleeding! Borrow $99, create a new dev account, and submit all your apps through the new account.
Same here. Perhaps I'm not moderating large enough groups for this to be an issue, but it's never been a hassle.

What I really like is that I get mail telling me there's a moderated post, and I can approve simply by replaying to the meta-message.

Now, it is annoying that every so often users with approved posts are not correctly then set as auto-approve, so there's some occasional intervention needed, but Google groups has worked quite well for the 4 or so groups I look after.
The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems - nowhere else in the world will one find such an aggregation of talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them.

With every cycle (I have seen them all), the Valley takes new shape in its economic drivers, and it will likely do so again this time around. But the tech revolution has fundamentally changed world commerce and is not about to slow down. The Valley remains its epicenter, in spite of any bleak short-term issues.

Early-stage startups (my area of specialty) have not slowed but rather increased in the past year, and their quality is up (very often driven by immigrants or first-generation children of immigrants - this is a big change from 25 years ago). The venture-backed part of the startup world has been on hold and will largely remain so for the time being. In time, it too will emerge again, but this will depend on an eventual opening up of the IPO market.

The Valley will survive and emerge stronger than ever, in my view. Opportunities for those seeking to launch new startups are as good as they ever have been (and office space is cheap and plentiful, and certainly not just in large office buildings but everywhere).
The reason you couldn't cut and paste was that Apple doesn't release a feature until they polished it. They didn't let you make apps until they'd made the App Store, and there was a year of complaining, but when they finally did it they nailed it. Ditto cut and paste, which now works better on the iPhone than it does on anything else.
Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US.

I don't think it's really reasonable, at this point, to expect a GPS device to work worldwide. Are they supposed to store the world's mapping data locally? Google is still licensing their maps from Tele Atlas (TomTom) outside the US so I don't think it's even possible for them to provide navigation in those parts.
The problem with Google's offering here is the fact that the navigation is an online application. Roaming charges are excessive here, so the moment you leave your home country, using an online navigation app becomes prohibitively expensive.

Combine that with the fact that, especially here in little switzerland, the only time you REALLY need a navigation tool is, of course, when you are abroad.

Interesting and a nice addition (as it is free), but no replacement for the traditional solutions.
I agree -- I think Grubber is missing the boat on the overall trends. Android OS devices will, guaranteed, outsell total number of iPhones in the not too distant future. Will it be 12 or 24 months? I don't know, but right now Google is knocking the ball out of the park on distribution deals: Apple and AT&T market the iPhone and its OS.

Sprint, T-mobile, Verizon, Barnes & Noble (through the Nook), HTC, etc. etc. all market Android OS and phones right now. Which group do you think will win?

Eventually the developers will come, especially because developing for Android is frankly easier for developers: significantly more open platform, and broader developer skills for Android's app SDK.

Right now, Android's Market app sucks (1.6's update is a bit better). Android Devices will vary more in terms of hardware, although Apple's are starting to differentiate as well. Apple had a pretty good Store app from the get-go, a single platform to develop for, a beautiful UI and almost no competition in the paid app space.

Apple pulled out in front, and they'll probably always have an arguably better product, if Steve keeps up his perfectionist ways with successor products. It might even be that the most you could make as a successful developer would be having a 'hit app' on the Apple Store.

But, the market conditions will almost certainly generate far more value, in aggregate, for Android developers than iPhone developers; it's going to be a more democratized, far broader market for Android devices really soon now.
See also:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=908005

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=908091

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=907961
Thanks Google. Using this app instead of Google Maps while driving is likely increase my chances of living.
> I overshot myself a bit with "without having any skill at all". I meant "without skill that they must had to get comparable salary from engineering type of job".

How about some supporting evidence?
Google Maps GPS has been a dream for a long time. It's about time.. All my friends are on ATT right now.. but it's going to be really hard for me to avoid getting a Droid when it comes out.
Anyone know if its chipset supports GSM-based networks like ATT? If so - me thinks I'll be getting an unlocked one.
The text editor is a bit clunky. I use the home and end keys extensively while I program, so their lack of functionality really bothers me. The intelisense is cool, but when I press tab it does not complete the word.
Anyone else think it's weird that he wouldn't even mention twitter and facebook? he just called them "the two fine companies". I know they want to own the information and distribute it (that's their biz). But why not talk about them directly?
Key elements of a business plan
This argument between left and right often doesn't matter. A true public utility or a true commodity would both be great for the users of broadband. The problem is the corrupt center we have, where an open marketplace was ruined by corporate subsidies.
Looks like Garmin stock didn't take the news too well:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=grmn
That's awesome! Thank you very much.
Collections-js looks like a nice split -- I might end up nabbing a few more things out of there. Maybe some of the unit tests too, although, FYI, your Functional.js page has shown "Documentation Failed to Load" for me for the last few days (on Webkit).

One thing that it would be nice to agree on is the standard names for some of these things under Javascript. What should reduce be called? Inject? Foldl? I've followed the Prototype/Ruby naming conventions, but it might make sense to provide all of the commonly-used aliases -- especially when you're not extending core objects, and don't need to worry about cluttering them up. What do you think? Does the same function under 5 different names run as sweet?
They're missing headless mode, which is a deal breaker for me.
> Cap-and-trade is basically the last chance to fix the economy of the valley, and frankly it's not looking for good right now.

Cap-and-trade is intended to increase govt control and pass out goodies to well-connected folks. It's unclear how either of those will "fix the valley". (Yes, there are well-connected folks in the valley who will benefit, but ....)
Because it's not a sexy problem to work on, so no-one really wants to spend any time making it better.
Promises looks fun!

You might also be interested in http://osteele.com/sources/javascript/concurrent/ for another approach to this. [later, after reading more:] Actually, Promises looks much more complete and useful.
this made me smile. Yeah. Not too well.
Pretty much everybody that got caught unawares by their sites sudden demise. The mail I'm getting makes me believe that rather more people than you'd expect suddenly realized they had some precious family photos and stuff like that on geocities and thought they'd lost if forever.
Yeah. Software, hardware, consulting.
I think Basecamp is pretty good, so is Basecamp, when it comes to GroupWare. We're also "sort of" building better GroupWare: http://askmybraintrust.com
Nor Tom Tom:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=TOM2.AS
w00t! Did you breakdance thru Microsoft with it on, tho? That's a pretty great bouncer trick - I'll have to try it sometime. See, reddit will open doors for you... maybe it's become a geekier Illuminati?
I'm marketing to the same group, and from what I've experienced, word of mouth is your best ally. Email me: http://scr.im/danl.
So after downloading it and installing it (and waiting for my trial email), I found out that:

- It lacks headless mode; and
- It clobbers your 2.0x install completely.

If anyone wants to reverse the install like I did, you can still download the 2.0x series from here:
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/fusion_2_0_6/JUBiZCVka...
Storing all the worlds map data locally is unnecessary. All you need is to let the user download the maps for the part of the world he intends to visit before he leaves. If it's a licensing problem I'm sure it can be solved with money. I'll happily pay a reasonable fee for each additional country/region.
Corporatism? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism)
Yes, interface is important. The Macintosh also had a great GUI... which was copied...

why couldn't the iPhone UI be copied? notwithstanding working around patents etc.
Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply that. I don't think anyone here is being unreasonable. I just meant that I've had enough awesome from Linode that I'm willing to give them a pass on this one. Everyone screws up now and then. :)
It takes a while for office prices to go down (at least it did in 2000-2001 after the first web crash). It's a great time to renegotiate an existing lease (lower price for a longer contract so you won't bolt after your initial lease expires) but most of those landlords of the big buildings would rather write it off than lower their price dramatically (or break it up in smaller chunks).

Another way to go if you have established connections with some larger companies that have downsized is to sublease some cubicle space from them. You lose some of your own identity by being in the middle of a bigger company, but sometimes it can be super cheap and you get some of the amenities of a bigger company like not dealing with phones, internet, security systems, etc. The company wins by offsetting some of their costs (or getting a tiny bit of equity) and just filling up some cubicles has a positive impact on a company's morale.
Hm, I think it's all a matter of cost/benefit. What value would hiring an administrative assistant bring compared to just having an equity founder with more of an incentive? At least the founder can abstract everything business related away, so all you need to do is code. And, to me, that's hard enough as it is.
I could imagine that if the new Android 2.0 comes are released to the market with these full capabilities that the entire in-car navigation market will be shaken up. Or at the very least, prices will have to come down significantly. Looks like some market consolidation is in the near future for many of these companies.
1) Open an account with, say, $1M as the opening balance.

2) Withdraw $888,888.88

3) Armed with a bank statement showing this transaction, and everything that's online about this magic number, threaten to go to the media with your story unless the bank "refunds" your missing money. The bank doesn't want to lose all its customers so it gives in, even though it knows you're ripping it off. Kevin Spacey plays the bad guy.

Good enough (maybe, just) for a movie script at least. In reality I'm sure step 4 is "Go to prison".
It's much more useful in the U.S, where you can get cell coverage in most major highways and cities, usually on your original cell carrier. And people often need some sort of navigation app in an unfamiliar city - the U.S. is big, and many older cities don't have the most logical street plan.

Does the EU not have some sort of unified cell network? I'd think that'd hurt their competitiveness a lot, if people can't take their cell phones with them when traveling between countries for fear of huge roaming bills.
Then you make the last-mile infrastructure a public utility, but allow companies to compete by offering services over it. This sort of arrangement has worked well in other countries (generally with copper phone lines and DSL), and it really represents the best of both worlds. You take the part of being an ISP that's basically a "natural monopoly" (because of extremely high entrance costs and entrenchment) and operate it like a public good, while allowing the private sector innovate and compete over those lines.
The rational reason to vote is not because your vote actually has an effect on the election's outcome. Rather, it is because if nearly no one voted, then politicians would have no incentive to take care of the needs of the people. The reason why representative democracy works (when it does work) is because the people have the power to remove politicians from office (or prevent their reelection).

Of course, it is unwise to limit your involvement in government to merely voting, but that is a separate topic.
I don't think that's the main market of GPS navigation. Everyone I know uses them just to help get them to everyday new places. A store you haven't been to before, a weekend trip to another town, etc. No matter how small Switzerland is, I know that no one I know would ever be able to make our way around the entire thing without help.
Time Spent On Yahoo Homepage Up 20 Percent Since Redesign
I have worked these before, and my family has tried these. My mum is a nurse, so she frequently worked 13-hour days 3 days a week when I grew up. My dad worked in IT for a long time, by the end he worked exclusively these shifts before he retired to start his own business.

I agree it's ultimately harder, especially with younger children, on those days that you'll work harder. It will inevitably be a personal choice whether seeing them a bit every night is more important than seeing them a lot on one night.

All I can say is from personal experience as a child with a parent who worked those shifts (I haven't got kids yet, so I can't speak from the parental perspective). My dad regularly worked those shifts, and when I was younger it was certainly tough (its a little different in your teen years when you're up later and more independent), but the fridays he got off were always worth it. I remember getting off school and we actually had the time to go to a theme park on my birthday (I believe he switched his shifts to get a tuesday off) or that we'd get to go to the movies or bowling before they got packed on a friday evening.

I can't say not having your dad there wouldn't be hard on a kid (in the last few years, and the reason why he left the job, he had to work away from home so then the 4 day week really helped as he wasn't home for 3 nights instead of 4 nights), but from my own experience the quality time certainly made up for it and in hindsight I think I actually preferred when he had the 4 day weeks.

Perhaps it would be more of a win-win when they're in high school rather than junior school as with the amount of homework that gets dumped on the teens, they'll barely notice if you're an hour or two later home.

I suppose it all depends on you as the parent, your spouse/partner and your kids. 5 days may be best for you, 4 days may be better for others, but a trial-run for a month might give you a clue as to which you and your family prefer.
I think it'll be a while before Google is able to provide mapping data internationally. That's why Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US, where it's a perfectly suitable replacement for traditional GPS devices, especially with Verizon's ubiquitous coverage.
According to the question ask "do you think war is inevitable?" you'd be included in 9 of 10 think war is inevitable. What we want was not part of the question (and I don't think it is on peace.facebook.com either. Their question is "is world peace possible?", based on your response above your answer to facebook would be "no").
I cannot disagree more with you. Why do most people only have one choice of cable provider? Because the government gave the cable providers local monopolies.

So we're stuck, until new technology is rolled out that hasn't been denoted to one company.

The best way to manage this problem would be to say that:
1. The individual owns the line from their house to the street (it is managed by their provider).
2. Any provider can run cables on the street (they must share access to telephone polls etc since they get a right of way from the government they must share.

The key is to always keep things free and competitive and not have bureaucrats making deals that hurt everyone in the long run.
There are multiple competing cell networks because it's relatively inexpensive to set up a cell site, compared to running wires to everyone's house in the same area.

If this wasn't the case, you'd have a dozen pairs of copper phone wires and as many cable TV coax lines running into your house, all by different companies -- those industries have existed for far longer than the Internet has, and have traditionally been ridiculously profitable. That you don't have more than one telephone line and one cable line is a strong indication that last-mile infrastructure is a natural monopoly. Whoever gets to your house first basically owns you.
Since each company has unique needs, I actually think it's a horrible idea to try to design one piece of software that works for everyone. You'll end up with SharePoint.

With ShopTalk, we're trying to solve just one (very important) piece of the puzzle: real-time communication. We don't want to own the group, though, as the article says. Since most organizations have some sort of LDAP server (MS Active Directory being the most common), we'll be rolling out LDAP integration soon, so that you only have to add/remove/update users in one place and they only have to remember one password. SSO ftw.