skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
* 15" Macbook Pro, 4GB, 10.4.8 (waiting for 10.5.3 before upgrading).
* Quicksilver (one of the big reasons I switched to Mac in the first place)
* IntelliJ IDEA for Java backend stuff (imho, the best code virtuoso tool out there bar none; once you get used to leveraging all the functionality, you will feel crippled in any other environment).
* iTerm for terminal needs
* Journler (perfect for note taking and keeping interesting reference web pages locally searchable)
* VMware Fusion for Windows development stuff
* NetNewsWire to consume my daily news fix efficiently
Biometrics screening for Olympics workers
Agreed. I'd add linear lookups to that list since they easily lead to n^2 when someone comes along later on and puts your lookup inside a loop of their own.
Yahoo! gets upper hand in Microsoft fight
you complain "sucks balls" is anti-gay, but you call a bad article "childish". is that term not informed by anti-child culture?
Google's Glazer Touts Carr, Cloud
Even if Microsoft buys Yahoo it won’t affect Google’s dominance
Macbook pro modding: resurrection of the rainbow apple
Ask YC: Is it never too early to invite press coverage for a startup?
We're launching our private alpha next week, and I've been in touch with journalists and bloggers for a while now. Of course, everyone wants 'an early look', but is it ever too early for press? We believe in releasing early and releasing often, but am worried about showing a site that's too raw to a prominent blogger/journalist. First impressions count for a lot. What were your experiences like?
Lenovo introduces its new thin Thinkpad X300
found this: http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4066811/iPhone_SDK

People are saying it's legitimate, but I would exercise some caution.
A developer can really get screwed jumping into someone else's idea on faith. If you really believe in your idea then pay to outsource a prototype, then (since you are not a developer) show you have the business chops to bring it all together. Once you do, developers for your idea will be a dime a dozen.
My guess is that tech companies like recent grads because they can get away with paying less ("interns welcome!"), and also the employee is usually not married and doesn't have kids, so they can spend a lot of extra hours on the job.
West Coast Startups, East Coast Cash
> Get yourself a new job

Not always so easy.
For web work: fedora 8, vim php

For desktop app work: netbeans, java (!) either winxp or fedora 8

For mathematical work: Mathematica + win xp

For fooling around learning new stuff: fedora 8 + python
Yes. You will be able to play around with the Animator before you register (except in the private beta). However, unlike Minivid, you will not be able to save or publish until you have registered.
I would suggest that hackers and engineers need not be mutually exclusive. One could assume either role, depending on the needs of the situation.
Back in the day, WebObjects Builder was like Interface Builder for the web. But now you have to use Eclipse for WebObjects development and NeXT/Apple's WebObjects tools are no longer being developed.
Let's say you have two companies. It costs company A 500 dollars per ton of emissions eliminated. It costs company B 100 dollars per ton of emissions eliminated.

Under a cap-and-trade system, company A can pay company B to reduce its emissions twice as much. This way you reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide pollution by the same amount as creating a tax would, but it is much more economically efficient.

My understanding is that this doesn't work under a carbon tax. Again though, the environment/economics aren't really my areas of expertise.
True, for any given project you need some of both. The whole post made so much sense when I was dealing in the abstract, but when I got to the end and had to tie it to development, I realized I had painted myself into a corner. I'll go back and clarify.

Thanks!

EDIT: I expanded the last paragraph to clarify that point. I think it makes more sense now.
Germane and appropriate! After all, one of the biggest differences between Bush and Putin is their attitude towards aggressive wars against Muslims who commit acts of terrorism!
Articles like this need to be written because common sense isn't common. It seems obvious to us not to buy too much for a business, but many businesses have gone under by going too far too fast. They buy too much equipment, far more than they need and run out of cash.

I've seen software projects crippled because the managers wanted to optimize for a later that never would happen. Coders often make code work, then make the code better. Others don't always seem to get that concept.
Did you know that there are companies that use VBA, Microsoft Excel's extension language, for floating point numerical computations, in real life, not as a joke?

Did you know there are companies that make tens of thousands of dollars a year off the results of these computations?

How do I know this? I WORK AT ONE, OH GOD screams like Sam Kinison
Selenium and WATIR and Firewatir.

On Windows I rigged up something to walk a site and take screen shots of each page so I could do a quick visual scan.
Wonderful idea, but some of code I sampled is not what I would define as literate. For example, the singly linked list implemented in C has a linear time remove operation. While this operation is inherently linear with a singly linked list (you must find the previous node), you're not required to provide it as part of the interface. Personally, I think you shouldn't provide inherently inefficient operations in the interface to a data structure. That a particular operation is not implemented should be a hint to users that this is not the data structure they are looking for. Yes, I'm nitpicking, but this is supposed to be literate code, not just correct code.

And yes, I know, it's a wiki, so I can contribute, not just criticize.
I'm a graduate student in mathematics.

This article made me cry. Really powerful.
Why the wait til 10.5.3?

I use Quicksilver on my Powerbook (running Tiger), but Spotlight is fast enough on the Intel iMac, running Leopard, I use at work that I removed Quicksilver from the system completely.
by "open", they meant open wallet.
Technorati sucks? Arnold Kim of MacRumors compiles traffic data for top blogs
We see 10x multiples in the low-return, low-risk financial space.
Yeah, I totally agree about the article. Not only is it almost content-free, the content it does have is misguided. It's particularly ironic that the interweb flamed Microsoft for originally planning to make IE8's rendering conservative by default. Now that it is (more) standards-compliant and will hence break some pages that depend on the quirks of old IE versions, they get more abuse...
I always thought it ironic some of the biggest investment successes of the KPCB Java-fund were
companies that actually had little or nothing at all to do with Java which nonetheless rewarded the investors handsomely when they were subsequently bought or went public (albeit before the bubble burst).

Edit: KPMG -> KPCB. Thanks to myoung8 for pointing that out.
Slicehosting is great, but you need to do all the dirty work, like choose the OS, setup apache, do the security, etc.

I'm using MT's Grid and have had good luck, but you have to be on Grid Cluster 1- it seems like Cluster 2 is down every week.

Someone actually recommended http://asmallorange.com to me recently, but I have no experience with them.
God I've been waiting for this!

print "Thank you! "*1000000
Al Gore's Convenient IPO
Startup web 2.0 operations
The term 'Engineer' is so widely abused in many parts of the world (such as the UK, where I live) that I may be msinterpreting your use, apologies if I am.

I believe there's a fundamental reason there's distance between the two. I'm on to my second degree in Engineering at the moment but I remember back in my undergraduate days.

One thing you realise quickly when you're learning alongside mechanical, civil and electrical engineers is that if you get it wrong, people die. You can't afford to do quick solutions and fix it later. You have to get it right first time or lives could be at stake.

You could kill several people with any one of the dozen or so robots we have downstairs and poorly written software. When you realise that, it changes the way you program.
Do we actually know it didn't turn out great?

Beyond the fact that Java is the de facto language to work in, I'd wager that KP made an excellent return.
http://codepad.org/uo5BeNRh
Oh cool, interesting, thanks. Say the idea entailed having a portal, which, in a first cut, would take uploaded xml files, parse them into business objects, process these into some other form, and output them into say, excel? So, input xml --> parse --> compute --> output excel to the user. Could I pay like some India company to whip up a prototype portal for this on the cheap? Like in the range of 1 or 2 K ? Thanks much.
Have you looked around at what's going on at your college? Many good open source projects start out as research projects, some of which will even pay you a little to help them out.

If this is just for fun and self-improvement, just keep looking around until you find a team that seems to appreciate that. Google SoC may be a good start.

If you're thinking of pursuing a software career, I'd recommend considering projects that would help you in whatever kind of work you do later on. For example if databases are your thing, take a look at PostgreSQL or sqlite3. If you're into server-side web infrastructure, consider joining a project like memcached or squid, etc.
Very impressive. It almost makes me want to buy an iphone.
It was my understanding that to distribute your app through App Store (the ONLY way to publically distribute), you must pay the $99 per year, regardless of if you charge for your iPhone app or not. This is a bit lame if you ask me..
Press releases are best used when you have something ready for the masses to use. If what you have is ready for its beta then I would go ahead and get journalists involved, but if it's not ready for the average user, then I would hold off.

Of course if you can use the press to build public anticipation then it would be worth it. Just be careful not to let anything break.
I'd much rather have her bring home more bacon than, say, more sausage or more eggs. You can never have too much bacon.
It got ok returns, but only because they tossed the original plan to fund companies using Java, and just invested in the same kinds of companies KP would have anyway.
I'm about to use Silverlight in my current project.
It's KPCB. KPMG is an accounting firm.
The Jobs quote about Flash lite not being "up to par" with the iPhone is pretty much BS too.. The latest Flash Lite 3 is actually very robust and would cover just about all that is needed for a great iPhone + flash implementation.

I agree the real reasons for not doing so are based on ulterior motives. Apple is greedy and doesnt want Adobe playing in their walled garden.
small underpowered laptop, openbsd, dwm, newlisp, vim, javascript, jquery-ui, flot, lighttpd, hg, ssh, cron
ubuntu+ff+ie4linux+opera+kazehakaze+jquery for testing
mini+leopard+safari for testing
deprecated:freebsd,python,php,sqlite,mysqlite,darcs,matlab,R

my mini and desktop are far more powerful than my 450mhz 128mb fujitsu laptop; i might get an eeepc tho, only iff openbsd can run all the hardwares

my iBookG4 broke last year, it's weird but i didn't miss her that much
ha, good luck with that. you will really need it.
And hopefully a quicker way to get glacially slow, complacent IT departments (and the enterprise vendors they use) to use web standards.

So some pages break because the site was IE-only. Nothing like a swamped help desk to get the IT department up and moving.
What's the point? It's only 6 months old.....
There is probably little basis to draw any conclusions from one data point. Besides, this focuses on the wrong thing - what they aren't realizing is that apple doesn't need 100MM to boost development. Apple just provided a way for any smart person with an idea to place his/her product in front of every iphone user.

Bring on the naysayers. I see huge opportunity (VC funded or otherwise).
How do you like it so far? What led to the decision?....just curious.
It's true that you must pay $99, even if you're developing freeware. I don't know if it's per year, but probably.

Part of the cost is for the encrypted certificate that apps need to be signed with in order to legitimately run on the iPhone. This has always been the case.

It also allows Apple to know which developer is responsible for an app. So if your iPhone app ends up being malicious, Apple knows who is responsible.
The 15th Richest Man in Australia would beat you up for that one....
"He started his Linfox company in 1956 with 1 truck. [6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Fox

I saw his interview with Andrew Denton a few months ago.. interesting guy - very much a working class straight shooter who's done well for himself..

*That wikipedia article has about 3 mentions of "suspicious fires".. It's really piqued my interest - but I probably should get back to coding..
I don't know the cost... but I do know that parsing xml and outputting excel is not all that sophisticated. However you'll need a more concrete application of the process to get some bytes built. Hit craigslist software developers up for some quotes to get a better idea of what you need to move forward (dont hire anyone yet!). And start reading: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/11/09/rexml-processing-xml-in-...

Good luck.
In startup world, the difference is:

Hacker: beta is out the door in a month, features get tacked on every 2 days in the middle of the night, million users in a year, $100M exit in 18 months, anyone who sees the code would cry.

Engineer: can't release the beta because no proper QA cycle, no features can be released until the beta code base has been refactored with proper unit tests, less than 2000 private beta users after a year, $10M series B round after 18 months to keep the company afloat, everyone cries when they see their hacker competitors' new automobiles
Yes, it's a very very nice article. Actually, you put it better: very, very powerful.
Graphing Social Patterns Recap
Why don't they just close the comments? It seems a lot easier to do like Steve Pavlina, that only allows trackbacks, not comments.
Interesting! Thanks, but I also got a chance to get into the line on the Apple site itself. So, all is well now.
iPhone 2.0: Enterprise Ready. Developer Ready.
In Europe, Central Banking Is Different
"... Is this a PR hit? ..."

I'd say yes. I had a quick peek at the types of stories on RRW and they follow the familiar pattern

- subject

- mild discussion of article

- quick summary

- plug

Also if you check the founders about page [0] you can see there is a link to a IR marketing company, nooked. So there is a fair chance the articles are mostly suggested themes from editorial to the writers directly from paying client. Of course this is all conjecture but it looks like a money trail of sorts - reader to article, article to writer, writer to founder - founder to marketing company.

[0] About ~ http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_readwriteweb.php
"... the best thing is that there is no deadline ..."

That's the worst. No deadline, no incentive to produce a product.
LLC's don't have a residency requirement generally, I believe
I'm not sure where you've been interviewing, but from my observation, a newly-minted CS grad is significantly more likely to get an interview for a programming job than an autodidact with a couple of years' experience, at least at most larger companies. If you don't get an interview, it's tough to get hired.

It's worth remembering that someone has to pick your resume from the pile before you ever get in the door to have your intelligence tested. For a recruiter or HR person without a strong technical background, the name of an institution where an applicant earned their degree jumps out a lot more immediately than tidbits like "taught myself Ruby and wrote a point-of-sale system" or "built RPC bridge between Java and Common Lisp for desktop GUI apps."

Now, if the folks screening resumes are themselves hackers, your screening process will make selections based on much more useful criteria.
Pre 0.8.1 there was no backtick and it was all manual AST afaict. 0.8.1 has [| |] which is similar to ` I believe. See second link above. Not sure about hygiene though, I guess not.
Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life (video)
Delphi - I'm all alone :-(
I wonder if you've exhausted all resources. At last count, there are something on the order of 400,000 cracked iPhones in China now.
Do small businesses create more jobs? (pdf)
Yep, I'm in the same boat as you - "almost" ;) All I'm waiting for is the hardware upgrade announcement (WiMax, 3G).
There are lots of great Java companies at the moment (JetBrains, JBoss, Atlassian, ...). However investing in a particular company just because it uses certain technology or doesn't makes no sense to me.
"... What is your preferable development environment? ..."

Normal gnu setup ...

- ubuntu64, gnome, vim, bash, xterm, & git

- various langs - python, perl, Js, sql, c & basic LAMP stack.

- browser with firebug, dom inspector, html validator, js debugger, noscript

- commodity desktop hardware + 22" + good speakers.
I couldn't agree more. Needing to scale up is a GOOD problem to have. Many startups don't make it to that stage. Plan for the future (ie have room, and ways to get money for more servers), but don't live in the future (don't grow a server farm from day 1).
Also consider the tax implications and the biggest payday goes to the Department of the Treasury. So, even though there was a transfer in asset categories, it wasn’t one-for-one.
OS X, Firebug, TextMate, Git. JavaScript, Python, Io, Arc.
We Need a Body
Wait, did they lose all the money they put into the fund? They tried something, it didn't exactly work the first time around, and are probably making some changes to try again. (2nd? 3rd?). Why is this a bad thing?
I find it interesting that you talk about how engineers can be creative, but then end the piece with an comment that engineering "feeds my family", as if it were an otherwise shameful thing to be doing.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. In any case, sometimes I'm a hacker, sometimes I'm an engineer...but I get really annoyed when people think I should act a certain way because of my current job title.
Engadget's iPhone SDK coverage
"... the python-to-javascript conversion, which appears to be based on : py2js ..."

I like the way py2js uses pure python and lets you do the rest. Pyxer requires Cherrypy for the server.
I think that the definition still works - you just need to go farther down the scale towards pure engineering, and you start running into things like anti-lock-brake sensor programming, bridge design, refinery design, etc. The constraint "no failure whatsoever" is a pretty hard constraint, and while it may limit a lot of options and take more time and care, it would let you pursue perfection and responsibility to a degree not possible with regular business apps.
I used to Delphi, if that makes you feel any better.
Where's the simple self-health-monitoring startup?
Yeah, the job title things was just an excuse to introduce the continuum - I purposely picked engineer instead of software engineer in the rest of the post so I could talk about in terms of actions instead of titles.

About the "feed my family" - when you're on a forum like this one where so many of the people are young single guys sacrificing all to follow the billionaire/world domination dream, it's not sexy to say you make decent money fixing bugs for an app that helps gazillion dollar companies make more money. I get to do some cool stuff (that I probably wouldn't be doing in my own projects) and facing different constraints, and I do it while doing a good job providing for my wife and kids. No shame in it at all, it's just atypical for Hacker News.
Eclipse (PDT/Flex Builder) + Text Mate + Aqua Data Studio + PostgresqlMaestro + nano (eat it vi! shove your c-h-ch-x-f-u-ch-k-sh-i-t emacs!) + iTerm + SubEthaEdit (for pair programming)
You can check out what their open version does. [0] It looks like the product allows you to grab bits of information from various document sources on the web easily [1] into a db ready for various reports. Is there merit in creating a Data agency that you can subscribe to which parse known sites for info & creates an rss feed?

[0] With a download of 165MB of steaming Java ~ http://openkapow.com

[1] You know it's easy because it's point & click
Nice! Those videos are awesome. CMU RI = made of win.

Another interesting project they've got going (which seems like it might be related) is their work on modular robots using electromagnetics or static charges. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e44hA6IBtkA (Link goes to a short New Scientist clip regarding the project.)
Mixing metaphors from the post a little bit, but yes, in the startup world, if you take time to engineer before you have a proven product, you'll get squashed. On the other hand, with a proven and successful product, if it's poorly engineered, it will be too expensive to scale or modify. Different situations, different priorities.
Can we all stop pretending software development is engineering? For chrissakes.

We don't build bridges, we make valuable things people will give us money for. We solve problems. We respond to rapidly changing, conflicting requirements.

How many suspension bridge projects have turned into skyscraper construction projects over the course of two months? Now, how many web startups have radically changed their idea? Flickr started as an online game, you know.

I'm extremely suspicious of anyone who calls themselves a "software engineer."
There aren't many jobs, but there are even fewer developers (especially experts). Obviously, Flash is on the other end of the spectrum.

I've done a couple of Silverlight projects and they've been quite lucrative due to the short supply of Silverlight-educated developers. If you know Silverlight well and are looking for work, let me know -- I've had to turn down work many times.
summary: small establishments and firms do create more jobs, but the effect isn't as much as is thought. Also, this relationship doesn't hold for manufacturing companies.
I tried to convey the idea that it was a continuum between hacking and engineering. "Software engineering" is a lot closer to hacking than it is to hard engineering like chemical, aeronautical, or civil. It doesn't have the extreme safety requirements of building a bridge or a rocket booster, but it does have constraints on development cost, time, and performance that you can blissfully ignore in exploratory hacking.
IE 8 + Google maps = ...
Ha! But can it ray trace?
Thanks, would have upvoted this.

nm, Craig Venter's company is private. Celera fired him in 2002.

from the talk: "We think we'll have the first fourth generation fuels in 18 months."
I understand. I'm not sure why that caught my eye, but if I had to guess, it's because it was the one bit of wishy-washy-ness in otherwise solid writing.

I was right there with you on the Ikea metaphor, and thought you were doing a great job of defending the creativity of the lowly engineer, but then you seemed to go apologetic at the end. I hope you don't think I'm arrogant, if I suggest that you cut that bit out. ;-)
USA state-by-state per-capita Walmart vs. Starbucks
Apple has always had issues with non-quick-time video formats and codecs. Competing video formats were second class citizens for years. I learned this the hard way studying graphics and animation on Macs for a couple of years.

It doesn't surprise me that Jobs is doing this with the IPhone as well.
Note that this doesn’t mean that an engineer is any less creative than a hacker. On the contrary, the constraints provided by the engineering problem can provoke more creative and original thinking than that of the original invention.

Take a look at that quote and then read this article: http://alistapart.com/articles/oncreativity

Hacking is not necessarily a very creative endeavor. Instead it is more inspiring.