skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There was a pretty elegant post on how Python's coroutines can replace callback hell with almost-synchronous-looking async code on HN the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10220712

Wonder if something similar will catch on in the node ecosystem?
> Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it.

No, that's the point of representative government (which can be part of democratic society -- hence, representative democracy -- but is not essential to it.)

The point of democratic society is that society -- and government in particular -- should be responsive to the will of the people. One of the things the people frequently want, however, is not to spend all of their time dealing with issues of governance, so they often choose representative democracy as a mechanism for achieving that goal.
I don't understand your link. Are you saying Pinboard's new pricing policy sucks like a black hole?
Is the rendering process open, and what are they using for rendering the tiles? Mapnik?
ES6 has yield

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
Have you tried bluebird? It solved all my issues with async workflow in NodeJS, crazy-fast performance coupled with a very nice lodash-like API that makes working with data a breeze.
Despite all the naysayers I have kept with PHP and she's matured into a fine lady who doesn't let me down.
I can definitely accept that Rails is now somewhat old hat.

And agreed that the Rails 2 to 3 jump was (and still is for many codebases) a tricky and difficult path.

However, I'd argue that doing your 'startup' in [Rails/COBOL/PHP/Logo/Java] is probably a decent idea if you have good engineers who can build something stable relatively quickly. Technology is _rarely_ the problem in any given startup.

If scalability and speed is a problem, congratulations, you're a success.

Rails is still good at giving you the tools to build decent CRUD-ish apps pretty fast and deployment is thankfully a solved problem.

Rails is not the new hotness, but it's still great at getting prototypes out the door and can scale you a long way. I think I'm cool with that.

> our front end has gone from Prototype to jQuery to Coffeescript to Angular to React with major productivity improvements each time

Also rewriting your front-end four times doesn't seem that productive.
Great game, thanks!

One thing I noticed was after level 8 or so the sound started to stutter really badly.

FYI I'm using Firefox 40.0.2 on Arch Linux
The Web-Tracking Tipping Point
Current discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10235757
Embedding the Python Interpreter in a Qt Application
I have to admit, I have them memorized too. The original MOO is a game I still pull out and play every few years. I didn't like the direction taken by MOO2 and every damned 4X game made ever since. They became more complex, but without providing much additional strategic depth. Take, for example, buildings. They offer a labor intensive way to specialize the output of a planet. You can spend hours working out an optimal build queue and some games will even let you automate a queue. In MOO, you just set the sliders and move on to dealing with the strategic outcome that has on your empire.

It probably exists and I'm not even aware of it, but I'd love to see a 4X game that focuses on simplicity and strategy rather than micromanagement. Not every galactic empire game needs to come down to city planning!
How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up
Switching from Ruby, I used the Fiber pattern (await-defer) heavily in Node via node-fibers & synchronize.js which alleviated a lot of the pain.
Owning a website does not mean it funds 100% of your life or makes any money at all for that matter.
Ah, the myopic business school view of the world...

The second effect of surge pricing was to allocate rides to those that value them most. Figure 3
shows that, while the number of app openings increased dramatically, the number of actual
requests didn’t increase by as much. This came from riders who opened the app, saw that surge
pricing was in effect and decided to take an alternate form of transportation or chose to wait for
surge pricing to end. From an economic efficiency standpoint, this was highly beneficial
because those that ended up requesting a ride are those for which their outside option was worse,
leading them to value Uber more in that particular moment. The gap between the red and blue
line could be tentatively interpreted as a measure of this allocative efficiency.

Allow me to translate: people who couldn't afford surge pricing didn't take Uber, while those wealthy enough to be indifferent to price still did. Surge pricing is thus not as much a means to increase capacity as it is to get the huddled masses out of the way of the 1%.
I've often thought that financial discussions on Hacker News are about as accurate as the portrayal of electricity in Hollywood movies.
OBVIOUSLY a stupid idea

Continue shaming a 14 year old boy for doing something within their rights.

The only OBVIOUSLY stupid thing (/ person) is you suggesting that he shouldn't have done what he did because of a very wrong status quo.

Your analogy is nearly as dumb as you. More accurate is "if a kid loves cooking, should he bake cupcakes and bring it in for his classmates? YES."

Should a kid get arrested for bringing in cupcakes? Obviously not. And if there are assholes in the school who arrest kids who bake cupcakes? Well, they can suck it, and hopefully people don't sit around and let it happen without a response. #thanksobama You don't call kids who bring cupcakes to school stupid.

--

What you construe as "reality" and what you judge as stupid or smart adds nothing to the topic. If the intent of your post was to say "the status quo of conservative america sucks," you're saying something everyone knows. If you're saying (and this is what your text ends up conveying) "it's stupid to exercise your rights," this is the problem. You don't get to blame victims. Nowhere in your commentary are you saying the aggressors are responsible for changing course. You only say the kid should have changed course. You call him stupid for his actions. Do you yet see how that's shitty of you?
> since they might have easier time talking to Polish filmmakers about DRM-free release

Also because they've been publishing The Witcher games DRM-free for a while now, and probably have some good stats on how responsibly the Witcher fanbase deals with DRM-free releases.
which site do u use for your search?
One upside is clearly that it helps attract raw talent more easily with a hot/trendy stack, and to me, it's a more exciting adventure overall (more risky though).
You can also scale ruby fine if the content is fairly static. It's only if it's massive scale and dynamic when you start to run into problems.
I think this is genius. One of the best products I've seen recently, if not THE best. Definitely, the best Bitcoin-related idea. I guess companies like Circle, Coinbase, Chain, 21 co, etc. are cool in their own right. But I don't see how any of them will help Bitcoin breakout and become more accepted. I think relatable products like yours are gonna be more beneficial to the protocol.
> Some people will point to language design characteristics, which are part of the story, but I think the deeper reason is that ruby does not have a serious corporate sponsor.

Spot on. Biggest reason why I don't think Ruby/Python will grow bigger than what they are today is this. Meanwhile NodeJS/JavaScript is adopted by _many_ companies: IBM, SAP, Google, Joyent, Microsoft, etc. Ruby had some momentum before but none of the big guys extend their support as far as NodeJS/JavaScript.

Having said that, I'd probably use Java for a new company , why not?

Some people say "bulb" I'd say "matured"

Some people say "verbose" I'd say "explicit than implicit" (or code is written once to be read multiple times)

Some people say "bloated framework" I'd say "stable and backward compatible without sacrificing speed and flexibility" or "does not have to reinvent my memory mental model" (compare to different JS API programming style).

Some think Maven "sucks/bloated" but I'd think nothing can touch it for the most part...(plus Maven's idea is copied everywhere else..)

To each of his/her own I suppose.

PS: I use JavaScript 100% to build 2 enterprise products as my day job
Ah understood. Is it something like the company feels like it needs some help in the area of design and sets up a meeting with a design-minded partner? Or does YC look from outside and say, "you could use some help in the area of design, so maybe talking to so-and-so is a good idea". Or a little of both?
Awesome service! I've already used this for four rides: https://i.gyazo.com/b6ba0bd02566eb7eb54781411b322bbd.png
It's sort of interesting that the inescapable conclusion is that VC funds power tech. What I mean is, if a business isn't sustainable, and the fact that they're sustainable doesn't matter, then it's thanks to the VC funds.

If you want to affect the world through business, the type of business you'll start is a startup. Counter-intuitively, it may be true that sustainability doesn't necessarily matter for a startup. If so, then sustainability in business doesn't matter for affecting the world.

That seems like dangerous thinking, and I've been trying to escape the conclusion. But since the home runs are how VCs make their returns, why is it a bad thing if 9 out of 10 startups eventually fail? And if it's not a bad thing, then why decry companies for being unsustainable, or the valley for funding them?
it depends what you mean, but i probably disagree - popular frameworks have more stack overflow answers, better docs, more bug fixes, and bigger ecosystems in general

i do not use rails but it probably is the cheapest alternative (from an engineering perspective) right now given the number of available engineers + ecosystem
> Scripts used to control compilation and installation != signing keys.

You're referring to "scripts used to control compilation", but how are signing keys not part of the source code? GPLv2 uses a specific definition of source code, "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." Don't you have to be arguing that a form not allowing modifications to be used or tested is the "preferred form of the work for making modifications"?
> If scalability and speed is a problem, congratulations, you're a success.

I can not emphasize this enough. A lot of solutions are absolutely good enough for a startup's needs. You obviously don't want something completely throw away, but too much concern over tools & performance is kind of like a premature optimization for your whole business.
You should use whatever people you're working with know and are comfortable with.

Looking at trends is almost useless, from your example Nodejs can't be above Java for Jobs searching.

"if you want to future-proof your web application, you have to make a bet on what engineers will want to use in three years. " really? I'm not expert but the tech is a tool to create a product not the way around.
He had a relationship going back years with each customer, and a deep knowledge of their application requirements. The new guy will have none of that.

Its that attitude, that engineers can be bought by the 6-pack for any application, that causes tragedies like this. Any new guy will fail to save contracts at a much higher rate, perhaps not having any benefit at all until a relationship is built up over a period of years (with new customers of course; the old ones will leave).
Please read the book if you would like a complete explanation of Huemer's ideas. In short, the protection agencies he describes as one alternative to the current coercive state is as follows:
There can be a large number of different-sized protective agencies which operate under contract with either neighborhood associations, or individual landowners (depending on size and preferences). Some may be large, while others will be small; there is no reason to believe economies of scale exist for protective agencies as they do for car companies. It is unlikely that the agencies will fight with one another, as they have strong disincentives (on multiple levels) to do so. It is most likely that they would operate under subscription contracts, and the market for protection will likely be a lively and competitive one.

Huemer's anarchy is very different from the current state; it is not 'the same with one or two changes'.
Complete schedule for GitHub Universe
The article is about momentum not necessarily newness or hipness. Node.js is only three years younger than Rails.
The article alludes to an open question in astronomy known as the "last parsec problem," but doesn't quite state it outright. The issue is that we observe that all galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers and that galaxies merge. Due to a phenomenon called dynamical friction, as the supermassive black hole of one galaxy passes through the stellar field of the other galaxy, its velocity slows until it comes nearly to rest with respect to the common center of mass of the two galaxies. This leads both supermassive black holes to sink to the center of the newly merged galaxy and come into orbit with each other over a relatively short timescale (I want to say ~100 million years at most).

Over time, the orbit of these two supermassive black holes shrinks because stars wandering through the orbit get kicked out and take energy with them. However, once the orbit shrinks to about a parsec, this process stalls. All the stars that could wander through the orbit have already been kicked out and there's nothing left to shrink the orbit. Furthermore, gravitational wave radiation is still too weak to make much of a difference at that distance.

Now, supermassive black hole binaries are rare, so clearly they end up merging somehow. It's just not known how this happens. For a while it was thought that the last parsec problem could be solved by taking into account the triaxiality of the galactic potential [1] (and the references therein). The idea was that new stars from further out in the galaxy would wander in as quickly as the black holes could kick them out and the orbit would continue to shrink. However, new work seems to be casting doubt on this and whether or not triaxiality solves the final parsec problem is still being debated [2].

[1]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013ApJ...773..100K

[2]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ApJ...785..163V
I guess I've just become a bit more jaded. Or maybe I always have been. I used to maintain a good amount of open source stuff, and the entitled complaints really got to me.

But if I'm being paid for something, I feel the obligation to deliver what I've promised, and I feel bad if I fall short. I do struggle sometimes with valuing my time "correctly", but overall I think I've experienced less stress building software for a paycheck vs. dealing with the (minority of) ungrateful leeches in the open source community.
A good way to counter testers is to add a delay to charging the card.
I've been there. Especially in the beginning of this year. I forced my self to finish a JavaScript and Jquery book without stopping to change. Great, now I can make better (or slower) web pages and know JS - big deal. The purpose was to sit, and really learn all the core aspects of a given language.

This is mainly a matter of self discipline. This term I'm taking a C++ course at college. Skimming the book for the class, I already feel far more confident with the material knowing another language.

After learning one language I would suggest using that new skill set to reproduce some traditional software applications (Calendar, Calculator, Text Editor, ...). Additionally it would be wise to test how well you can read other peoples code in that language. It took me about 2.5 months to be able to work with JavaScript and the DOM effectively.

Also consider that compilation, weak/strong typing, data types, variable assignment, for and while loops, if statements and logical/comparison operators, and OOP exist in most languages. I found the key is understanding these topics in one language. Beyond that it's a matter of adjusting to the syntax in other languages.

Overall, find a strongly rated book on language ______ thoroughly complete the material, make sure you understand it. Write some applications with it. Make the time to do all of this. A line of code a day, or 20... Read about the language with the bias towards learning. Drive yourself towards self learning all the time. If all this seems like shitty chore most of the time, re-think choosing programming as your career. Oh, and you have to love fixing broken logic all the time.

Best of luck to you! Let me know how it all works out @nickersfpdx
Amazon quietly does pretty good business with some school districts. We've made several 1,000+ unit bulk sales of educational apps through them. It's not iPad numbers, but it's a lot better than we thought.

This device will slip perfectly into that role.
I can totally understand. I just read through each post and I can relate to pretty much every point.

For searchcode I have not implemented paid accounts though I have considered it for a while. This post pretty much confirms for me that it would be a bad idea. searchcode also gets a lot of abuse, particularly to the API's (millions of requests) and though hot-links. I think the worst part for me though is the constant takedown notices. Most are nicely worded emails, but quite a few have been very nasty threatening legal demands.

I haven't lost my love for my side project yet and the ad's that are running at least cover hosting costs. Really looking forward to the next part in the tale.
NanoHub: online computational nanotechnology simulations
Maybe next time put it in terms of a fine wine or automobile.
Well, without going down the road of trying to find plausible probabilities for imaginary scenarios it is difficult to chip away at either hypothesis, given we do not have a variety of different earths to test on.
Alice Springs: Thigh-Stabbin' Capital of the World
Yeah, I'm not sure what kind of new company is willing so sacrifice productivity up front on a bet that future developers might not be excited about their codebase.

"Yeah, we're going to be another 2 months to launch because we're betting developers in 2018 prefer Go."

I'll be pretty surprised if you're still in business in three years.
The fact of the matter is that surge unambiguously causes drops in demand. What is less clear (and more interesting) is understanding the casual, supply-side effects of surge, which isn't really tackled in this paper (one mention of the word 'casual').

Definitely some nice charts in here though, would be a fun data set to play with.
Or it could be just telling the truth.
I wonder why the graphs of driver supply and rider demand don't show the surge multiplier against time?

Given that footnote 6 indicates the price increase varied between 20% and 80%, it would be interesting to see how long it takes for a price increase to cause increased driver numbers.
Why is HN upvoting someone's poor-quality school homework assignment?
The most compelling reason not to use Ruby for a new company or product in an existing company is that the talent of the average Ruby programmer has dropped drastically in recent years. Face it, Ruby is hitting that adoption stride where it's attracting/has attracted a lot of people who don't care about the quality of code they write. JavaScript isn't any better and is probably even worse in this regard.

As much as we hate to admit it, a significant part about what attracts us to a language is the quality of people who use it. While Ruby has nicer things about it than Java did in 2004, the people adopting Ruby in the early to mid 2000s didn't just dislike Java, they liked the like-minded individuals who seek out tools to make their lives better.
> Django for Python is largely a rails clone

Django was initially released in July 2005 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_(web_framework)).

Rails was initially released in December 2005 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails).

Just a minor quibble. They basically grew in parallel and implemented similar feature sets, but the timing hardly allows for cloning.
At the bottom right of the page you linked, the game is included in a "GOGmix" named "GOG games using DOSbox", so I'd assume it's the DOSbox emulator being clever, rather than GOG's reverse-engineering skills.

For example, DOSbox emulates the DOS API directly, rather than running a real copy of DOS and emulating the hardware. That means that DOSbox's DOS doesn't actually take up any space in the emulated machine, leaving vastly more of the magic 640KB available for applications to use without having to mess around with memory-managers.
Without addressing whether or not Tech is underpaid (there's a strong argument it is based on pervasive industry collusion dating back decades, and generally a monopsony/oligopsony market), Adam Smith has a delightful articulation of factors contributing to wages in Weath of Nations:

Chapter 10: Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...

"Part 1: Inequalities arising from the Nature of the Employments themselves[edit]

"The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them."

The section continues to explore each of these in detail.

Note particularly the risks and preparation components: training, stability of employment, and probability of success. Also the "trust premium" for certain professions:

"the wages of labour vary accordingly to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen.

"The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are everywhere superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity, on account of the precious materials with which they are intrusted.

"We trust our health to the physician: our fortune and sometimes our life and reputation to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires. The long time and the great expense which must be laid out in their education, when combined with this circumstance, necessarily enhance still further the price of their labour...."

Another factor, one Smith doesn't consider, is the durability of skill or ability within a profession or trade. In the Tech world, state-of-the-art is constantly evolving, to the extent that professional obsolesence is a real risk. This is the case in other trades as well (Car Talk discussed this in auto repair som years back). But it's a consideration not much weighed in the market.

Also cumulative stress and burnout.

Pricing these into the market is a challenge.
When people say Java is "verbose," they usually mean it is relatively hard to read, so I don't see what you mean by "code is written once to be read multiple times." The problem with Java's verbosity is that the code is typically full of noise and redundancy.
Paris Is Sharing Electric Cars by the Thousand—Will It Play in Indianapolis?