skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Registering on HN is harder than it should be
I was somewhat disappointed when it took me quite some time to find the registration form on HN. I know it's for tech savvy but still, where does it say that hackers don't like simple, usable things?
The site itself also looks quite outdated which is a no-go in my book. I'm sure YC has invested in some companies that have usability experts why not ask them for an advice or two on the matter?

Or maybe you're trying to mimic craigslist and it's popularity (which would be sad since that site also has a big margin for improvement).

Tomaz
I'm not convinced. JSON objects have attributes and can contain child elements. Ordering can be provided by arrays.

Namespaces are also easy to create within objects; an example would be the "type" attribute from the Freebase API.

For versioning, many APIs are accessed through a different subdomain or URL (e.g. http://api.example.com/v2/). If you're feeling somewhat enterprisey, you can also wrap your response in an "envelope" object containing all the necessary details to implement your own custom protocol.
As a software architect for the last ~10 years I have to disagree. His point seems to be that if you get a job as a software architect you'll end doing nothing but meetings and creating UML diagrams. I'm sure there are places like that, I've worked at one (Rational Process - shudder), but there are many places where they need someone who can provide architect level application design, who can see the forest through the trees, who can balance the needs of the business, the 3rd party integrations, and the technology. My current contract role has me providing architecture (usually just a 1-2 page design doc, not often UML), mentorship, and coding some of the trickier stuff.

I still code a lot, but I also have responsibility over the whole software ecosystem and hence some power to decide how things go. I mentor developers, perform code reviews, and work on process improvement too. It's a great role.
"Apple's open source strategy is well defined, but not, shall we say, integral to their company."

And it looks like that turned out to be a superior strategy, in a profit-minded sort of way.
The author refers to the distribution of values in the text. That graph is the distribution of leading digits of those values. It doesn't follow that the first digits would also be a normal distribution.
New Data on Twitter’s Users and Engagement
An up-to-date refresh of the August 2009 "outside-looking-in" data analysis that was published in TechCrunch. Shows new registrations leveling off at around 6MM/month and Twitter topping 75 million registered accounts by year-end 2009.
I'll concur, as I've been getting quite comfy using Netbeans. If Netbeans gets hung out to dry, it does mean going back to Eclipse (I'm not really into the idea of buying an IDEA license).
Schneier on Security: More Surveillance in the UK - read comments please
That's because LCDS is a commercial product. Flex itself is not (it's an open-source framework), nor is Flex simply "Flash that uses an integration server."
http://www.amazon.com/Reduction-Error-Analysis-Physical-Scie...

it's been around for years (i used to own a copy of the original - i see it's been updated) and i doubt the fortran / c++ code will be much use, but it's a simple, clear, introduction to basic statistics (which is why such a slim book costs so much...)
Probably because those are invalid image dimensions?
Google strikes back at Apple, releases new Google Voice for iPhone
Get it up on heroku!
Companies that are getting eaten from below have very few options. Do you really think Sun could have made a profit selling equipment at PC margins? That requires an entirely different cost structure. If they had tried, you could have written a slightly different comment:

Sun used to make really high-quality equipment, but now they are making crappy PCs like everyone else - maybe they should have focused on the customers willing to pay for quality.

Schwartz's task was essentially impossible, and selling to IBM or Oracle was probably the best outcome he could have hoped for.
Most of these problems can be prevented if you select the woman yourself after meeting her more than twice.

Two western technologies I see making a huge impact on India: dating and film editing.
Seems cpu intensive :) Server down.
HN is an example of how you can flaunt pretty much every rule in the book and still be successful.
That those are open source is coincidental to Apple. It was just a faster means to an end for Apple, not part of a defined open source strategy. WebKit, for all practical purposes, killed the OSS project on which it was based (KHTML).
I bought a used HP tc1100 tablet. I think Windows XP's Tablet software is amazing. When I hover over an entry field, a button appears to bring up the writing box, and the recognition is very close to 100%. (I always print, however. I hear the recognition for cursive writing isn't nearly as good.) The industrial design on the tc1100 is on a par with Apple's, IMHO.

If Windows tablets can be this good while embracing the old Windows UI paradigms, Apple had better be mindblowingly good. I would be very pleased if I can have good pressure sensitivity and accuracy with an eraser stylus, plus multitouch.

I think someone made a big mistake by not trying to sell this stuff to the public and concentrating on business instead. Surfing with the stylus is very nice, I find.
I'm sure there are places like that, I've worked at one (Rational Process - shudder)

Thank you for your honesty :)

The bottom line of my post was "beware of the advertise SA positions, they tend not to offer what is usually expected from an advanced position like that".

I also think that a key to being a good SA is to keep writing code, no matter what happens. Looks like this is exactly the case for you.
Chile invited to join OECD, Venezuela left behind, Why it matters
Very true. Films/TV have made a huge impact on Indian psyche. read Superfreaconomics to know more.

Also the article has a sarcastic tone to it. It is meant as a humorous take on the topic not a assertive statement
"if you are interested in buying this domain / website, feel free to contact us."

That's an unofficial spam blog.
Good systems architecture is crucially important - which is why it should only be done by people who know they can get called at 3AM when it all goes hatstand.

Not the sorts who wave their hands and draw nonsense diagrams on a whiteboard and chuck something that cannot work, ever over the fence to the implementation team and blame their skills when the project fails.
Single Party Democracy: Is China Democratizing from Within?
I absolutely agree that if you like coding, don't ever stop. It will also make you a better architect.

In my experience, large companies who use Rational will have their architects buried in Rose building UML and writing 150+ page docs all day. Smaller and/or agile/XP companies will be looking for a super experienced coder, who can mentor, and look at the big picture, see the business drivers, etc...

Ideally this sort of thing can be figured out early on in the interview process. "How do your other architects spend their time?" etc...
There should be more people like you.

The biggest problem in our industry is that there isn't enough mentors to tell the young people that they were wrong all this time.
I'm in almost the exact same boat, though I find that much of my job is in just predicting pitfalls, and in anticipating when things won't work.

As a federal contractor for an agency that prefers to use COTS/GOTS software, there is a surprisingly great need for having a developer that can look at a given piece of software, intuit how it works, probe its sales and development teams to say "Well, this claims to do Kerberos authentication, but it really does GSSAPI, and hence, won't work with your existing OpenSSO implementation."

I also code a lot, mentor other developers, etc., and yes, it IS a great role.
New York City's 10 hottest tech startups
Why not go cricket-style and call it the "Google Wagon Wheel"?

"Wagon wheel" is a better metaphor -- I know what that is.
The T-Mobile G1 has an excellent, 5 row hardware keyboard, and I made use of it on many occasions to SSH into my server and make some modifications to code that I had ideas for, but didn't want to wait to get home to work on. Because the keyboard actually had multiple alt/shift and hardware keys, ConnectBot could remap them as tab, control and escape keys, so I could actually use Vim without any problems. Can you say that about your phone? :P
The practice of architecture is inevitably entangled with one or more notational and representational systems. This is true if you are architecting ships, infrastructure, buildings, or software. Complaining about UML is like complaining about drafting, drafting notation standards, and CAD software.
That's actually the reason behind this law in general :)
The line between those two words blurs more every day
Typo3 seems to be back on it's feet after quite some time
It does seem obvious that such a device may be good for EHR and such. Timing will be the problem. This year is the big push for implementing EHR. The systems that will get implemented are ones in existence from numerous commercial vendors and there is one solid open source solution, VA's vista.

Most doctor's offices already have scheduling and billing systems. The gov's incentive funds are oriented to purchase existing approved EHR systems. Its a difficult process to get a new app approved for the gov incentive funds.

So the shiny new tablet, as cool as it may be will most likely not be the compelling peice that makes the sale. The compelling piece is integration with the doctor's already existing scheduling and billing system and that which is approved for gov funds.
I think both don't work. The point of a placeholder pic is to have something tangible there while looking at a layout. If the picture is more interesting than the layout, then people will focus on the picture. That's the motivation behind "lorem ipsum": it superficially looks like English, but it's gibberish and people won't focus on it instead of the layout.
> Companies that are getting eaten from below have very few options.

Companies die if there isn't an entry point that makes sense for customers.

It doesn't have to be at the same price point as the folks eating them from below, but it does have to be some place where customers are willing to enter.

The mid/high-range sun systems are about as expensive as comparable PC based systems. However, the PC systems have a low cost option for development. Suns, not so much.

It doesn't have to cost $500, but it can't cost $10k either.
Ejaculation Trainer Ebook Discussion
I finally got Lenovo Idea Pad a netbook that has 7 hours battery backup. i am happy.
:) I think the biggest problem in the industry is that many of the "young people" (I'm still young, dammit!) don't really want to learn or be mentored. Seems like there's a slew of folks in the junior to mid-level developer arena who got into CS because it was going to make them a lot of money, not because they love to code. I love it when I'm working with people who love to tinker with new libraries and APIs, who are working on something neat in their spare time, etc... They make much better developers than folks with a CS degree who do what's assigned to them from 9-5 and that's it. I'm not saying you have to work a ton, but just be interested in the whole tech universe:)
I'm new to NetBeans and in a similar position with you (scared of losing it).

I don't know why but I feel that NetBeans is more organized and less "rugged" compare to Eclipse.
It would be a statement of the obvious to say "you're new here, aren't you", but get a feel for the site and the users before you launch a criticism 9 minutes after your account was created.

The majority of people are here for the content, not the presentation. Also, I doubt that you would be able to suggest a better design that works so well with laptops, tablets, iPhones, Androids, etc.

In some ways, this site is little more than a grand experiment in ARC, the content is just to dupe users into alpha-testing new concepts :)
Programmers often neglect the fact that not all problems need to be solved with more code. More specifically, there are problems that are better solved at the architecture level. For example, rather than queue jobs in a wonky static variable, use RabbitMQ or Redis. And instead of implementing search functionality through Hibernate, consider a separate stack which you can grow independently of your core application. While you're at it, consider using Solr instead.

I'm not justifying the term software architect (I don't like it for other reasons), I'm simply suggesting that if your infrastructure consists of a single, monolithic application, you need to consider solving some of those problems outside of your code.
Okay, testing, trying... something just to spend time and learn instead of playing games. But I doubt you can do any work on it (if you have a project with databases and that needs lot of programs to execute).

As long as it's for fun then it can be!
The comments on this post are fascinating. It's a really, really long scroll but to watch grown adults be so oversensitive about their stations in life makes for some entertaining early morning reading.

"Popular" web designers, I feel, have a certain arrogant air about them that outside of their fields and in everyday life they could never get away with.
Main Entry: hack·er
Pronunciation: \ˈha-kər\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century

1 : one that hacks
2 : a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a tennis hacker>
3 : an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer
4 : a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system

Three out of four possible Merriam-Webster definitions are negative.
The article is pretty trite, but one gem that's worth repeating, is that if you want to be popular, then be "raw". Make yourself vulnerable. Share unpopular opinions.
I tend to believe that the job of an architect is not to make the important decisions but to make sure the important decisions get made correctly and to take responsibility for that process and its results.
I think the real problem is they don't keep sufficient spare planes ready to roll at airports. Granted that's an extremely expensive proposition, but even a little extra slack can greatly reduce delay propagation. As you increase efficiency you can always increase utilization to the point where the system becomes unstable.

Edit: I am not suggesting you need a spare at every airport, just that increasing the quantity of spares or increasing scheduling slack time fight delay propagation where increasing efficiency does not.
They actually think that to get the latest version of my application I should upgrade my operation system?

Really???
Thanks Daniel,

We have dealt with the 2nd and 4th issue - that should now be fine. The 5th we are looking into as you are quite correct; we just wanted it to get some people to review it even though we did not have 100% of the functions in yet.

With regard to the first point we will add some wording in to make this clearer and with regard to the third point we are trying to explain to our audience (a largely non-technical base we imagine) what all the buttons do.

Overall did you like the site? Any major features that you would like to see added? Thanks for your feedback - we have taken it all onboard.
> economist.com is >>> techcrunch

Wrong.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/techcrunch.com+economist.co...
Because we are a "reader" community and not a "watcher" community. We are only interested on what you write (the text). As long as it's readable so the design doesn't really matter, at least for me.
Seems there's more than one way. The other is the inefficiency of the air traffic control system: http://reason.tv/video/show/951.html
This blurs into my vision of top-notch software engineer without the fancy title, which was the reason I wrote that post in the first place.
Yes, I am new and this was the first thing that bothered me when started to use what it seems like a great service. If you want a nice, usable design that works well across different browsers and platforms, check digg..
And this is not a criticism, it's a statement of the obvious :)
I'm in the target audience for something like this, though I live in a suburb and not in The City.

It sounds awesome and I plan to sign up at my first opportunity.
Ask HN: Experience with netbooks
I just bought a netbook (LG X130) with around $500, but it's nice and not slow.

It has two buttons: one to start the Windows OS and the other to start a weired platform that LG made (a browser + Skype + things like that).

It's not bad to use Windows (XP right now); but I'm using this little device just to browse the internet (sites like HN, read emails, watch videos and chat).

I read about Android but I don't know it; can it work in netbooks? Also what's your experience with netbooks? What platform, apps.. do you use? and why?

Thanks for your replies!
If Apple or someone else can do for doctors what iPhoto has done for snapshots, then they've got it! Host EHR software in the cloud. Just make something which doctors and assistants can just buy, which will generate forms or integrate with existing systems in some fashion. Granted, many of these systems are archaic. Perhaps too many of them will be too crusty to be capable. What percentage of the scheduling and billing systems can use Microsoft or Adobe forms for input?

Here, a completely closed ecosystem in the vein of the iPhone with its App Store can be a tremendous boon. This will help assure Docs that their hardware doesn't have malware installed. If Apple builds in some form of Hypervisor executable DRM, all the better.

The doctors could deduct the cost of such a tablet as a business expense. If it does media, magazines, is a passable e-book reader, can be a home automation and FrontRow remote, then I think Apple could sell tons of them!
Project 2000 Video - Apple Computer (1988)
It's the Eddie Murphy school of networking.
I'm not justifying the term software architect (I don't like it for other reasons)

What are your reasons, BTW?
> (d) utilize the LCDS Library to develop a product that competes with LiveCycle Data Services or BlazeDS

BlazeDS is their open-source version. So they are saying you cannot compete with our open-source version, either.

Yes, I know Flex is not just Flash. A haiku I wrote while waiting for mxmlc:

it's more than just flash

enterprise level big apps

not just eye candy
Wow amazing. Now I feel like a total CSS noob.
Google Voice Finally Heads to iPhone, Palm Pre With HTML5 Webapp
As best as possible, I think a company should screen for that in the Interviews. (given that Interviews are sometimes a effectiveness gamble, I realize that it can be difficult to screen for that). I usually watch to see if they light up and get into conversations when I ask questions in the Interview related to our tech. If they don't get that expression and interest (hard to qualify but I think most people know what I am talking about) than that is a lot of hire points lost. If you spend an hour talking computers and they never 'light up', I feel, they are probably not the right fit.
Have you checked out reddit? They might have features you like more:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/

Or, I guess you could keep hanging around Digg or whatever.
Somehow I don't see how a new hardware platform with a shiny interface is going to fix the gnarly problems with electronic health records. A nice UI would certainly help with filling out forms but that's only the tip of the EHR iceberg.
Submarine Internet cables could detect tsunamis
My regular doctor (I'm in Canada) makes frequent use of tablets, but I've never taken the time to find the make/model. This article reminds me to ask, next time.
"Just be yourself" This is pretty similar to what i remember reading as a teenager when looking for advice on the opposite sex. Though no one ever really told me, how to be me.

There are lots of me's, the one that stays up late watching south park, and the one that enjoys a fine glass of wine. Many of my friends took this phrase as a ticket to be slovenly, thinking that they would attract others by "being themselves". While the advice is sound, it shouldn't be taken as an absolute law.
Yeah I think it was tongue-in-cheek :) (I hope :P )
310th anniversary of the Cascadia Earthquake today
I took me a minute to figure out that the links on the right-hand side of the page were search results and not adwords ads. I'm still distrustful of them because I associate their location so strongly with advertisements.
He's 11? By the time I was 11 I was pretty darn good in Z-80 Macro Assembler. If he wants to make games, it's much better to get comfortable learning the hard stuff first. At his age, learning to kick a sprite across the screen will seem pretty... childish.

I've been reading the new edition of Jeff Duntemann's "Assembly Language Step by Step." While I don't particularly like how he teaches hex (which is terribly necessary to understanding Assembly), the rest of it made me think that it was the book I wish I had when I was a kid.
I'm guessing I have offended you guys in some way, for which I apologize, I don't use digg nor reddit, I was just trying to make a point.
Django admin now ships JQuery
The logic behind treating "sexting" teens as child pornographers
"So just be yourself already. It’s that simple."

It actually applies to everything in general. It's that simple.
Freakonomics: Fish Gotta Swim, Teachers Gotta Cheat?
Not sure if it is fair to call something "pure speculation", just because the exact mechanisms are not yet known. Are there not different degrees of likelihoods? Strictly speaking we can not prove it yet, but given everything we know (complex systems, chemistry, history of earth,...), self-synthesis of life seems still more plausible than a god-like creator. Of course we haven't proved it yet, but at least it seems to warrant further research. And I claim that isn't arbitrary - one could research all sorts of things, maybe we could try to build a big telescope to talk to god or whatever - but some approaches, paths of research seem more promising than others.
Well, it works for them, certainly. I think the important thing for companies is to have a strategy that's reasonably well-defined, and to be pragmatic about it. "No open source" is more or less an idiotic strategy (at the very least you should be open to taking advantage of it where it makes sense), and "all open source" makes it difficult to turn a profit (but not impossible...).
Fancy job titles and funny job descriptions aside, i always thought that the ability to perform critical architecture related decisions is something that every developer should some day achieve, making this "software architect" as a natural step of the evolution of every developer.
And regarding UML, having seen it misused and misunderstood a lot of times, it's just a tool, the same ideas can be expressed with other means, what counts is that the content is clearly explained and correctly understood.
Does not understand internet.
I love it when big players start throwing competitive punches, and we're set to win big from Google attacking such a monopolistic clique as the cellular network industry. I suppose this also means that Google Voice is nearly ready for a public release.
But... if the glowing logo is covered, how can you warn the entire coffee shop that CREATIVE THINGS are most likely happening on your screen?

Admittedly, typing on what appears to be a sideways book is a good way to draw more attention to yourself, so it may be an effective strategy.
HotRuby - Ruby on JavaScript and Flash
Piturna: a CommonJS/JSGI-Compliant Web Framework
Introducing Botox, bioweapon of mass destruction
Honest question: Could somebody explain to me why it is bad for Apple when iPhone owners can use Google Voice?