skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Tim Bray exhibits the error of rationalism in this piece.

Knowledge can be split into two types. The first one is what's usually called knowledge: what you can learn from a book, get graded on, formalize, prove, explain etc. This is academic knowledge, the know what, the episteme.

The second type is more ambiguous. It's more of a way of doing things -- easier to show than to explain in words, something that one can do well without being able to put it on paper. This type of knowledge is implicit, it's the know how, it comes from practice and experience, it's the techne.

The error of rationalism is overestimating the importance of the first type of knowledge. To someone unaware of the distinction - someone who reads too much - it will seem that all knowledge is of the first type, because it is all they see in their books.
FP is also catching on at BAML; we have a bit of production Haskell, and are starting to hire Scala developers instead of Java developers for new projects. (Java developers are too hard to find. Never thought I'd be saying that...)

Of course, most of the code that actually makes us money is Excel spreadsheets :)
I don't think it's that the iPad will be the future as much as it is the form factor and simplicity of the ipad will be the future. Apple is paving the way in this case because they focus more on polish and e "average consumer" than they do features and geeks. The rest of the industry will be caught with their pants down just like they were with the iPhone, but they will quickly catch up and all the gripes us geeks have about openness and lack of features will be addressed. Say what you will about Apple, but they certainly shake things up and inspire competition, and that's a good thing. Oh, and I'm posting this from my new iPad :)
I think the problems lie in reimplementing something with disregard for the experiences gathered when it was implemented the first time. There are plenty of times where solutions a wiped up to age-old problems that only work in the most common of cases, and cause huge headaches when the edge cases are hit. On the other hand, mature solutions with wide user-bases have already run into and solved these problems.

Basically, there's no point in re-inventing the wheel unless you're meaning to improve the existing implementation or at least bring something new to the table. Too many times things are re-implemented and labelled as 'new and improved' even though they are a decided step backwards.

All of that said, I think that original statement was meant to be a push-back against the prevailing 'wisdom' that Perl is dead and that you should really be onto something like Python or Ruby like all of the 'cool kids' are doing. (i.e. "Don't discount Perl, it has many solutions to offer you.")
But you probably drove to the library less than you made Google searches.

There'd be much less remote hiring without hi-tech options, too.
But then again this is Haskell so there may be some mind boggling property of the language that is only understood by math postdocs and the more enlightened monks in Shaolin monasteries that makes the original line ok.

Nope, and there never is. Haskell is just programming!
No. I think the iPhone multitouch (truly intuitive interface advance) plus the App Store (walled garden combining a significant degree of safety and convenience with usefully harnessed market forces) pointed the way to this. By mentioning the Kindle, I was replying to your comment.
"The incumbents said the personal computer was inadequate and underpowered. It couldn't even multitask, unlike their glorious, room-filling computers. The personal computer would never catch on, they cried. They were wrong."

Notice how the modern personal computer eventually grew features that made it a more attractive proposition for people who were addicted to the power of the previous model. A modern personal computer offers all of the power and flexibility of an early vacuum tube computer, and much much more, without needing to deal with burned-out vacuum tubes (suck on that, people who think the command line is a big deal!). A quick perusal of the iPad programming guide reveals that there are now rudimentary features for sharing data between applications. That said...

My worry is that with the New World computing model (locked down by default, with the inviolability of the locks arguably backed by the DMCA) this process will be significantly slower and less pleasant if the mothership (whoever 'owns' the platform) has that kind of leverage over people who would otherwise give it a well-deserved kick in the pants. Here is a well-known app for the early Macintosh, well into 'jailbreaking' territory:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

It is interesting to compare the difference between then and now in what kind of experience the guy who develops Switcher ends up having.
Google's Panoramio runs on App Engine: http://www.panoramio.com/
I talked with one of the guys that works for Google App Engine, and he confirmed that BuddyPoke is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) apps that run on it. That app serves millions of DAUs on various social networks and runs just fine.

I've set up things on app engine and amazon as well. I found GAE just to be much, much easier and saved me a lot of time and money (yes I know EC2 is cheap but it's not cool to see your bill growing when you're just testing things).

I actually took the time to switch to EC2/S3 for a couple days because I was worried that GAE was not really serious about making it a productive place to run serious applications. Portability was a big factor too. But after a while I figured that all this worry was nonsensical. If I ever have to move things over, it must be a good sign and either someone will have built a tool for it or I just spend a week building a tool for it.

Also, re: SSL. You can actually do it right now on GAE but it involves a few tricky workarounds. That said, the GAE team just pushed a more straightforward feature for this to the top of the roadmap. Beforehand they had said they weren't going to work on it anytime soon, but presumably after so many people complained they decided to go ahead with it -- another good sign that at least they're responsive to developers' needs.
Actually, thinking about it, it does! "People under people" is a metaphorical description of a business, and they "exploit capitalism", that is, use it to their advantage, selling products and living off the profit.

But, of course, that is not what the joke I quoted means. What it means is that, like Churchill's alleged saying about democracy goes, "it's the worst system except for all others". So far, anyway.
Meta: can we change the title? It is different than the title of the actual article, and "does evil" is a pretty subjective term.
Google, Ambiera show off what WebGL and HTML5 can do for browser-based 3D gaming
How very PC of you. Meanwhile, you have somebody who is afraid to date, without laying out a whole big drama scene on his perspective girlfriend.

You would rather make every relationship this guy has (yes, there will be more than one) be an 'After School Special'. You get 15 karma points for validating his current viewpoint, which he's obviously not happy with and which is keeping him single. Cool. That seems worth it to me.

I disagree that this woman will "somehow find out and be scarred for life". I reject that it's better he stay single on the hypothetical theory that she might be scarred. I have a problem with PC bullshit, but that's just me.
I think the appropriate question to ask before talking about the technical merits of various platforms is:

1. How much content do they have in DNN already?

2. How much of that is going to be tough to migrate out of there?

3. What kinds of customizations have already be done in DNN?

4. Why are they contemplating moving to a new l(a|n)(m|pg)(d|r|p) platform and who do they know to program in these new technologies? Is that you? It might make sense to move to a linux, nginx|apache, postgre, django|rails platform if they want to make a website that is very custom and needs to be fairly maleable.
I've been using GAE+GWT for about 6 months now, mostly for small, "do it in a weekend" type projects. I've also used it to host content for my iPhone apps, so that I could update the content (mostly ebooks delivered as PDFs) without going through the awful App Store update process.

It's been great for me. I love how quickly I can bootstrap new ideas, put up a prototype, and then just hand out the URL for to people to try.

A couple of recent apps:

http://create-a-password.appspot.com
http://slimpoints.appspot.com
http://mealminder.appspot.com

That last one was mostly a proof-of-concept in using Google's account and payment infrastructure. Really handy if you decide that you'll want your customers to pay you some day.

I guess the biggest hurdle is getting used to the Datastore, which is not really intuitive if all you're used to is SQL. Overall, a very positive experience for me.
I'm probably not quite as successful as PG is in his space, but I've done embarrassingly well in the area under discussion.

Sadly, I can't disagree with the assessment about studying to become a quant. Odds would be higher if you simply picked up the books and tried to trade yourself. Otherwise you'll likely be sucked up into a big firm and get lost in that mess.

That said, I don't know what the relative odds are vs founding Google or Apple. It seems kind of like wondering which state's lotto to put your money in.
'97 BBC series http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8639555925486210852#

It seems the author himself uploaded the videos and encourages their use. Amazing.
The iPad is not at tool at all, it is a distribution channel.
I have a small blog here: www.seevishal.com. In it I keep a log of what I've eaten for the past week. Many of the things I make take 15-20 minutes to prepare, taste pretty damn good and are good for you.
How could they have failed to mention the Go Tablet?

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/go/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO_Corp.
He wrote "everything you need". I'm not sure why you want to limit it to mainstream. Of course mainstream stuff is of better quality than some rare packages, but that's not what he said and not what disagreed with.
No, it doesn't mean that.
I usually overbuy bananas since they are so easy to eat on the go, but can also be quickly turned into the most amazing vegan ice-cream.

1. Freeze ripe bananas

2. Mash with strawberries/blueberries/mangos/etc.

3. (optional) Add agave nectar and coconut milk to taste
I will not give my opinion on the article being right or wrong. However, the CLI and maybe the current GUI will survive, even if they become a minority. The joy of computers today is that people suddently have access to an amazing, powerful and versatile tool, which is the programmable computer.

Our computers are not designed to do one thing, they are designed to be flexible and allow lots of things to be done. That's why you can read a DVD, transcode its contents, take screen captures and send them by email or serve the whole movie, maybe even edited, to the whole world using a peer to peer application. Obviously this flexibility is not seen as a good thing by some industries, but that's a different matter.

Now, to interact and program this flexible machine you can do two things, or a mix of them: on the one hand, you can give the user a powerful language to express their ideas and make the computer ask only a single question ("Huh?"), and that would be a CLI and its prompt; or you can give the user a simple language of pointing and "Huh!" and make the computer ask the right questions to them in the hope you offer them enough options.

The first way is usually more powerful and flexible, easier to implement but harder to use, and the second option is way easier to use but much more difficult to implement, and there are a lot of books with dissertations about how to ask the right questions and how to choose which questions to ask, because you cannot give every option.

Probably, the majority of people using computers in the world today only need to be asked simple and very direct questions and a simple computer that doesn't really get in the way and uses a different metaphore could be the solution, but I challenge that the number of computer experts and power users is in the millions anyway and they need a CLI or a slightly more complex GUI to express what they want to do, so I don't think those interfaces are going to die, even if they do "lose the battle", if we such a battle exists. As a programmer and power user, I turn to the CLI many times a day simply because the GUI isn't asking the right questions, and I hope it remains an option in future computers.
It's in the works, and for the most part works well: http://github.com/rspec/rspec
Sharing vs. your privacy on Facebook
I agree 100% about using sharp knives. The Kiwi knives from Wok Shop are fantastic and incredibly cheap:

The Wok Shop: Kiwi Brand Knives from Thailand
http://knurl.us/url/acefb63

There are plenty of reviews:

Cool Tools: Kiwi Knives
http://knurl.us/url/6xx9oac

Pattio Daddio BBQ: Discovery: Kiwi Knives
http://knurl.us/url/vz75rau

Pattio Daddio BBQ: Follow Up: Kiwi Knives
http://knurl.us/url/e1f9etx

Tactical-Life.com » Credible Cutters on the Cheap
http://knurl.us/url/1rykse5

I'm considering getting a few Wok Shop chopping blocks, too. Has anyone used them?

The Wok Shop: Chinese Chopping Blocks
http://knurl.us/url/mvhaa45

The Wok Shop: Chinese Ironwood Round Chopping Boards
http://knurl.us/url/1xj0ufu
Agreed, you don't post a screen like this unless you are pretty pissed off that your $500 new toy just stopped working for a while out of the blue. Strange how almost all negative iPad remarks are getting down voted.
"Ms. Derrick" lied to the other teachers about asking him to install software on her computer. She apologized to him, but she's still portrayed in a bad light and used as an example throughout the book as the proof that "all adults lie." I don't remember the others except for Carl, but they certainly don't stand out.
> If distributed, fail tolerant and instant deployable are three things that describe your startup, relying on your hardware to always work, that your sysop friend is always around and that you're on top of kernel bugs seems like a pretty fast way to fail.

Indeed, if you are a typical startup, then you either don't have the capital, the time or the knowledge to manage your own hardware.

But at some point you should move into a hardware-owner category at least because it's the foundation on whatever your are building and you might want some control over that.
It took me some time to get Linux fonts looking the way I want, and the conclusion I came to appears to be the same as yours: hinting off, subpixel on. Fairly simple compared to some of the funky paths I went down in the past.

I look at that "sharp fonts" page you linked to and I can not react more negatively to the awful stick-thin fonts they seem to like. Awful, awful.
That's not a weakness of capitalism (an economic system), but a weakness in the way our regulatory agencies and legislatures interact (our political system).

People who call themselves "capitalists" typically want to reform the political end of things so it stops distorting the economic system.
I am a part owner of a business in West Africa, and I'll say that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Kagame's leadership and hope to see similar leaders rise in Africa.

The West and this documentary makes the erroneous assumption that full democracy and unfettered freedom of speech are axiomatic components of a society. Not so. I see these as goals to aspire to, not starting points.

Singapore's rise from one of the poorest countries in Asia to now being wealthier than Britain on a per capita basis was not founded in full democracy. Even Europe had to go through a long evolution from the autocratic Roman Empire, to monarchies, to feudalism, aristocracies, and eventually democracy trickled in.

If what Kagame is doing is working, then let it work for his people, The country is now peaceful and has an inviting and reponsible environment for private enterprise to play a role in developing the country. The west needs to stop trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
broken-module forcing a manual rebuild of half of existing modules

Very few modules are actually "built". Most building is just "cp lib/* $PERL5LIB". If you mean some module required a newer version of another module, and that new module was installed... yeah, that happens. That's why there's a dependency management system.

There are broken modules, there are specific-distro-and-version-only modules, there are undocumented modules, etc.

Some people think one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. Others think a rotten apple is better than no apple at all. It's usually the second group that has working applications, and the first group that whines on social news sites about how bad everything is. Just sayin'.
Hi, Alexis here from RabbitMQ.

Wtf? You may not like what we do with AMQP but I can assure that lots of people are very happy using it in its RabbitMQ incarnation. Which version of AMQP have you "had the misfortune to work with" and how have you found it "hopelessly overengineered"? Is there something else you would recommend - and if so why?

We do actually like making our product better and appreciate constructive criticism.

Please do explain.

Also please note that RabbitMQ supports multiple protocols and one reason we like AMQP 0-8 and 0-9-1 is that they are flexible enough to make this easy (see e.g. RabbitHub on Github).

Cheers

alexis
I think Deestan was more suggesting that turning into an Asshole would not be the best way to handle such a situation (breaking up).

Im not certain but I am guessing that recurrence of the disease would not be something to happen over night. You could detach from a relationship perfectly well in a few weeks if you wanted without being an asshole :)
Judging by the number of patches I get for my modules, I would say that this statement is false. Or everyone on the Internet is just really, really smart.
Jumping URL (http://www.jumpingurl.com) runs on app engine.

FYI, there are few key things the GAE team is working on which can be found at http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/roadmap.html

Things like SSL for custom domains and background processing would make GAE even awesome to have your project running on.
IPad Doesn't Charge from Windows PC USB Port?
I did that when I was younger - I started a company for the experience. Can you guess what I got out of it? Experience! (and not much else)

Now I focus on making money, solving problems, changing the world.
Aaaaaand ... 23 days later (April 04 01:16:55 WEST)

Relevance: 21,590 Results
Others: 17,807

An increase of nearly 4k in a tad over 3 weeks, about 170 per day.

By date, they seem to land in batches - Mar 19, Mar 14 ...
That FastCompany wattermark on the pictures sure was annoying.

Were they afraid that pictures of 20 year old tech might be stolen ? Really ?
Not all USB ports are powered. It is often necessary to connect certain peripherals directly to a USB 2.0 port on the computer (as opposed to, say, a USB jack on the keyboard itself).
In defense of the excellent but not-beginner-optimized Programming in Lua, its back cover describes it as "targeted at people with some programming background".
> I am also interested in computer security.

If your smart, can do some programming and are able to think on your feet this is a multi billion dollar industry right in front of you :)
No, you're supposed to mount it to your arm so that everyone can see how awesome you are for owning an iPod. Apple doesn't get any free advertising when it's in your pocket!
Although we aren't a big site by any measure; we're using it and loving it for http://www.classlet.com
Gmail on the iPad
loading PDFs for school

What app do you use? iBooks?
I use app engine for several projects, a couple of which have decent load. My biggest one is networkedblogs.com, which I started on php/mysql and recently migrated big parts of it's back-end to the app engine. My experience with it has been good, and I always build new projects on it, unless there is a good reason that prevents it. It has it's own pros and cons, but overall it's a good choice:

- It's easy to start with and fun to use. You shouldn't need more than one day to learn it.

- If you like to focus on coding and not worry about managing the server then you'll love it. But if you're a control freak and like to have access to low-level settings then you'll not.

- If you have prior experience with relational databases such as mysql, then you'll need an adjusting period to forget much of what you learned about databases and start thinking in new and different ways. Some things that are really easy in mysql, such as getting the number of records in a table or joining tables, become hard on app engine and require writing code.

- When it goes down, you'll feel helpless that you can't do anything to bring your site back up, but you'll also feel lucky that a Google employee is carrying that beeper and have to wake up and fix it.

- It scales, but it's not super fast. Due to its distributed nature, individual requests rarely finish in less than 50ms and usually take 100 to 150ms (that' my experience, yours will likely differ). But it can run a huge amount of requests at the same time.

- It solves the scaling problem, but it's not magic. You still need to optimize the heavily used parts of your code for scaling. But at least you do it with code, rather than having to fiddle with server and cache settings.

- It's a paradigm shift that will eventually eliminate most of database and system admin jobs if it catches it (I think it will).

- It's very different from Amazon's EC2. Amazon gives you servers that you have to manage, Google manages everything for you. With ec2 you pay per server hour, with App Engine you pay for resources you use: CPU Cycles, storage, bandwidth, ...etc.

- It's free to start with, but if you have heavy load it's a bit more expensive than hosting dedicated servers. I think it's worth it, though, because you'll be saving a lot of your own time.

- It's good for the majority of projects, but if your project has special not-too-common requirements, then it might not. Check first.

- It only supports python and Java right now.

If you're in Silicon Valley and if you need more in-depth information, you can find me at the next App Engine meetup at Google on the 6th.
Uh, you don't remember the NiCd and NiMH batteries from a decade ago? I do. Those really sucked.
Mind, I'm not deeply involved in either the Perl or Ruby communities, but...

The de jure successor of Perl 5 might be Perl 6, but the de facto successor is Ruby. That is where the momentum and mindshare has gone; my impression is that Perl is easing back into it's old home as AWK's big brother. In all honesty, how often do you hear about somebody writing a web application in Perl these days? While my personal experience isn't really admissible as evidence, all the people I know who used to write web apps in Perl are now writing web apps in Ruby. A bunch of the ones who used to do system administration with Perl are now working at Opscode doing systems administration in Ruby.
Since ZeroMQ has no broker but is peer to peer, that would be somewhat unnatural.

Cheers

alexis
Facebook claimants vow to continue legal action
The 'innocent data compiler' is actually a HN semi-regular. waves hello

I've got lots of thoughts on all this, obviously, but I'm trying to collect them all into a considered blog post. I'm happy to answer any questions I can though.

And if you're interested in related code, you can check out my Google Profile crawler over at GitHub:

http://github.com/petewarden/buzzprofilecrawl
I've been using it for about a year for http://www.wolfire.com and several hobby projects and am a big fan. If you have any specific questions, I am familiar with most aspects of it. It certainly has a lot of limitations, but if your app happens to coincide with what App Engine currently offers, it is a pretty sweet deal.