skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure why everyone's assuming that this office cost fabulous amounts of money. Good designers can make tight budgets go far. The only really expensive piece I see in this office is the stone table - but if they spent wisely on the rest, why not allow themselves one big expense?

I mean, their desks are from Ikea for crap's sake! If they were looking to throw money out the window, they wouldn't have bought desks from Ikea.
Are these the workspaces for "regular" Twitter employees?

http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/...

Seems like you'd be right on top of each other.
That story is hilarious, thanks for sharing!
The Social Web is Changing Documentation
I used to turn those around and make it in to: how about I give you a 30% discount on what I'll charge everybody else for the package if I believe it has the market potential you cite. Several pretty good lines of business resulted from that (webvod, webpay), and the respective customers went overboard to help spec 'their' package.

You can't blame a guy for trying, it is up to you as a front line contact to try to negotiate the best deal, declining them outright is not always the best course of action.
Warcraft's Back End: 10 Data Centers, 75,000 Cores
"and at some point the dude that’s throwing all the blows get’s tired"

annnnnd....that's where the analogy broke down. I thought it was a bit disjointed. All that talk of strong abs was unnecessary. But strip out the attempt at clever humor and you have an important message, I think.
I think I would quickly tire of working in that space.
Making sure people are matched to jobs they're good at and they like is something that society values. Or would you prefer that your career was chosen by a central committee?
Dilbert lives in a cube farm in a large corporation. Neither he nor his co-workers are entrepreneurs. Dilbert rings true because so many people live in cube farms and many entrepreneurs have escaped cube farms. Based on your other comments, it appears you live in or escaped from a cube farm yourself.

Your comment "people that made it big in business" is telling... at the point someone has made it big in business, their business is likely to be big and they are not likely an entrepreneur any more.
This is the one we chose, we had several options from different designers at Crowdspring. You can give feedback on various designs that people can adjust until your deadline is reached.

http://assets3.sportspyder.com/images/common/logo_hi.png
Blogspam. Original story is here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10404937-71.html?part=rss&...
Well that settles it then - you can name some therefore you must be right. Silly article.
But we're in Bubble 2.0!
Rescission Offers: Five Tips for Entrepreneurs
Ask HN: How to traverse a transitive closure tree in preorder?
Hi

I'm working on a transitive closure tree implementation. I seem to have managed to implement everything else I need except a way to traverse the tree in preorder.

I've been using http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/sql-antipatterns-strike-back from page 68 as a reference for the build.

Currently I use depth to order the descendant call, which gives me a very quick level order result.

Anyone got any idea how to run a preorder traversal on this type of data structure?
You are right about markets, that's why I said life. What I meant was that these guys are like rich kids who get to spend daddy's (VC) money on expensive toys. Why? Because they built a "protocol". I wonder if anyone ever made money on an information protocol.

As far as working there is concerned, an employer with no revenue and $150M in debt doesn't sound very promising. Sooner than later, the hollow art decor office must come to haunt some people.
It also shows they're spending more energy/thought into what people think, rather than putting that effort into their product.

How many new features has twitter added in the last year?

How about they spend the effort adding [share video] [share picture] on the web interface to twitter? How about allowing more than 140 characters and creating a trimmed version for the 7 people using SMS (Or send as multiple messages).
The DJ stuff was left over from the previous tenant.
Hi Andrew!

Regarding your 3 points:

1. This is a bug and we are looking into it.

2. The reasoning behind the new tabs and the pop-up up-loader is this:

Albums open in new tabs: we'll introduce support for music. You might want to listen to some music while looking at some pictures or working on another album.

Up-loader Pop-up: you can have multiple files uploading at once even if you are browsing other sites.

However I understand your confusion. We are working on a better flow.

3. Invitation box: It is hard to find. We need to make it easier for the user. We are also working on a solution so the user does not have to remember the users twitter handle name.

Thanks so much for your input!
I have deep inroads and personal connections into the design industry, and it recently cost me $1500 to get a preliminary, temporary identity done, not including any printing costs or anything. That's a rock bottom price for good work.
Does anyone else get annoyed when an article's content is primarily from another article and that article doesn't even get a link?

Or in this case is embedded in one word in a paragraph.
Tumblr just broke into the Top 100
Sadly the answer to "how are we going to answer the iphone" is not anything surprising or interesting - the answer is usually - "lets make our own iphone a-like and customers will buy it because they don't want to buy Apple or because they are tied to a different network" and I think that is what the article is getting at.

if the answer was: "ok people like small gadgets that are connected (for example iphones and netbooks). Let us see what we can come up with" - then perhaps we would see something better.
It looks just like a logo you paid $400 to crowdspring for. Uncanny!
Really interesting, but where / how is the user's session data stored? client side or server side?

A small amount of additional detail on the Clojure Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...

The author mentions he uses the continuation monad.
Ask HN: Dealing with mental spillage
I don't actually work 15 hours a day. But I can easily spend around that time thinking about my startup, especially when I am not working on it(ie. in class; while hanging out with friends).

This is not just about startups. When I am doing something else that I really dig, I think about it all day. And if my love for that thing is greater than my startup, I can be working on my startup and day dreaming about the other thing. Because of this, when I am doing a startup I am hesitant to get involved with any activity that might make me fall in love with it(and thus pull me away from my startup)=)

Does anyone else work in this obsessive way? If so, what's your perspective on the mental spillage between going from doing something you really like to something else?
I'd personally prefer this sort of link not be posted here. To me it seems exactly the sort of thing that Paul's referred to as dangerous in the past: amusing, but with no actual meat.
> Based on your other comments, it appears you live in or escaped from a cube farm yourself.

Hilarious :) Would you mind citing the comments that gave you the impression I live in or have escaped from a cube farm ?

> at the point someone has made it big in business, their business is likely to be big and they are not likely an entrepreneur any more.

So, someone who has a large business is not an entrepreneur ?
Iraq War's Manhattan Project- information warfare on the battlefield
Google is just a website the way a library is just a room full of broken trees.
Am I the only one who feels a little ... wrong reading these?

This isn't a leak in the usual "whisteblower" sense of the word.

Instead it's a leak of communication between individuals that was intended to be private.

If someone "leaked" emails from Gmail or Facebook, I think most of us would be angry about it and feel as if some sort of privacy was violated. So why do we feel different about this - because these messages are eight years old, or because it's wikileaks?
Those little stools? $1000 a piece. Extrapolate from there.
I agree. This is fit for reddit, but don't really think it belongs here
Porn Facebook hack hits Firefox
Bob Woodward was going around talking about a Manhattan Project like breakthrough that was responsible for Iraq beginning to improve, but never said what it was.

From reading this article, it sounds like the NSA was identifying imminent insurgent attacks in real-time, and then feeding fake information to lead those attackers into traps so we could drop a bomb on them. It'll be interesting to read the full story when the inevitable books are written about it.
Python may not be your best bet for raw video processing at acceptable frame rates. I'd suggest C or C++.
Getting to the Heart of the Linux Kernel
Who would leave that! Aw.
maybe, but he's happy with it.
Yeah, I was thinking the same - not a perfect cross section, but the Black and white way it's distributed makes it very telling.
Using "terrible" to describe Java is precisely what I meant by dumping on Java.

A terrible language is a useless language; something not worth using; terribly broken; more trouble than its worth. Just the sheer volume of quality work by non-commercial open source developers provides a resounding rejection of that notion.

Java is an imperfect, perhaps flawed (but not deeply) language. But I guess that would find it in good company with many great languages out there.

And yes, The JVM is an impressive technology. (And do note that it is the Java virtual machine and not the Sun Virtual Machine, given that (the latest welcomed opcode developments notwithstanding) it is a virtual machine designed and developed to provide support for the language that informs its computational model.)
Rambus EU Settlement Appears Near
Erlang is now on Github (official repo)
It is a hard and fast rule of online games that no matter how the game is designed, players will find holes in the game design to abuse it. IMO the only good way to deal with this is to build the game from the ground up with the assumption that players should be allowed to abuse most core aspects of the game.

EVE Online did this pretty well and to date the developers have continued to encourage all kinds of cheesy tactics. Of course, even they have their limits, and will ban people for a few extreme abuses, but scamming, griefing, and even suiciding into newbies in secure areas is all perfectly fine.

If you try to lock down the game and prevent players from doing anything except what the developers intended, the game will usually end up being rather uninteresting.
Maybe just a one-time mention of the originating blog.
They wont be using this internally yet, but it will be updated daily I believe
I think you misunderstood me. I mention Google just to show them an example that a website can be much more complex beyond its web UI. Non-tech people usually have difficulty in seeing the difference between a highly complex webapp and a static web page.
I absolutely agree with you. I knew a very smart guy who went out to start his own company and you could see the failure coming a mile away. He thought because he was smarter than most at some things, he was smarter than everyone at everything. Bankruptcy quickly ensued. The people who don't see how important this is are the ones who can't play well with others.

This is not disproved by assholes becoming successful. One of the common traits of ruthless people is fierce loyalty to a small group of people. If you can't create that core of people to trust, delegate, get advice from, you can not reach the higher level.
I'm inclined to believe that lack of common sense is an exception and not the rule among geniuses, despite popular beliefs, but I could be wrong.
Care to offer a few counterexamples?
Seems to be a trend lately.
It's not that they're wrong so much as that they're incomplete. The author has a very CRUDscreen/.NET/VisualStudio-oriented worldview, and his tips apply to that but probably won't be applicable generally. If you're working at Google, for example, an ORM is probably the last thing you'll reach for. And if you're working in an agile web-shop with RoR, generics are utterly useless.
All it really needed was an http auth logout button years ago. Http auth has built in MD5 hashing too so sniffing is harder (though some auto salting would help).
I suppose it's a stretch, but there is the implied point of many people seeming to think that the software 'does all the work', in a sense. You see it all over the place, too - how many old-school rock fans believe that electronic musicians are talentless because "it's all done on the computer"?
Rinse and Repeat with TDD
Well, they have to catch up to Facebook's overdoneness.

http://www.contemporist.com/2009/10/28/facebook-headquarters...
Like it or not, Steve Jobs is a trendsetter for the electronics industry, and the strategy of aping his successes generally tends to work out well for other players. For example, if it weren't for large, established companies knocking off whatever Apple is doing, Windows wouldn't exist.
Anyone have a good experience with http://99designs.com/ ?

It has a "contest" model and I am leaning towards trying it out ($39 is not recoverable if the contest is a disaster).
Saks, Microsoft Team Up on Holiday “Windows”
At half the resolution this is running at though, and the Flash does benefit from quite a speed up if you knock down the viewport size.
> It all looks and smells...of the Aerons of the late 1990s.

I'll admit that ragged on all the Aeron-acquiring startups back in '97-99, too. Then I bought one (second-hand, of course) for my home office last year, and discovered that, much to my surprise, Joel's arguments are actually sound: I can work for more hours, with better focus/less discomfort, in a really nice office chair.

Ergonomics aren't just faddish indulgence -- they can really make a difference.

Now, a DJ booth, and hand-rolled rattan bench cushions...those are faddish indulgence. (I'm still jealous, of course.)
marketing gone wrong; check the twitter stream (#holidaywindows)
Agreeing a coin toss remotely
I've just had reason to use this, so I thought I'd share it here. You can find similar stuff, and generalisations, all over the web, but I've put it here so you can read and discard, or read and research, as you choose.

Suppose you and I need to toss a coin, but we're separated physically and can only communicate by phone or email. How can we do that?

Obviously I can toss, you can call, and I can tell you whether you win or lose, but you might not trust me. How can we add some verification?

Simple. I toss the coin and write the sentence "HEADwibblewibblerandomrandomXX$&*HmmWhat?" into a file, where the random stuff is actually random. I then compute a hash such as sha-256 or similar, and send that to you.

Now you call heads or tails, and tell me. If you win then there's unlikely to be an argument, but if you lose I can "prove" it by sending you the original sentence for you to hash and compare.

So there you are, remote coin tossing. Sadly, I can't tell you why I needed it, but it was rather useful.
The problem with this approach is that it opens up a good angle for your competitors to attack you on compatibility grounds. They can tell your client that they don't charge anything extra for IE6 compatibility, leaving you explaining that either they are charging them but that it's a hidden cost, or that their sites are so crappy and outdated that they work fine in IE6 from the get-go.
I'm on the fence about it. I'm always looking for good analogies to explain what I do and how I do it to clients, family, friends, etc...
Why so much 'hate' for Reddit and/or Reddit users around here? I'm just curious
Book Review: The Book of Inkscape
The dark colours and lack of lighting would make that a depressing office to work in.
Great... but does it work?
I've talked to too many people and am one of the most vocal critics of the 'spec work' model.

Asking someone to complete work for the chance of payment is downright evil in my book. I view it as the pyramid scheme of the design world.

Best thing to do is look at other contests, find a designer you like and contract them.

http://no-spec.com/
there are a few reasons - not all of them individually convincing, granted, why this might be viewed as OK:

- public interest (not voyeurism, but clear relevance to major international consequences, and a mass casualty incident)
- as real, instant and broad a reaction as you might get, to a major incident. unfiltered and true (and resistant to network overloading unlike most other systems that day). there's interest and value in seeing that and learning a bit about the pager-using mob, no?
- i don't want to get into the debate about the value of indulging conspiracy theorists, as I simply don't know which way the evidence points on the utility of that - noise v small chance they're right
- it was more than 8 years ago. the chances that geeks poring through logs of messages limited to <200 characters (no idea what the real limit was) will somehow have effects on these persons lives is limited - existent, but should be weighed against upsides

we have to wait and see what the effects will actually be - either way, it's a very good test case to see what the impact of something like this can be, and whether it ought to be controlled.

I wonder if a tiresome 'national security' angle will be raised - giving terrorists insights into reaction times, etc... weak, imho.

I do feel sorry for numbers and email addresses released here that will henceforth get spammed.
I thought this was a great way to do some peer 2 peer file sharing... Sort-of like filesovermiles.com but native in the browser...
This post seems to interchange between referencing WoW and Blizzard's "gaming operations" a few times. I assume gaming operations would include Battle.net.

Is the data here strictly about WoW? I'm just curious...

EDIT: The linked Gamasutra article clarified it. These stats are for WoW only.
It isn't hate. HN and reddit have different goals and concentrations. Both have a place.
Ford is Retraining Automotive Engineers for Electric Car Work (with UDM)
Some interesting stats for you on the company you used: http://www.specwatch.info/raw-numbers3.html

I can't scream from the rooftops loud enough to stay away from spec work. Some bad things happening from it on all sides.
AT&T's network problems: The canary in the coal mine
(Could it perhaps have bought a "Remember Me" checkbox that remembers me?)

Cool, so I'm not the only one. I was beginning to think it was some browser configuration or that I'm on Linux and not OSX or something.
7 seconds is an age. LinuxBIOS gets to console in 3s
OK, this is better than nothing, but the fact that this is still a hack pisses me off. why iTunes can not continuously play podcasts bugs the hell out of me.
Giving away free products will always be labeled a "brilliant campaign."

The game that was given away free a few weeks ago, Radiohead, NIN.

I'd say the campaign would be brilliant if you could measure an increase in consumers after the campaign. I would just claim my free furniture and that's it. Not necessarily shop there any further.
News Corp. - If You de-Index Will They Still Come?
Blogspam. Original here:

http://mixergy.com/affordit-wil-schroter/
Customers suck.
Common Testing Mistakes
i don't see any overdose in this office. Some colorful walls, bird vinyls(except embedded ones) and ikea inspired simple furnishing shouldn't be such expensive.

I remember reading about ID software's office ( or j. carmakcs) back in bubble days where gigantic marbles allover the place, but i might be wrong with the company.
I don't think that's right. I think he just means "don't be an asshole", in the Bob Sutton sense. Introverts and extroverts alike can be this way.

http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/
Would you mind citing the comments that gave you the impression
I live in or have escaped from a cube farm?

You said you were a boss and appreciate Dilbert. Good predictors, but apparently not flawless. ;-)

So, someone who has a large business is not an entrepreneur?

That is not a disjoint set, but it is a very small set. The qualities spencerfry talks about, I associate with small businesses. Spencerfry (now) says this explicitly in a comment on his web page.
"Terrible" is a subjective description, so I don't think there's any inherent contradiction between you calling Java "imperfect" and "flawed", and smanek calling it "terrible".

Generally speaking, it's very difficult to compare programming languages objectively. What one person might think is a flaw, another might consider a feature.

That said, I'm personally inclined to agree with smanek. There are a lot of design decisions in Java's syntax that are, to put it kindly, rather bizarre and perhaps not particularly well thought through. "Terrible" would be the word I'd pick as well, were I asked what I thought of Java's syntax.
There's no history that's been imported. Just one commit. It isn't even what I'd call an official mirror, let alone an official repo.

Much more interesting would be a mailing list thread where they say what they're planning to do with their version control.
And before desks, they had... errr concrete floors (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0int-4)
Quake gave me a sense of direction when I was a teenager. Before that I had either walked very short distances or been driven everywhere. My sense of direction meant I could figure out that this street was parallel to that street etc. but it was not based on cardinal directions. When I started using a map during college was when my sense of north aligned with north.

In silicon valley it's interesting because people sometimes define north/south as parallel to the freeway north/south 101. It actually runs ~east/west where I am.
It's not just that it can be abused, though - every use of it is an abuse. Finally{} is not for decisions and manipulating values and program logic, it's for cleaning up resources.
The ability to give stuff away can make campaigns work. But is not a guarantee.
I play tabletop RPGs which could be considered fake achievement. The types I play however reward creativity and problem solving so I think they have merit.
It would be nice to have an integrated OpenID interface. The way it is now, OpenID is just too complicated for the average user.
getting to the heart of the linux kernel "development process" to be more precise...
It also looks like they still aren't releasing the test suite, which makes it very difficult for anyone outside Ericsson to contribute to the project.
i agree with mh_.

part of the reason why i love HN is because i don't have to expose myself to the ridiculous arguments that some people like to propose.

obviously i disagree with the andrewbostom.org's opinions.

i don't want that to affect perception of this comment, though. i don't see the logic in posting a political/religious article on HN. it offers nearly nothing to entrepreneurs or coders.

unless the entrepreneur is incredibly ingenious, i guess.
Dave Thomas (PragProg) Explains Ruby Metaprogramming (2007)
or plain math: n(n+1)/2
Top Must Have For a Start-up | Stanford Entrepreneurship Lecture [2001]
The brilliant part of it was making people tag their names into the Facebook profile's photos. You get those photos showing up in the Walls and news streams of contestants who then explain what they're doing to their 150+ friends who then tag themselves and share the promotion again.

Brilliant use of the tool to capitalize on network effects of Facebook.
"Don't start with 'solving a problem' because what you are really doing is polishing before you have a thing to polish."

This taken out of context would be all wrong. I never build anything that's not going to solve some core problem my users have. I think, though, that he means, "Don't start with solving a problem inherent to your, or a competitor's, product."