skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I mean, "as they actually evidenced themselves as I read them", rather than "by way of conventional view". Obviously I'm talking about my own opinion. I suspect a book like catcher in the rye would have a hard time getting published and selling today. Without being preceded by its acclaim, most readers would think it ho-hum.

This is true of a lot of things, though. Take Shakespeare's comedies. They aren't funny. A modern Shakespeare audience laughs at the jokes even though they already see them coming (having read the play multiple times already). This is the opposite of normal experience. I won't laugh much at a genuinely funny comedy if I've already seen it 10 times, so why would I laugh at 500-year-old puns that I've heard before...when even the best puns rarely cause laughter the first time?
Right, it looks like this is a baby version of iPhoto, not just a viewing app, so you can import photos, etc.

Presumably these photos would get sync'd back up with your "real" iPhoto when you plug it in to iTunes.
I'm glad you will be doing something more interesting for the second half.

I understand that the sqrt function is done for teaching purposes, but there is no point in showing people how to write an abs function, all it does is give the impression that Clojure doesn't have an absolute value function.

It would be a better use of time to take the opportunity to show people how to import a function from an external library (like clojure.contrib), than it would be to re-implement a relatively mundane function. Using libraries is important and something that should be covered in an introduction to a language.

My point about operator precedence is that it is clearer because it is explicit. When you add exponentiation into infix math notation, it gets very easy to screw stuff up by missing a paren.
xx+yy is ambiguous with x(x+y)y, in lisp it would be (+ (* x x) (* y y)) vs. (* x y (+ x y)).
(The point being that they have vastly different structure).

(Is it ironic that I'm arguing that missing a paren is more annoying in infix than it is in prefix?)
I wonder how many of those sites are pushing Unicode without knowing it. I still see programmers and non-programmers scratching their heads over character encoding issues.
If you want real metal, your best bet is probably US Mint "gold eagle" coins.

http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/?action=american_eagles

You can also by stocks (in a gold mining company) or futures in a commodity market. There's also a dizzying number of derivatives.

I gotta say though, its far from a certainty that now (or any time) is a "good" time to buy gold. Its just a commodity (and not a particularly useful one) that has some elements of currency because of its relative scarcity. It can suffer a plunge in value from a crisis in confidence like any other currency. It seems like a good bet against inflation, but if you took that bet in 1980 (the last historic high driven by inflation fears) you didn't recover until 2007!

If you want a precious metals hedge, getting some silver (low value, easy to trade) or some platinum (actually useful for many things as well as valuable) wouldn't be a bad idea.

One final thought, it is good to value food, shelter and clothing, but don't forget tools and weapons. If you get to the point where your food and clothes are a deciding factor, a good saw and a strong, sharp knife will be just as precious.
I think it more likely that the iMac will spawn a TV. The iMac 27 inch is close.
Perlman said the next step is to develop nanotechnology for a more precise method of delivering the drug.

1. Invent fusion

2. Profit!!!1!!
Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad
I use nodewiki [http://github.com/gjritter/nodewiki/] and nerve [http://github.com/gjritter/nerve/] to power my personal wiki/mindmap sites, and I'm also using node to power the backend of a site that should go public very soon.
Ping Tunnel - Send TCP traffic over ICMP
Actually he suggests to use something that he has no clue what it's doing. :)
On the iPad
Mahmud, thank you for explaining that.
Why the iPad may be just what we need for Digital Inclusion
As a person with a unicode (or iso-which-noone-ever-uses) first name - I'd like to thank all of you who enabled unicode on your databases and pages. It makes my life much easier and pleasant if I can use my real name during registration. Even if I keep getting my snail mail with '?'s, '+'s or urlencoded...
Ask HN: What options exist for a recent CS graduate?
I graduate this spring with a bachelors and masters degree in CS (dual degree program).
I know I have a lot of options ... big corporations, start ups, phd etc.
What I really want to do is work in a developing country using the knowledge I've learned in university. EWB is a great organization but I don't think they really have a place for computer scientists.

Any suggestions?
Interesting. I wonder how applicable this would be to other autoimmune problems, like Crohn's disease, since they share other treatments (e.g., Remicade).
Freakonomics: Whole Foods offers higher store discounts for healthier employees
A Closed Apple Platform is Inevitable But Temporary
I'm curious what other experienced people think about this article. I've been working as a consultant for about 5 years now and recently started working on a startup, so while I like working with a constant team (as opposed to a different client each project) and large projects (website, marketing, services, etc) I don't have the experience in starting a company and thinking long term about teams.

Besides not dismissing "grey beards" (which I don't tend to do, most that I've worked with have a lot of experience and resources to bring to the table, while most 20 somethings have lot of energy and usually a deep understanding of a small area of expertise.) is there anything else I should take away from this article with a grain of salt?
Some nice photos, but site is seriously ad-laden.
Shed Skin - Python-to-C++ compiler
Report: Critical Infrastructures Under Constant Cyberattack Globally
That is true presupposing that the technology behind lisp is sufficiently inscrutable to make it magic-like.

Fortunately for us, lisp is probably the exact opposite of a magic-like programming language. All you are doing is composing lists of symbols into trees of symbols and then executing them. It is stupidly simple.

Saying that lisp is magic serves the sole purpose of scaring newbies and spreading the fud that using lisp is a complex, complicated, and difficult. (it is not).
This is apple, once and for all, signaling to the world, that the people who make computers do cool things, the developers and the savvy, are not the market. It's too small. No one knows how to make computers do cool things, but lots of people want cool computers.

I, for one, take this as a blessing. If you are technically savvy, it's in your best interest for companies like Apple to lull consumers into a sense of satisfaction. Your job, as a programmer, is to avoid all things consumer. Your job is to do the hard stuff. If you're using facebook, you're wasting time. If you're building facebook, you're making tons of money.

This has been coming. The writing has been on the wall. The app store tragedy. Hard for developers, easy for consumers. The developers, as always, are the ones jumping through hoops. Change the color, add this, add that, i want it this way.

So the devs say ok and do it. That's the way it has always been and increasingly into the future, it will be more typical. Developers work harder so everyone else can work less. That's the way it should be.
The end of the desktop OS.
Why would it be more convenient to pull out an iPad vs a Macbook Pro when you're on a plane? By that logic, you'd get an even bigger screen with your macbook pro, and it's practically just as easy to pull that out. So that should have increased sales already. Not to mention with your computer you can play non-DRM movies if you have those. If anything the iPad might decrease pre-flight movie sales, because the TSA would think it's witchcraft--i mean, a bomb.

I see the iPad as more of a home-mobile device, rather than a mobile device. That is, it's a device mainly for home use which allows you to be mobile around the house with your information, instead of a device you take outside. A laptop is a device you take outside, because it can do so much more if you need it--like work stuff. If you're going out you'd want to know you have a more capable device on hand just in case.
This makes me sad in a Caulfield kind of way.
This advice is garbage.

What a shame such a great post starts with such a negative thought.

Your feedback, tjic, is excellent. Too bad a lot of people won't get to the excellent part because they're so turned off by your slam of OP that they just stop reading.

I've made the same mistake many times (and even realized it before my 2 hours were up and came back and editted down the negativity).

Sure, OP's advice is mechanical, but does offer some value for some readers. No need to viserate him in order to get your point across.

You zero in on what's most important first. So do your references of Steve Blank and Jay Abraham.

Having launched two bootstrapped startups over the last six years...

No need to post your resume in your comment. Your thoughts are your resume. Anyone who says what you just said has obviously already achieved a lot. (Might be a good idea to put those links in your profile so that anyone can see them no matter which comment they read.)

Not a slam, just some feedback from someone who keeps making the same mistake. You have much value to add. Find a voice that gets that value to the maximum number of recipients.
Cool.

I'm also a fan of intuitionist logic in the context for this discussion, because uninhabited but "true" types such as ((a -> b) -> a) -> a are not theorems.
It's been reported by multiple sources to be a feature of the device, not a "this should work" but "this is made to work".
swernli nailed it. Prior to the Razr you could definitely own a cell phone, but it was the first one to dare that putting a phone line in your pocket could be easy, sleek, attractive. It took the extant technology and made it into a piece of future-stuff.
Interesting.. well, I'd think the trig functions would be by far the most expensive part of that program. Is Python really that much slower for control structures? That's literally the only other computation there.
Did you really need to type out "Agreed"? Isn't that what the little up arrow is for next to each comment?
Change the color, add this, add that, i want it this way.

This reminds me of what's been going on in real-world architecture for years.

If you want to build in Apple County, it's got to have green awnings and Spanish tile and stucco walls with eaves of at least 18" ...
Neither do I, I'm just saying it's making them very profitable, much more so then the developer fee.
So much more that I don't see the developer fee as a source of income.
From one of the comments on that page:

"Likewise, neither 0MQ nor AMQP works on Internet
scales, where RESTful principles become more important than immediate performance."

I don't follow this logic. Can someone help me understand why 0MQ would not be appropriate at "Internet scales" (and I presume "should" be relegated to LANs)?

I ask because (1) it looks great for a general transport at any "scale" and (2) the article itself discusses a scenario in which 0MQ could be used over a WAN (branch offices, the forwarder, etc.).

What am I missing?
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Karl Marx
The irritating problem with this is when two different pieces of code--such as two separate gems--both attempt to add the same method to the same class. Classes are global in Ruby, so we end up with a race condition in our code.

Obviously not the point of the article, but it's still important to get your jargon right. This isn't a race condition. It could be, if you were trying to modify the same class from separate threads. But the mere attempt to share access to a global variable is not a synchronization bug, and you shouldn't be using synchronization terms for it. This is usually just called a "namespace collision".
EFF Reveals How Your Digital Fingerprint Makes You Easy to Track
I totally agree that lisp isn't magic once you have seen past the alien notation and a couple of new paradigms (pervasive meta programming, fp, symbolic manipulation, laziness). But I consider it foolish to discount that barrier for a programmer who has never ventured outside the baroque temple of the curly brace. Perception is significant as reality.
Ask HN:  Does patronizing marketing material work?
I don't want to name names, but a very successful iPhone app has marketing material like that.

Any insight on this?
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." --Douglas Adams
DHH said something about this in his presentation at Railsconf.[1]

He compared developers to puppies, saying that we really all just want to be loved, and fetch that ball over and over and over, even if it gets thrown in the mud. We need to stop thinking like that, and start demanding to be treated as equals in the requirements making process.

---
1: http://brightkite.com/objects/a8ab4412399611de9db7003048c108...
Excellent point, thanks! Although it feels like one in that the behaviour sometimes comes across as a Heisenbug: depending on the order the environment loads various gems and files, you can have a code that sometimes does one thing and sometimes another.
You mean Charles and Ray Eames' "Powers of 10":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z53wTtGGA0
Companies using node.js: http://wiki.github.com/ry/node/
Wherever we stand in digital history, the iPad leaves me with the feeling that Apple’s interests and values going forward are deeply divergent with my own.

It's pretty odd to me how people have willingly accepted Apple's closed phone and media player ecosystem without batting an eye-lash, but the iPad is just outrageous as it encroaches on the PC.

Isn't the iPad just a logical continuation of Apple's trajectory of the last decade?
I thought this was awfully shallow by O'Reilly standards.

I didn't catch a single compelling reason that anyone should want to use this device, particularly in preference to iPod/iPhone or a larger netbook. A statement like

But the final bit of noteworthy, and compelling, good about iPad is that this just feels like the device that real people (read: non-techies) are going to flock to.

really doesn't come close to a real argument.

Also, the paragraph

the iPod and iPhone that came before it were truly revolutionary devices, offering wholly new functionality, delivering new value chains, and fundamentally changing the relationship that consumers had with, first their media ... and then their communications.

Seems incorrect to me. iPod was another MP3 player, of which we've had a zillion. iPhone, too, is just evolutionary, in its melding of phone + PDA; really, is it that much of a revolution to add a better UI (even if that UI is great by all accounts)?

And if it's this UI revolution (if it is one) that is going to carry this, then -- as the article admits -- it will do so by cannibalizing existing Apple customers. In that case, how does this affect Google's prospects at all?
I first read Catcher in the Rye in high school, years after I had already gone through my own "Caulfield" period -- so I found it at the time kind of, I dunno, juvenile.

I don't know if re-reading it now would make a difference.
Women’s higher earnings seem to benefit husbands as much as wives
In what way are they American? They're from the U.K., which has stopped their export and charged the head of the company with fraud.
But I think people understand the limits of a phone that means it might have to be closed (after all, phones were closed for 15 years before we started seeing "open" ones), and people saw the crazy copyright battles that went on that lead to a big restriction in music copying freedom. On the other hand, we've had programmable computers in our homes for 30 years.. we aren't ready to give that up.
As Seen on TV...and in Aisle 5
Your points are valid, but I don't see how they affect the average web user. I'd be iterated too if there was a missing plugin. But most pages don't depend on flash so the odds of that happening are less.

With the upcoming compilation of Flash to native applications developers will be able to tunnel their apps through the App Store. Not perfect but for Flash game developers it's not so bad.
Actual case of an approved App-store app making premium-rate phone calls without informing users: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/27/iphone_admob/
A lot of what he's talking about is done automatically when you're using a classic Smalltalk/Squeak environment.

(E.g., names are in one place. Refactoring can happen automatically, because the IDE can find all uses of a method and fix them.)
The Last March of the Ents
As a general rule, don't trust anything that's said during an acquisition. Those communiqués are designed to assuage shareholder, employee and fan fears and usually get, uhm, reinterpreted within the first year.
But who's not a friend.

The secondary relationship makes the primary relationship hard when it has issues.
Beware, ranty comment follows:

There's another possibility here. Microsoft succeeded because of their focus on developers and, to some extent, having an open ecosystem as long as it suited their business goals. Forgetting this may be Apple's first slip up.

When OS X came out, tons of amazing apps came out that got many people switching: if Apple turns off those same developers, the platform will weaken.
Looking forward to growing the group with all of you. See you at the Upper Room.
@hunckler
Am I the only one who could hear Stephen Fry in my head the whole time I was reading it? How does he do that?!
And yet the most desirable neighborhoods in the country are planned in just that fashion.
I personally feel more optimistic than most commentators concerning what "most people" will want.

I think that a large enough group of people will continue to want an extensible machine that closed systems like the ipad will have trouble seeming like a good deal - a Mac or a PC might a bit harder to use but it does have that one extra program you have to use sometimes.
In fact I think you will find that the universe covers pretty much everything; http://getonmyhorse.com
Why the iPad isn't so bad (and why it is)
I rather like the parentheses... heehee.
A touch screen based ChromeOS would seem to be the logical next move.

Problem with this is the web was developed with point & click in mind.
Check out http://www.geekcorps.org/ who are working on community radio projects in Mali. I've talked to some Geekcorps volunteers who were using an open-source project that I maintained, and they seem to be doing good work. They've been operating for several years now.
The most interesting part for me was the MS security paper he linked to:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cormac/papers/...

It's a great explanation of why users are rational to ignore all our security advice; the expected benefits are so low compared to the effort required, and a lot of the costs are borne by other people anyway.
A consultant is selling themselves... their skill set and their time. If you are a consultant with no clients, then sure you don't need a business, but good to have one set up before you get clients.

Sometimes having a business is as simple as a DBA... cheap to do and a couple hours, looks more professional to have a client pay a company than cutting a check to Joe Smoe.

In my opinion, any time you are entering into a contract with a third party, it is best to have a legal entity set up. Talk to any company whose been around a while, consultancy or product company, and you'll hear war stories about deals gone bad. When you are still small, there'd be nothing scarier than having a deal fall through and leaving your personal assets exposed if they decided to sue.
I see the point that he is trying to make in this article about the iPad's intended audience, but I think that the iPad is still a disappointing device.

If someone needs a computer for typical tasks such as Chatting with friends, Sending and receiving email, Listening to music, Watching videos, Playing games, and Browsing the web, then they should just get a netbook for ~$300. A netbook is still highly portable and can do all of these tasks at a cheaper price.
My overall point with that sentence was that the more tech literate someone is, the less likely they are to benefit from the ease-of-use gains, and the more tech literate someone is, the more likely they are to regularly utilize their "lost freedoms". I phrased it poorly, my apologies.

Abstracting away the hierarchical file system is a positive for my mom, who can never find stuff she's saved, but I have no issues using one in the first place, so my gains are smaller. She'll be thrilled not to have to navigate an application installer or download some component from the web to run something, but doing that is nearly effortless for me.

It's no loss at all to my Mom that the iPad can't run some GPL Ruby VOIP app she wrote herself, because she can't write a Ruby VOIP app. By contrast, I would be giving up my ability to write and run my own Ruby VOIP app[1].

Overall, I (as a very tech literate person) benefit less from the positives and feel the pinch of the negatives more than my mom (or any less tech literate person). It could still be a good trade for me, but I wind up looking at a totally different values proposition than my mother would.

[1] - I have no interest in writing a VOIP app.
Once again, think of another tragically hip Steve: Steve Rubell, owner of Studio 54. He was completely capricious when choosing who got into his club and who had to remain a hopeful standing in the cool New York night, and his word was law. But that was okay because his club was the coolest around, and it was cool because, not in spite of, his caprice.

Jobs, like Rubell did, knows cool when he sees it, and is in the business of delivering the coolest, most desirable, most enviable experience to his loyal customer base. That mandates a snobbish and dictatorial selection policy, because if you let pedestrians make the UX decisions what you end up with is... pedestrian.
It's no stretch to say that modern players are in general more familiar with winning strategic plays as a result of making thousands of decisions in a quasi-simulator. However, even without video game practice, one would expect the quarterback to already have plenty of strategic understanding.
Blogosphere on Bootstrapping
A journey through the blogosphere on the topic of Bootstrapping.
I agree that iPad is a culmination of Apple's trajectory of the last decade, maybe Steve Job's trajectory for his career.

It's a triumph of creating something entirely designed to meet people immediate needs while not having any rough edges. And extensibility is inherently a rough edge.

But that doesn't change from the negative points the article makes - it illuminates them.
Designing For Monetization: How To Apply THE Key Metric In Social Gaming
IPad as Secret Video Attack Vector
Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S.
“It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
– Warren Buffett
I think what he is saying is that a general internet "service" is better off providing a higher-level REST interface instead of a 0MQ interface.
I suppose, but from a Stallman-esque strictly engineering point of view, it's all just software running on hardware and the fact that you call one with a 4" display a phone makes everyone accept it being closed but a 10" display crosses the boundary into PC territory and now it's outrageous to be closed.

It strikes me as an arbitrary distinction to make.