skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A dumb terminal session (or TightVNC, RDP, etc.) would suit for about half of what I do. The problem is that my productivity with the other half is compromised by being off-site.

As far as the bureaucracy goes, that is one of the pitfalls of working as a staff programmer in academia. The point of my post, however, is that many staff IT or programmer jobs are simply not compatible with the kind of working environment lepid0ptera describes, and I think this extends outside of IT or ERP style teams at large instutitions: my friends in the game or design industry frequently pull long shifts when trying to meet hard deadlines. This kind of environment is what is hostile to parenthood in general (not just mothers trying to take maternity leave).
Well a lot of the issues are in the refund. But it also says about 1000 were resolved.
How does using an electric heater instead of waste heat from electrical appliances reduce the use of fossil fuels? Same transport mechanism, same source, same efficiency.

The only way to reduce electricity consumption is improved insulation.

I agree with you if you have a wood-burning stove.
Does the future needs us?
Wondering what the current opinion is on this topic started by Bill Joy back in 2000.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html
Mikandi: The World's First Porn App Store for Android
Innovation is happening on the edges
I tried the axbo and it didn't work at all.
For my mother, repating to Pakistan was very easy. After the '01 recession, she had been looking for telecom work in the US for years, despite a PhD from MIT. Finally she sent her resume abroad and got immediate responses.

But she did hit issues with the opacity of government, which was even more of a problem with Pakistan than India, because she was there during the rule of a military dictatorship. The unfortunate thing is her program, which was establishing extensions of foreign universities for Pakistanis to get top-notch engineering degrees, was killed with democratic reform. No one would argue it was a bad program, but in Pakistan's cut-throat political environment, all of the opposition's ideas are bad.

It's easy to find articles about the crumbling American Emperium, and the vertical rise of new economies in the East, but that's overlooking how much America (and the West in general) has going for it, and how important some of those components are. The quality of a society is not directly proportional to the growth rate of the economy; government, social welfare and cultural attitudes also play important roles.

As much as we bitch about our government, it's an order of magnitude more established and stable than that of India and Pakistan. Corruption, while an issue, is eclipsed by the sort of problems you'd see in these countries. And from my experience, these two countries see social order in a very hierarchical experience; this is the exact opposite behavior to what is needed if we are to assume that the new economy consists of shrinking organization sizes and flattened management chains. These issues exist in China too, except in many ways they seem all the worse.

India, China et al. have a lot going for them, but this article reminded me that it's not all sunshine and roses, and there are still some significant hurdles to overcome. Based on my mother's experience, I don't think the issues associated with repating are simply because those returning are too Americanized - it is a product of many of these unforeseen positives that are so easy to overlook in an atmosphere of cynicism in the West.
My first reaction on reading this article was wondering whether it came from The Onion...
The LoseThos Operating System
The article isn't about going back. It's about the feudal culture in corporate india, and the way the feudal structure jeopardizes the future of the country.
Steve gave a good talk on the "Past, Present, and Future" of the Customer Development model at the San Francisco Lean-Startup-Circle meetup this month.

Video here: http://www.justin.tv/s/XMP0tQg/clip/8cb0037e984e6a1f

Slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-past-p...

It certainly is not a set-in-stone one-size fits all approach as many seem to believe but is very much in development itself.
Even though its about going back, in this case, its about how the feudal structure hinders the real growth. What good is to have good minds and not put them to use?
Fair. It depends on what bothers you, I suppose. Now that
I think about it, "A Thousand Deaths" was also pretty disturbing.

I suppose I shouldn't be so judgmental in my description. Whether you like or dislike those types of stories, they are good illustrations of why some people find Card's writing disturbing. Then again, some people like to be disturbed. I might go so far as to say that is the point of his stories in the first place.
This is why I feel so little sympathy for the newspaper industry's problems.

If every paper started charging for access to their website tomorrow, the only ones worth bothering with would be AP/Reuters, NYT, WaPo, the Economist, and WSJ. A handful of papers produce 90% of the worthwhile, original content. The hundreds of other papers published today add little to nothing of their own.
I used to be a huge user and advocate of ocaml, but the language is heavily constrained by the standard library, and the maintainers come from a pure research background so they aren't inclined to make it more practical.

For instance, there's no packages for http, json, or xml in the standard library.
The trouble with the Video Professor website is once you drill past the homepage you don't see anything about the $289.95.

Consider someone who arrives via deep link. To that person it appears as if all they are risking is $9.95 - even through checkout. They might click User Agreement during checkout but the only charge that reveals is...$9.95. If the visitor clicks into How it Works they will see the wrong price: $189.95. (Check for yourself: https://www.videoprofessor.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=shopping...). Only the skeptical and curious who arrive via deep link can know what happens after the 10 day trial, and even they will be overcharged by $100.

We can debate whether the product line is worth $289.95 but that is irrelevant to this issue of checkout fraud.
If you use a standard electric heater, like a bar heater, I agree with you.

Heat pumps can out-perform heaters (they seem to have >100% “efficiency”) by working in a different way. Rather than spending 1kWh to heat a room, you spend 1kWh to move 4kWh of heat from outside into the room.
It is worth remembering that feudal, mercurial, inconsistent, authoritarian are not simply individual problems but rather go together.

The hand-written offer given to Mr. Ayyadurai wasn't just an unprofessional act, it was act intended to put him between hope and doubt and thus reinforce the power of his superiors. This style of management by confusion and manipulation also exists in the worst western companies but it's clearly more common in India.

Oddly enough, it's worth remembering that the good part of bureaucracy is fixed rules which allow any member to know where they stand.
(off topic, but I think you mean corroborated :)
Are you sure you're talking about the maths subject GRE? Not the regular math section on the standard GRE?
This is awesome! Currently, though, it allows you to browse a listing of headlines, but that's a great place the start.

One feature that would make this tremendously more usful is just adding integration to the Python 'webbrowser' module to open the currently selected entry in the user's default browser. That might even be the only feature this needs :)

I'll be watching this!
Brush up on your calc.
The Internet has no Delete Button
Could you fix file modes, please? readme.txt file almost certainly doesn't need to be executable for anyone. (Just a minor issue.)
The typical startup that's struggling to find some sort of product/market fit would happily inherit the problems mentioned here. I don't think the lean startup model is supposed to be a smooth sail to success. It's just an efficient method for finding traction; there is no guarantee what happens (good or bad) from there on.
Everybody in this space make it up as they go along. No one really has a grand plan. Rupert, however, is making quite a bit of money in the process, unlike most of his competitors or critics.
Turkey wants to give each of its 70 million citizens an email address
It could be that many people have a yearning to work with and produce something tangible after all those years of working with abstract columns of numbers. I think we've discussed a similar psychological tendency amongst hackers before as well, in terms of the desire to create things.

After all, when given a Lego set most kids build something out of the bricks instead of just laying them out and counting them.
did I ever say you wouldn't...?
At the level of abstraction I would expect from a String object, the reverse of \r\n should be \n\r. Basically, you example is another encoding issue. I think strings should be free from any encoding concerns. Those should be handled when parsing/serializing.
Better video here:

http://steveblank.com/2009/11/23/customer-development-past-p...
Great job!
Guess I've got to find a way to hide my productivity decline now...
I'm not sure "Jack Welch's experience has expired" makes much sense either..
No it is accurate. You are only paying for the shipping and handling. That's why it's the only thing being shown on that page.

How many people would get hooked onto their wonderful product if they thought it costs 300 to begin with. That's why they get the trial, then decide they like their tutorials, and then possibly be willing to buy it at that price. But unfortunately no one has cared whether or not the video tutorials are actually good. If they are good, then it is not a scam.
I felt it hard to read this post with an accusatory finger constantly pointing in my face.

While I do agree with the point of the piece to an extent, I can't say I agree with the delivery. I found myself on the defensive even though I've taken college courses on design. I don't think an aggressive, elitist stance really ends up helping anything in this case.
Oh? I didn't know it was getting excluded!

Update: oops, I misread "executable" for "excluded". You can ignore the rest of this thread.
Ergh! Sure, some of these things are true, but some just reek of a stubborn refusal to do things the way the language intends for them to be done.

Note how instead of saying, "Ocaml doesn't have with-open-file or unwind-protect", he says, "Here's how you have to do with-open-file and unwind-protect in Ocaml". No! You do not go around trying to turn other languages into Lisp if you want to code in Lisp. If you want to code in Lisp, you code in Lisp.

Similarly, he just dismisses the syntax as "pretty much unreadable". Bollocks. The language syntax is fine. Sure, it's different from what most people are used to, unless said people have used SML or Haskell. But it's a decent synatx - yes, with it's own quirks and problems - which is most certainly not "unreadable".

"No Polymorphism; Cannot add an int to a float - need an explicit cast" - what he means to say is that it's a very strong-typed language. If you use the "O" part of "Ocaml" (Objective Caml", polymorphism exists and works.

Now, a lot of his points are valid, like the one about the standard library. But in general, I feel that he really discredits himself by his persistence in writing Lisp code in Ocaml. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

(Disclaimer: I've used Ocaml, but not to any grand extend. Maybe 10,000 lines of code written in it. Paradigm-wise, I'd have to say I might prefer Lisp, although I find that CL is slightly annoying often times.)
This article highlights something for me, I've recently started working in a large financial entity in London and. . . I have no idea what they actually do here, I have very basic understanding of trades and options/exotics etc, can anyone point me to a book or something that would give me a decent understanding?
@marketer - Too true. Wynn and I didn't like that either. I think it was just that he wasn't personally aware of that feature. I could ping them and get a more clear answer via email for you.
The author is naive and forgets one important detail: many "skeptics" are simply trying to muddle the debate. Think on how much the tobacco industry, the tetra-ethyl lead producers and other industries lobbied for years against serious research that threatened their interests.

The big problem is to understand if you're really convincing an engaging a skeptic or simply feeding a troll.
You just made me want to play Civilization -- one more time.
He said "executable". Is the executable flag set on readme.txt?
I guess you're not a Linux user? See under "Permissions" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system_permissions#Traditi... .
I work as a web analyst, so I have plenty of opportunity to see, quantitatively, just how important design is, and how often it's missing. Pretty but poorly-designed websites often under-perform by a factor of 10 compared to industry averages, for metrics as simple and basic as bounce rate or conversion rate. Just with exposure to some of the basic stumbling blocks I've seen sites trip on, I have enough domain-specific common sense to figure out about half of those questions.

I think the author exaggerates the divide between creativity and design, although not by much. I couldn't make a web site to save my life, because my creativity is zero, but when someone else makes one I have enough of a sense of design to know what they did wrong. So creativity is still necessary in design work.
I'm pretty sure someone's probably trying that since the dawn of religion. It's still hard to make the vast majority of people believe that (in different levels), even TODAY, though...
Oh sorry. "executable" not "excluded". I misread.

Sure, gonna fix them right now.

Update: done.
Oh, sorry. I misread. Yes, it's set. Going to remove it. (But I don't find it a big deal that it's set personally.)

Update: done.
The reply button. Learn it. Love it.
Opps. #imafool
I now babysit my daughter and hack on some Open Source projects. When she is playing she likes to have my attention, when I sit at the computer she would come and show that she wants that I take her on my hands, I can read Hacker News or something but usually I can do programming only when she is asleep which is now two times a day about 1/2 - 1 hour, and often she gets asleep when we are on the daily walk - then this 1/2 hour of my time is lost. Then there is feeding her and cooking for me and my partner, and cleaning, usually I can do some cooking when she is awake but it's not very effective work. Not much time is left, maybe in the evening.
How Well Do You Understand Design?
XML Transform in Ruby with Elegant Dress
Hi, thanks for the idea. I added this idea to TODO. :)
I'd make some gunpowder (charcoal, bovine poo and a couple of other easily found ingredients) and become a self-proclaimed god (with special effects and stuff). Then I'd teach my minions Klingon and we'd all be using a single language (with less than 6k words) today.
You can flag comments, if you go to that comment's page. PG, what do you think about having the "flag" button on the comment?
Apple Macintosh Marketing Story: Fact & Fiction
It's a decent idea in principle, but I'm not sure how well this would work in practice. I can think of two problems.

The first is distraction. When I am working on a difficult problem, it's true that I often need periods of inane distraction interspersed with periods of extreme focus. In theory, taking care of a child and hacking could be combined; where I go for walks or play video games now, I could be playing patty-cake. But those breaks need to occur when I intellectually need them, not when the baby needs them. When I am madly coding something I understand well, I very much need to avoid distraction. When I am mulling over something I don't understand, I very much need to embrace it. So I suspect this would not work well in practice.

A second problem arises from simple physical compromise. I am presently seven months pregnant, and--much as the admission grates on me--I have found my performance slipping throughout. Sometimes because I am tired, sometimes because I am forgetful, sometimes because I am more excited about the coming baby than the current project, sometimes because half a dozen random things are wrong with me physically and discomfort is . . . distracting. I had hoped to keep working at full capacity, and while I've kept working full time, I have to be honest: I haven't been as effective as I once was. Where I used to produce a couple brilliant ideas a day, now it's more like one or two a week. I don't see that improving just after the trauma of birth, during the subsequent hormonal adjustment, and what with the excitement and distraction of having a baby around.

Programming is an activity that depends so much on mental sharpness; where caffeine and sugar are performance-enhancing drugs, insomnia and strange hormones are remarkably destructive. On a bad day, I can spend 8 hours not-quite-achieving what should be half an hour's work. Mundane programming I can usually still do, but great hacks? Not so often anymore. Nor do I see them recurring with regularity for a while. No doubt about it, being a mother is a sacrifice intellectually. All indications are that it's well worth it, and I wouldn't do otherwise. But it strikes me as unrealistic to suggest that it's a light side-activity that one can casually combine with a serious commitment to work. Even very intellectual work.
Capitalism's Wicked Witch
Andy's thesis, "Creativity is not design," is pretty obvious. I'm not sure anyone ever defined creativity as design. What I think he means is, "Design is not creative," and I think that's pretty short-sighted.

Design is not art, it is, however, problem-solving, and being a good problem-solver requires a capacity to think creatively. Creative design doesn't mean ignoring accepted principles of hierarchy, spacing, etc. Design goes deeper than that. For example, think about the way that Google has implemented it's own cross-browser CSS button style. The button doesn't look very different, but Google designers were smart enough to know that the variety of default browser buttons detracted from their brand. Google designers (very creatively) devised a solution that is lightweight, accessible, looks the same across browsers, etc.
Even if men are less likely to take time off, the fact that they still can is a significant positive for women.
It's neat, but it only displays the top stories and there's no way to really read the stories? I think it's nifty, but not necessarily useful.
CISS: code-centered issue tracking
My understanding of the relationship: if you want to design something, you must optimise your solution under a set of constraints; creativity is one of those constraints.

With more creativity come more possible solutions. Then it depends on your ability whether you find a better solution, or get lost in distractions.
If you really have no idea about anything in finance, a good place to start would be "A Random Walk Down Wall-Street".

Edit: Sorry-- I forgot to say this is a book! It's by Burton Malkiel. (It's not particularly US-centric.)
"Creativity is not design," is pretty obvious

His other point is that design can be obvious to some people, but not others.
I watched the sessions where you judged. Some people thought you were harsh, but you were asking legitimate questions. Seatgeek was one, where you were asking about their algorithm. That's important stuff, especially when judging a startup. Some might feel startups on the stage there should not be put under the gun, but that's silly. If these are truly 50 of the best startups out there, they should be prepared for questions like this.
I'm a fan, but I mostly use C++ and Python these days. My counter to the complaints is that I could make a longer list of things that suck about any language out there.
"Note how instead of saying, "Ocaml doesn't have with-open-file or unwind-protect", he says, "Here's how you have to do with-open-file and unwind-protect in Ocaml". No! You do not go around trying to turn other languages into Lisp if you want to code in Lisp. If you want to code in Lisp, you code in Lisp."

What would be the OCaml solution for the problem that unwind-protect solves? In Haskell, I would use bracket, and appropriately the API documentation of bracket gives the definition of withFile as an example:

withFile name mode = bracket (openFile name mode) hClose

(see http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/Contr...)
Our Killer App: The Story of RedLaser in the App Store
Thanks for contributing. But it's not necessary to preface your submissions. We can tell by looking at your profile.
What the iPod tells us about the economic future: Added Value is going to be about design and execution. It's absolutely true that Apple products aren't composed of anything special. It's the particulars of how these things are put together and made to work together that holds the most value.

People who are still going over component lists, and insisting that Apple is just a ripoff because you can get the same ingredient list for less elsewhere just don't get the key idea. As our technology for producing stuff advances, even complex components are commoditized. So it's how everything fits together and works which will be the hard part with the big payoff.

American car manufacturers had to be schooled by Japanese companies in the last century. Apple is currently schooling Microsoft, and Microsoft is slowly learning. Apple doesn't quite get this when the scope of "how the system works" extends out to include he dynamics of developer communities. What they have with the iPhone and the developer community works better than what's come before, but it can certainly be beat.
I was co-lead organizer of the MIT Clean Energy Prize last year, a national biz plan competition with a $200k cash grand prize (and partner to the MIT 100K). We never thought ourselves capable of designing a competition where the winner was in any way assured of “making it”- the free market is the only force capable of determining that. But that wasn’t the point; the post is correct that the perceived ancillary benefits of forming a strong team, making deadlines, and meeting/facing potential customers and investors turn out to be what make the whole thing worth it (and not necessarily for the success of the business being pitched but for the skills built by the students). As pg implies, the judging is not "for real" since it's with OPM, but compare that to the usual indicators given at universities (grades) and it doesn't look so bad.

The vast majority of the teams realize this too, and the ones who don’t are not the ones who go far. Winning the grand prize is basically a bonus for the the team who gets it...

Is a b.p. competition for everyone? Probably not. I’d definitely prefer being a part of YC before winning the 100k (dreaming up a web app); YC community >> 80k. But they are not mutually exclusive and the b.p. application is only 2 pages and 10 slides.

And a big success who actually won such a competition? How about EnerNOC, a $600M public co that won the Dartmouth competition in 2002. They do load balancing for electric utilities (big customers go low-power during peak demand). Probably doing more good for the world then all the apps in the app store.