skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems strange to me that some of the most important software is written in some of the easiest-to-mess-up languages. When we are writing a web application to share 140 character messages with our friends, everything is high-level. There are no blocks of memory, or bits to twiddle that change the hardware configuration, etc., etc. You have to go pretty far out of your way for your application to not work correctly, and then you have extensive unit tests to make sure you don't do that. The possibility of a bug in your application affecting other applications, or the OS, or the hardware is pretty much exactly zero. You aren't even allowed to write code that could be incorrect, like casting pointers or indexing into memory you didn't allocate.

Then there are embedded systems that control missile batteries or commercial aircraft, and to save money on processors, everything is implemented in the lowest-level language possible. You have some registers and a block of memory. The programmer has to manage the hardware configuration, manage memory, make sure he never writes outside of an array, make sure he never treat one pointer as a pointer of another type, etc. If you accidentally forget to do any of those things exactly right, even once in a million lines of code, the device can kill 500 people. And that's not even including bugs in the actual control algorithm... which you don't have much time to get right, since making the computer work at all is the hard part.

Anyway, it would be nice to see the embedded industry as a whole start using a programming language that can ensure some minimal amount of correctness at compile-time. Add a bit of expressiveness to the language so that describing complex algorithms is only a few lines of code, and I think we won't be hearing much about embedded software failing.

My guess, though, is that this will never happen; for the same reason that soft drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. Saving 0.01 cents times a hundred million units means massive profits. Saving a few cents by using a low-level but dangerous programming languages, and then paying out a few wrongful death settlements is probably cheaper than spec-ing better hardware. Externalities, gotta love 'em.

Edit: I see things like Atom (http://hackage.haskell.org/package/atom) as hope for the future. Machines can write C just fine. Just don't let the humans do it.
check out hitbio.com
Thanks for the comment. This is the first, minimal viable product, and right now searching for the first practical implementation. Textbook and vacation trips are great ideas.

For the design, I believe a web app should be a web app, not a website. Minimal images, minimal views, straight to the point.
I'm playing around with the resume editing, which is pretty clean so far. I am wondering what the difference is between "project descriptions", "course or training information", and "job and project experience". It seems like you could combine the three and make the interface simpler.
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It's really rather evil, when you think about it. Any chump can stuff hot dogs down his gullet for a few minutes...but all day long? That's dedication to a cause.
privacy issue - i wouldn't want anyone knowing all my personal details. especially to the public.

maybe a hide / block feature. but then this would just become another .docx/.pdf resume site.

i like the idea of being able to share/critique. sometimes people are lost for words in their own resume and need help. eg: using action words when describing their role.

good work! keep it up!
So what can we say about bloggers who cannot get the names of the people they quote right?
Does it spit out a Word document at the end? If not, it's not useful for people who expect to hand data to recruitment companies.

I work for a company that provides CV/Resume parsing services to recruitment companies, and they all want Word documents they can reformat to their house style (and usually anonymise so the employer can't contact the candidate directly) using automated software (either ours or their CRM provider's).

Are you taking structured data from people to generate the resume? Have you considered generating HR-XML which can be passed straight to various CRMs and HR tools?

Do you provide an API to allow multi-board search tools (which we also produce) to search the resumes on your service? Recruitment companies don't want to search your site individually - they want to search everywhere at once.

You're just getting started, but trac's really not a good choice for managing your end-user help! Save it for your developer documentation and get something nicer in there, quickly!
im not necessarily saying they're "connected". Moreso, reading all those speculative posts sparked this post in my mind.
It seems we would have much further to fall before genuine survival is imperiled.

I quite agree, things have to get a lot worse before most of us here are seriously affected. But I think it is worth being aware of the trends.

To quote Gibson: "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed"
checked it out: but serving difference markets. hitbio is a google search (Basically tells you type your name).

praux-whever is about sharing resumes, critiquing, etc.
You know, I have to disagree. Without application multitasking, the iPad won't even replace the laptop that stays in my living room -- sure, I mostly surf the web, but I'm also running (multi-protocol) IM and IRC all the time and I want them to stay connected in the background.

I do realize that there's always BeeJive for the IM portion of my requirements, but I always thought that keeping your connection alive through a proxy server was an ugly hack that was only necessary due to the limitations in iPhone OS. That and I dislike sharing my login credentials with a third party server.

I also have to say (as an iPhone owner) that I really kind of hate the app switching experience as it stands now. I want an instantaneous switch -- more or less like alt-tab on Linux or Windows -- and waiting for the springboard to reappear and then for whatever new app to load kind of gets on my nerves, especially if I'm trying to bounce between reading an e-book in Stanza or reading a web page and a slow-moving IM conversation. This is one reason why I'm ditching my iPhone 3G for a Nexus One as soon as they're available on Verizon. It's also why I find the Android tablets that are in development, like the MSI Harmony, much more appealing than the iPad: Android multitasks.

But I do also recognize I'm not the iPad's target market.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I suspect a lot of the iPad hate, particularly regarding no multitasking, isn't so much the idea of making a device that normal people can use so much as it is the idea that this is the sum total of the future of computing: specialized devices that uni-task, attempt to lock us into specific content providers, lock up our data in apps rather than letting us have free access to the file system, and so on. In other words -- it's not so much about what it currently is, but rather the potential future it represents. I think those fears are a bit overblown, but I definitely empathize with them. I'd hate having a computer that (for example) forced me to use iPhoto or Aperture or Lightroom or Picasa to manage my photos rather than just keeping them in a nicely organized file structure that I created.

But at any rate, I think there's room enough in computing for both approaches and I don't understand why various groups on both sides seem so anxious to strip those choices away from everyone else. Which is to say: I don't think anyone who is confused by a file system or windowed multitasking is a drooling idiot who shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet, but I also don't appreciate the simplicity advocates telling me that I should get over it because I don't need the ability to multi-task or be able to see multiple programs at once anyway. There's room for both approaches and I suspect there'll always be a need for both.
Are the "top resumes" intended to help sell the site? Because they don't. 3 of them still have boilerplate in them, one of them is like 7 pages of ill-formated random technical qualifications, and none of them contain anything that shows off the value of the service. Axe that from the front page.

I don't know about the job market for people from Joann's Fabric, but the little cartoon guy is the wrong tone for my market.

I feel like LinkedIn solves the problem that this site is trying to solve.
The Day They Almost Decided To Put Windows NT On The Mac Instead Of OS X
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Well, it will for them....

E.g. Rich Hickey started out building Clojure on the JVM and CLR. At some point, he realized he could double the speed of Clojure per se innovation by only developing for one, instead of implementing the same thing on two VMs.

(He picked the JVM and later others resumed the CLR version.)
- you're competing with LinkedIn, you know that?

- The images (the little guy) and some of the wording is too dorky. Not saying you shouldn't show personality, but this is the wrong personality.

- "Theme your resume using CSS" - if you're aiming at regular people, forget this geeky stuff.

- I'm not clear on why I would put my resume there? I have LinkedIn set up, just seems better ("better" in this case means I'll get more professional benefit/job offers).
So what happens to those dollars you pay the bridge builders? Do they just turn into nothing? Or do they use them to pay their mortgages, and shop, and eat? What happens when those bridge builders are not paid for that bridge? That's right, their banks and local stores see less revenue.

Look, just read a textbook or two on macroeconomics. This isn't a new idea. You're just uninformed, sorry.
The 3d head scan to bronze statue process blew me away.
Ask HN: Does HN webserver follow HTTP 1.1 standard?
Hi all,

sorry to be such a protocol nazi, but today I noticed that surfing the Hacker news triggers protocol violation error in Fiddler. It appears that HN is sending lines in headers terminated with LF instead of CR LF ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http#Request_message or http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-2.2). Am I reading the standards wrong?
Thanks zefhous for pointing this out. But the "no more location-based ads" makes a better headline :(
I believe davidw(http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidw) is a Tcl hacker.
Thank you. I am now very, very addicted.
This brings up an interesting parallel to my situation - I'm kind of in the same boat, but I've also founded two different products myself (with lots of press attention) and have years worth of experience managing remote teams of designers, developers, writers etc for various projects.

Problem is I've been self-employed my entire ten years in the biz so don't have a "Product Manager" title on my resume that isn't self-applied.

I've been applying for PM jobs with lukewarm response. Its very frustrating since I'm at a point where I feel like its the thing I'd be best qualified to handle considering how much experience I have with pretty much every aspect of the role except for the titled position itself.

Curious if anyone has any incite into this - going from botched Founder to fulltime PM...
This is not surprising; I don't think pg cares about details like HTTP, Unicode, or CSS.
I would say because it is an interesting thought. And btw, the title of the submission is much 'better' than the post's.
Computation of 2700 billion decimal digits of Pi using a Desktop Computer
Except that most modern mobile devices DO have a hardware h264 decoder, but aren't fast enough to run theora as a plugin -- if they even have support for plugins.
speculation piled on top of speculation- where that gets us is not a place i want to go.
I think you've actually identified the key problem with the iPad - it doesn't do anything better than other devices.

In contrast, the iPod had the scroll wheel - an interface so superior to the alternatives at browsing large collections of music that every iPod since has stuck with it. Similarly, the iPhone had a killer feature - a mobile web browser that actually worked. Also, both products were polished versions of devices whose commercial viability had been established for decades.

The iPad lacks a selling point. It plays music, but it's too large to replace a portable music player. It doesn't support the codecs that 99% of the video files people view today are encoded with, and has a poor aspect ratio for watching 16:9 TV or movies. It has a fancy ebook reader application, but I'm betting that glossy LCD screen will be unreadable in direct sunlight. And it has a web browser that works well on a phone, but will probably feel very constraining on a full-size device.

It seems as if Apple believes the touch interface itself is the compelling feature that justifies the iPad, rather than anything you might do with it. I'm skeptical - touch-based computers have been disappointing marketeers for the last twenty years. They have a certain cachet, but other interfaces are less frustrating in practice. The iPhone is probably the best-case scenario for touch, and yet there's still a huge market for phones with a physical keyboard.

In short, I'm still waiting to see a reason why someone would buy an iPad over a task-specific device or a laptop. (Particularly for $500+ a pop) Nothing in iPhone OS 3.2 is compelling enough to sell to a mainstream audience, IMO. Of course, the iPod and iPhone had significant issues in their first iteration as well, but Apple addressed them in subsequent generations and they'll hopefully apply the same treatment to the iPad. The difference is that the iPad starts at a disadvantage so long as it launches without a killer application.
Have you looked at AppScale?
http://code.google.com/p/appscale/
Yeah, I realized that when submitting the post. a) prediction isn't allowed (was removing regardless for here) b) it's phrased better.
I think because he's predicting deflation. In deflation, the currency increases in value, so your debt effectively gets bigger. In a deflationary time, cash is king.
JooJoo Looks to be Dark Horse in Tablet Race
Same here, but I'd say it's probably happened once in the past three months, three times in the past six.

Flash may be the main cause of Safari crashes, but, well, my Safari never really crashes anyway.
As a consumer I will hate this, as site owner I will love it. Nonetheless, nice idea. Good luck!
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That's because they're nowhere close to a monopoly in the smart phone market.
I think you need to be more explicit in step 2. It's obvious that Apple will be making a mobile advertising play, and it may well resemble what you describe, but the idea that that they would ban every other ad network is a stretch.

That they "love to control everything" is not convincing. It seems to me that they are usually motivated by an unwillingness to depend on third-parties for things central to their business, not that they intend to actively disrupt anybody else's business just for the sake of control. What beef does Apple have with Fusion Ads or The Deck, and application developers that currently use them?

In truth, I'm not even convinced that they intend to open up that ad network for third-party developers, and not simply use it for themselves. Consider U.S. patent application #20090265214:

Among other disclosures, an operating system presents one or more advertisements to a user and disables one or more functions while the advertisement is being presented. At the end of the advertisement, the operating system again enables the function(s). The advertisement can be visual or audible. The presentation of the advertisement(s) can be made as part of an approach where the user obtains a good or service, such as the operating system, for free or at reduced cost.

Ordinarily I'd dismiss this as merely speculative and not likely to see the light of day, but this lists Steve Jobs listed among the inventors.
There already is an open-source Flash player. It's very good. not.
http://www.gnashdev.org/

Oh, sorry. what you're saying is that Adobe should pay for the developmentof this open-source Flash player... Ah, right.
Google Apps highlights – 2/5/2010
Writing Compilers Quickly
put it in my calendar.
Nested parens. Nice.
A few suggestions, and an idea.

Unlike many people here, I do like the name. I understood it immediately, and contrary to what people are saying about "buzzwords", when writing a resume you are in fact promoting yourself. If I did have a suggestion, maybe add Resume to the name? PrauxResume.com ?

You lack a call to action. I really don't know what the next step on the website is. You need to explain precisely what I need to do next. Most of your users will be fairly stupid, they need to be told!

Someone mentioned the comment bubbles in your slideshow. I also agree that they need to go, they distract me from the useful content I am supposed to be reading. The comments are cute and clever and all, but get rid of them.

Finally, I think this would be fairly useful for people looking to hire people. Perhaps you could add some useful tools for people to search for resumes based on experience and geographical location - be sure to include protection so that peoples content can't be harvested for malicious purposes. Perhaps even an opt-out of the search, which is probably an essential addition.

I like it and have added it to my bookmarks, I may use it down the road. Best of luck and hope you get all the feedback you can handle.
Not your grandfather's braking system
I doubt this "scares Google shitless". There are plenty of advertising companies Google doesn't own. (Ever see a billboard or watch TV? Those are not Google's ads.)

I have to wonder what the value of ads on a mobile phone is anyway, especially on a phone without multitasking. I imagine the click-through rates are very low, and that conversion rates are zero. The only value that could possibly arise is increased brand-recognition of the advertiser.

(My experience with ads on Android is that they are usually annoying enough for me to insta-uninsall the app. They provide no value, but they do ensure that I stop using your app and consider someone else's paid version.)
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"The iPad isn't for dumb people, it is for people who don't want to think about their computer anymore."

These devices will eventually just become extensions of our ourselves as with other tools.

The Samurai didn't need to think about the inter-workings of his sword to make mincemeat of his enemies in battle.

Through training, the sword becomes a natural extension of one's self.

Why should our hand held computers be any different?
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Obviously you aren't using an iPhone 3G. Unbelievable lag at times...
> A meritocracy, almost by definition, assigns more value (and therefore dignity) to those who are more capable.

No, a meritocracy does does not assign more value to the more capable. Moreover, dignity is not value.
I have to admit: this is one of the most well reasoned, clearly articulated discussions of the patent system I have read in a very long time.

Only one portion that I think is misleading:

"Meanwhile, the loss of patent protection for software could make programmers realise at last that they have more in common with authors, artists, publishers and musicians than they ever had with molecular architects and chip designers. In short, they produce expressions of ideas that are eminently copyrightable."

As you can imagine, the process of copyrighting code is somewhat unwieldy. The definition of what constitutes copyright violation (changing variable names? functionally similar code with a differing structure?) and what constitutes fair use is hazy. Is it the answer to the patent woes of today? Probably not, but it could evolve into a more complete solution if/when it is more heavily utilized and more cases are litigated to develop a stronger precedent.
Heh ... in all fairness, I'm pretty sure I only developed this level of understanding of the US firearms industry in the last few years, and part of it is my focus on FN (my family has been buying their stuff for a long time, going back to a FN marked 16 gauge Browning Auto-5 that my grandfather or father bought in the '30s or '40s).

One of the things that caught my eye about FN was the reason for their fidelity to the US civilian market: unlike government sales, it's reliable and fair (you don't have to bribe us to buy FN :-). Hmmm, now that I think about it, I'll bet the US civilian market earned back the development costs for the P90, it's intended market disappeared (designed to penetrate Warsaw Pact body armor with ammo we can't buy) and other sales have been limited.

But Americans just love the little puppies (hey, it's really innovative and looks like a weapon of the future, I'm sure it's use on StarGate didn't hurt, and it's well featured in anime) ... if I could afford a "fun" gun I'd buy one in a second.

Plus I don't like direct impingement (the AR-10/15 design) so I've paid close attention to all the alternatives, of which there are many. And e.g. bought a SIG-556, which is the love child of a SIG-551 and an M4 (stamped steel upper, forged aluminum lower (which shaves off a pound which my RSI limited arms really appreciate)) and was impressed by the aftermarket parts activity for this fairly obscure gun (they'd only sold 10s of thousands).

Plus buying a mousegun is next on my list, after .380 ammo becomes available again.
There is a lot of middle ground.
It does spit out a word document at the end (if you want one).. The URLs are RESTful. To get a document file out of a resume go to the resume / view you want then do filename.ext.. so http://michael.gregorowicz.praux.com/resume.doc would give you a word document. .txt, text file.. .odt, .pdf, etc!
While copyright does last for 70 years, it doesn't seem all that useful to software developers. After all, if the idea behind a piece of software is not protected, it is a relatively simple matter to rewrite it (if given the idea).

That said, an end to software patents would be welcome indeed. I wonder if this would have any impact on the H.264 patent?
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Hello guys. As someone who's supposed to graduate this summer I can really see the value of this thing. I think you have done a terrific job.

There are some points for improvement though. As is already mentioned, I think the faster you let people experience the ease of creating the resumes the better.
Anyone going from North County?