skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I take that back. It turns out the journalist is a former college cartoonist.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/02/bill_wa...
I would love to see this, already you can use the Flash IDE to compile to the iPhone, so also being able to compile to canvas or HTML would be great, unifying the IDE to the current Flash IDE would be the way to go.

I would love to be able to share my vector assets across flash apps and canvas apps, also write tweens that can be used in both flash and canvas as well.
Progress on the Responsive Design Project: long list of terse recommendations
First Grad Class from Bootup Labs set to pursue bigger funding rounds
Don't forget: civil law; Roman alphabet; architectural discoveries (dome); Caesarean section (?).
Or will HTML 5 consign Adobe to the dark ages?
I'm all for the dark ages if it means I might finally get vertical synced video playback (which even Flash 10 still cannot do, so I get to enjoy obvious screen tearing in hulu, youtube and amazon videos).

The fact that Adobe continues to ignore details like vsync makes me wonder if they even know what a good video playback experience would look like.
Just curious, but how is Java going to solve that problem? Now you've got the Java opcodes, plus any JIT information/native code, plus the JVM. Seems like that would be even larger!
I also feel that doing OO python is a pain.

I have had fun scripting with it however.
"300,000 lines of code and more than 5,000 unit tests."

Both values sound good in theory, but are both meaningless. How is the code coverage? How many man months? How many developers?
It isn't "web design" anyway. (http://agnilux.com/)
Well, in that case I have to eat my words, and wish you luck with it - I'm afraid I'm so skeptical of management-speak that I read your Inc. article as a CYA. I'll shoot you a brief email during the afternoon, and apologize for my skepticism.
The Least You Can Do
I hope what will replace Kenai will be similar to github and rubygems.

That will probably mean a package manager like leiningen.
More tellingly they claim to have had an adequate Flash just sitting waiting for Apple to give them the okay for the last year or so, but for the platforms that actually want Flash we're still waiting after multiple delays.
Did Google Just Multi-Punch Apple In The Face?
Online Realtime Flash Actionscript Compiler: Fork Japanese Sparkly Spirals
i care now because it's more than an upscaled ipod.
I find it ironic that you feel LOC is meaningless and then asked for man-months, an even more useless unit of measurement :D
Ask HN: The "Expert/Master At (Language)" Point
At what point should a programmer consider himself well versed or an expert/master of a programming language? Where is the bar set?
What's the advantage of this over email, other than that anyone can look in on your conversation?
3 New Ways to Measure the Social Web
Are you living in an alternate universe? Facebook are scarily competent. They have executed brilliantly and their engineering is top notch.
Just because people never seem to mention it, I will also throw in a good word for Rudix. From their project page (http://rudix.org/):

Rudix features a world class collection of pre-compiled and ready to use Unix compatible software which are not available from a fresh installation of Mac OS X but are popular among other Unix environments. Here you can find utilities, programming languages, libraries and tools delivered as standard Mac OS X packages.

The packages are pre-compiled dmgs, easily downloaded and installed, or you can download the whole suite if you prefer.

The nice thing here is that if you only want coreutils and you don't want to install Xcode to get gcc, you don't have to.
Just to correct one point from that post: you can close the list of members of a class using __slots__ http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#slots

I really like the "Classes in Python are more like dictionary objects with functions attached than classes." part though. It's exactly what I expect from objects. There aren't that many situations when we need anything more.
Welcome to HN! Please take some time to go through the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. And hit upvote when you agree with somebody's comment.
Agreed but if you listen to Mixergy the #1 message that I hear from the guests is that they put so much hard work into their businesses.

The titles get people to click the links but the interviews stand for themselves after that.

Keep up the great work Andrew!
For a "best of" collection from the site, visit:
http://beautifl.net/
That returns 'Browser not Supported' in Firefox.
And yet, as digital real estate, comment sections are among the most under-optimized sections of any content site.

A site with high-quality comments can increase the value of the existing content exponentially, but because there is a more removed connection to revenue generation it seems like the majority of comment sections (HN excluded, of course) are thrown in as an afterthought.
Different sense of the word "user".
so what is a tablet, if not a surface small enough to be carried?

this looks like it can be carried. remember, there are people lugging around 17" laptops...
Turning Hacker News into Spam
That's an incredibly short-sighted viewpoint. The vast majority of authors don't get to choose their publisher, and are very lucky if any publisher agrees to publish their work.

Furthermore, authors tend to build long-lasting relationships with their publisher, so even a well established and popular author isn't exactly free to just switch to another publisher that Amazon has decided gets to continue to exist.
OK. I might be missing the point about the whole Flash thing but as far as I'm aware the SWF format is an open format just like e.g. HTML. Does this mean that your browser that displays the HTML needs to be open source for it to be considered a standard? IE isn't open source. Is that an issue? OK, IE is crap as displaying HTML but I guess that's another issue.

Sure the SWF format is currently controlled by Adobe and I'm not sure what the current status is on implementing your own Flash Player, but there are already alternatives like Gnash[1]. Adobe already has donated their Tamarin[2] AVM2 to the Mozilla foundation. There is definitely work in progress when it comes to open source at Adobe.

Then there is the Open Screen Project[3] that basically tries to standardise Flash. I mean, 99% or so of all web user has Flash installed. That looks pretty standard to me.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
[3] http://www.openscreenproject.org/
you honestly don't see a difference between something that is backed up by "well that's what we believe" and "I have compiled statistics that prove my point!". I have the training to debunk their nonsense, but the vast majority don't. how many crap medical studies come out each year due to bad statistical methods combined with FDA corruption? this has a much bigger impact on the average person's life than religious nuts spouting off. The authority of the FDA and pharmas derives from their panels of scientific experts.
News.Arc ? Isn't all of hacker news written in a lisp variant thats only a few hundred lines long?
Gah. It looks like it doesn't support removing packages. I won't call it a package manager if it can't remove packages.
My organization is dealing with this problem right now. We're going with Flash because we have to. It's what most people use, it's a lot better than the hodgepodge of WMA, QT, and Real stuff that we've had, and you can't get fired for doing what YouTube is doing.

However, I did insist on H.264 flash videos in an MP4 container (rather than using VP6 in an FLV or something else). That way, we can easily serve HTML5 video to Safari and Chrome as a straight MP4 file if we so choose in the future. It doesn't help us with supporting Firefox/Ogg/a truly open standard, but it does mean that we can support Flash and HTML5/MP4 off of one file. I truly hope that Theora takes off. I hope even more that Google open sources VP8.

I just wanted to point out that one could serve video to both Flash and the iPhone/iPad off of one file with current technology.
I'm not surprised that there are isolated groups at MS that use Python. (We have a .NET version after all.) I would be surprised if you said that you worked at both Google and MS and their use of Python was pretty much the same. In that case I'd say your MS experience was unusual.
20 Years of Adobe Photoshop
> So hostile. I'm not the one releasing devices that don't support Flash but do support HTML and JavaScript.

If Apple wants to give Adobe the finger, they have every right to and I can't/won't argue it because it is their business logic. Are they billionaires? Yes?

I support HTML5 and it's apparent "crushing" effect on Flash, but call it like it is.

Your entire original comment is so far into the future that Marty McFly and the Doc would possibly need to go to 78mp/h in the Delorean just to see it in the horizon.

HTML5 is great, but it's not going to change the world and dethrone Flash anytime soon. Saying that or anything of that nature is dishonest and completely without evidence.
What about pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicavolcanoconiosis?

(Strictly speaking, I think there needs to be a volcano involved to create the fine particled silica relevant to that disease, but how often do you get a chance to naturally work it into conversation?)
Innostore Podcast (an Erlang binding to the embedded InnoDB Storage Engine)
In this podcast, Dave "Dizzy" Smith and Justin Sheehy discuss the release of Innostore, why we built it, how we use it in Riak, and why it might be useful for other Erlang projects. The discussion focuses on the stability and predictability of InnoDB, especially under load and as compared with other storage backends like DETS.
Someone doesn't like something. News at 11.
I think creating a link to a community site like HN or reddit at the end of the post so people can submit/comment on the community site rather than on the blog might help.
I go to that site with Firefox and it tells me my browser is not supported. Firefox.

This is precisely his point, web video used to be like this. "Firefox support is in the works". People are past the point where they need to have something "in the works" to do something as simple as showing their audience a video.

I am the biggest open web advocate you will find, but I don't see why its necessary to lie about the current state of affairs. HTML5 video is not ready for prime time. Will it be at some point? Of course. But pretending it is today is silly and distracts from fixing its obvious failings. The need to encode your video into multiple formats is a big deal, the fact IE doesn't support it at all is a big deal, the question of how to insert dynamic ads reliably into videos for people like Hulu is a big deal. Not to mention its still pretty darn buggy. The idea that Flash became useless yesterday is a joke.
This is because it is about central bank reserves, a topic that to my dismay probably generates more confused and mistaken thinking than any other topic in economics.

not understanding the basics of sovereign accounting is understandable. could you make heads or tails of a companies finance if they did all their accounting in their own stock?
The Costco (Kirkland) brand that I have lists Fish Oil Concentrate, Gelatin, Glycerin, Glycerol, d-Sorbitol, and Natural Tocopherols as ingredients.

These are the Costco store brand.
yea really. the original story cites him as a middle east expert... who cheered and approved of the invasion of iraq. now that's a record to be proud of.

EDIT: i do agree with him though that the US should invest in sustainable energy.
I asked a Google spokesperson about this and the response was pretty vague, but the gist seems to be that it will come to other phones once the manufacturers/carriers roll out this Android update. Obviously that could be a while for some devices.

I think there are rumors that the Droid will be getting Android 2.1 (which is what the Nexus One runs) in the near future, but I don't think anyone knows if it will include this update or if it will be what the Nexus One shipped with, which lacks multitouch.
Yeah that's what basically everyone is doing, but I think it would have ruined his straw man if he'd mentioned it.

edit: actually I've reread it, and it appears he doesn't know that you can serve the same H.264 files via Flash and HTML5.

"I wouldn’t blame you at all if multiple encodings of every video you produce is a non-starter, and you decide to just roll with Flash for now, ignoring the minority of devices (iPhone/Android, etc.) that don’t have Flash installed."

No wonder he's pissed off.
Most Apple applications do use bundles extensively, but that has nothing to do with HFS+.

Apple has religiously avoided "use of bit-twiddling in the HFS+ filesystem" for years -- everything new since 10.4 uses standard extended attributes. The only remaining uses I can think of are Finder color labels (a special bit-field in HFS), and that a bunch of the standard fonts still use resource forks (they only have a license to redistribute).
What would the big players attack you with if they didn't have their massive patent portfolios? Why would a startup have to worry about being attacked if patents were a non-issue?

It's a serious question.
brew remove <formula>
I've driven a Prius a couple of times, and I concur that they have an acceleration problem. I step on the gas pedal and the car has problems accelerating. (rim shot)

OK, back on topic. There's all this talk of cars accelerating out of control. Almost any car with disc brakes is able to overpower its own engine... for a little while. The biggest problem is that a wide open throttle means there is no manifold vacuum, so the brake hydraulics will be unassisted after pumping the brake pedal a couple of times. If the car is still at speed and the throttle is wide open, it will to be a lot harder to stop.

The problem of uncontrolled acceleration is due to a failure of multiple systems in ways that car designers didn't predict. All of the following are required for a car to accelerate uncontrollably:

1. An automatic transmission. In a manual the driver will hit the clutch and brake pedals to decelerate.

2. Hydraulic brakes powered by manifold vacuum. Electronic-assisted brakes are less reliable overall, but they will work reliably if the car's throttle is wide open.

3. Keyless ignition and lack of a BIG RED KILL SWITCH in a standardized location. Industrial equipment has them. Motorcycles have them. Why don't cars have them?

Each of these things alone seems like a sound decision. Automatic transmissions let drivers focus on driving instead of shifting. Hydraulic brakes are usually reliable, and they use manifold vacuum that would otherwise be wasted. Keyless ignition is convenient. But together these systems (coupled with a panicked driver) can fail in unexpected ways. I'm not trying to excuse Toyota, just pointing out that this sort of thing could have happened to any car company.
> It doesn't need free speech, delete the tripe,
> edit the rest mercilessly (but note that they
> have been 'edited').

Can you suggest a way of doing that without don it all "by hand"? What you suggest is what I'd like to do, but it doesn't scale. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as to a system like yours that does.
I agree its a good move for the current situation, but just turning comments on and off won't solve the problem in the long run. When the next gizmo is launched they will face the same problem. I think they should take this time to implement a solution to the spam issue either through moderation or a voting system.

I am also not able to access old comments which if intentional doesn't seem to be a good move (imho).
Use your imagination. Perhaps other languages can be compiled down with HipHop. Perhaps other languages can call PHP libraries compiled with HipHop. Then you might have an end to end solution to transition from PHP to Python.

This is obviously just a fantasy of mine. Back to coding PHP...
Going from Park -> Drive indicates that you are just getting going and possibly not fully prepared for such a surprising situation. If, like today’s Toyota problem, I'm driving and my car starts to speed up I’m likely to be fully engaged in driving and able to correct the situation more naturally.
It has been a long while since I looked at Wonderland, but I am grabbing the source and archiving it right now it in case the project completely goes away.
You are a master of a programming language when you consistently write idiomatic code in that language which exploits the power of the language to solve difficult problems in an easy-to-explain way.

Or in detail:

You must consistently write code in the language. Knowledge without experience cannot make you a master.

You must write idiomatic code for the language. If you're just writing FORTRAN in another language, then you might be a FORTRAN master, but you aren't a master of the language you're using.

You must exploit the power of the language. If you're writing "for" rather than "foreach" loops to iterate over a collection in C# or rolling your own LinkedList class, you aren't a master of C#.

You must solve difficult problems. Writing Hello World will never make you a master.

You must write code in an easy-to-explain way. If you are the only person who can read your code, you aren't a master of the language.
Canada's wireless carrier plans move in the wrong direction
Is Canada the only country where the cost of mobile minutes is increasing?
I just got this e-mail from telus informing me that the over-minutes rate (we don't have unlimited here like the US) is going up from $0.30 to $0.35.
I particularly like how they point out that they are commited to offering better value... and they will accomplish this by raising rates???

Here's the text of the e-mail- you'd think they could at least afford a mail merge to put my name in the subject also.
-------------------------------------
Dear Valued Client,

Important changes to local and long distance rates

Please note that on March 4th, 2010, your local and long distance overage minute rate will change from $0.30 to $0.35.

We are committed to offering you better value

Get better value by adding anytime minutes to your plan. 30 extra anytime minutes cost $3/month (as little as 10¢/minute). There are also long distance package from $3/month, for the same great rate of as little as 10¢/minute. You'll get more time to talk to friends and family across Canada for a lot less per minute.

For more information or to change your rate plan, visit a TELUS store or authorized dealer or visit telusmobility.com/plans.

We recognize that you have a choice for your wireless
Umm...note in the post the mention of HPHPi, which gives you the code/test/debug cycle of regular PHP but using (apparently) HipHop.
Why are we talking about this as though we still live in a world where it takes a Macmillan-like relationship in order to publish? Why do people love their print publishers, but music publishers get ranted at?

And in the world of blogs, in the world of independent publishers, and in the world of self-publishing (whether through Amazon or some other resource), holding fast to a publisher like people seem enamored of doing--it's just confusing.
I am quite unimpressed by these arguments. This blog post is a joke filled with inaccuracies.

- Encapsulation. Encapsulation in every language such as Java and Python is by convention. There are always ways to break it. Even in C++. Somehow the blogger missed out on learning "__" notation.

- Batteries. Nearly all the Python libraries are pure Python files which you can edit or debug. You can even debug the C modules with a C debugger if you like since they are just dynamic/shared libraries. You can delete libraries that you never use from your installation.

- This. This is probably the only legitimate complaint, but it all boils down to syntactical sugar.

- Members. Another blatant lack of knowledge. It is possible to enforce static members with the "__slots__" metamember. You can override the default object behavior by implementing the "__getattribute__" and "__setattribute__" members to suit this blogger's preferences.

- Lambda. Another syntactical sugar complaint. Python functions are first class variables.

Conclusion: The blogger's failed attempt to bash Python reveals his own lack of knowledge about the language.
Plus it reminds me of coding javascript, which I have only recently gained a great appreciation for. I love how everything is an Object (even functions), and Objects are just dictionaries. It's awesome.
Put simply: On the job means on the record.
News Corp Earnings: Digital Media Contribution Decreases By $32 Million YOY
That hasn't been the case with most projects I work on, but most people I work with have been burned by taking the cheap route in the past.
"Turning off safe search doesn’t mean, I want to see irrelevant results at the front of my search results."

If you went through the trouble to turn off safe search, presumably you don't think that the results there because you turned off safe search are irrelevant.
The 'Luxury Prime': How Luxury Changes People — HBS Working Knowledge
Gordon is not a Flash implementation. It is a Flash-to-SVG converter for basic vector graphics. That's about 5% of the Flash runtime, the parts that date back to the earliest versions of Flash. To call yourself a Flash implementation, you have to at least take a stab at multimedia, ActionScript, external resources, ...

Gordon will never do anything fancier than play a Newgrounds animated cartoon... without the audio track.
Turkey's respect for education ends when you talk about some basic historical facts, or the reality of the opinions of certain ethnic groups in Turkey.

It is kind of like how in the USA we respect science until it challenges the Bible. Except that the Turkish objections are to more recent events, and is more likely to result in things like jail time.
Javascript? :)
Not to mention the hard part ... building a community.
Half-Life Full-life Consequences: Free Man | Agent Zoo
> Perhaps other languages can be compiled down with HipHop.

There's already something like HipHop for Python called Cython. You can compile any pure python code into a static C shared library (with the exception of generators).
I don't think anyone is claiming that "Flash became useless yesterday".

hyperbolist was just offering an example of good-looking video via HTML5 to counter the claim that a world without Flash is a world in the dark ages of video.
It all started with your lists. I think that was when I really fell in love. You see in a language like Java or php if you want to get the last element of the list you have to write something like $a[count($a) - 1]. But python was different: just write a[-1].

Don't take this as hostile. Rather as an observation of the shifted expectations of programmer subculture.

So a cryptic negative index counts as "elegant?" Wouldn't it be more straightforward just to ask a list for "last?"

Here's the equivalent Smalltalk:

list last

In Ruby:

list.1ast

Laypeople would have an immediate inkling of either. The negative array index stuff would cause at least some python prompt exploration or the shift to some sort of reference.
Can you please provide a source for your claims about Apple religiously avoiding bit fiddling?

Because Snow Leopard is all about using some really crafty and serious bit fiddling + Resource Forks to improve performance and decrease size.

If you haven't read John Siracusa's excellent report on Snow Leopard, have a look at this page of his review: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.a...

While a lot of what he says is about compression, but pay special attention to what John says about the entire contents of files being stored in extended attributes in order to boost performance and lower file size... and Mail archives being stored in Resource Forks... and much, much more.

And I never mention bundles anywhere - they're a higher level construct independent of the FS.