skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Mobile development platform (Titanium, PhoneGap)
Security-related topics
Marketing (copywriting, AdWords, etc.)
NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, etc)
AI / Machine Learning
Development methodology (Agile, etc)
Looks like a great tool, hopefully the ease of use will allow more people to test their own software and bring some awareness to the often forgotten vulnerabilities.
+1 for the Batman rollerblader. But that's about it. Use what works, some apps do justify nosql off the bat. Many don't.
"Sometimes you just want to store data on the disk in a safe and language agnostic way."

You mean, kind of like a file?
"I am exhausting my somewhat notoriously short supply of patience, so please excuse the following outburst:"

You said this paragraph from wikipedia seemed to imply that problems "arose after independence" and asked me to edit it.

Let us see what the paragraph says

"Since independence, India has faced challenges from religious violence, casteism, naxalism, terrorism and regional separatist insurgencies, especially in Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast India. Since the 1990s terrorist attacks have affected many Indian cities. India has unresolved territorial disputes with the People's Republic of China, which in 1962 escalated into the Sino-Indian War, and with Pakistan, which resulted in wars in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. India is a founding member of the United Nations (as British India) and the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1974, India conducted an underground nuclear test[38] and five more tests in 1998, making India a nuclear state.[38] Beginning in 1991, significant economic reforms[39] have transformed India into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, increasing its global clout.[20]"

Why should I edit this? Because it lists problems India faced after Independence?

I replied that such "problems arise" in every country after independence (implying that I don't feel the need to edit the paragraph) and I provided a example of how in another country "problems arose" after independence.

You didn't like that? Too bad.

To your original point about wikipedia I pointed you to a far more detailed wikipedia article (linked from the article you pointed to btw but then you didn't notice that) which detailed the history of India after Independence.

I don't see a need to "contribute" because you couldn't be bothered to read it.

(you aren't the only one with a short supply of patience and if you feel the compulsion to indulge in obscenity laden "outbursts" here, feel free)
"something good to say" is not necessarily flattery. It could be thoughtful positive feedback, which is just as useful as criticism (i.e. thoughtful negative feedback). Feedback can be useful whether it's positive or negative, what matters is the content:

Useful Not useful

Positive feedback "like x because..." flattery
Negative feedback criticism trolling
NoSQL will never die, but it will eventually get marginalized, like how Rails was marginalized by NoSQL.

Is it just me, or does this statement make absolutely no sense whatsoever?
Ted's point may be valid for BigTable-like databases. (I'm not saying it is, but I don't know enough about those to say so.) Those are designed for scalability and if you don't need the scalability you probably should use a RDBMS instead.

But there are other advantages of SQL-less databases that don't deal with scale. I deployed my first MongoDB app a couple weeks ago. Even though it was a small (~1 developer month) project, and neither myself nor the other developer had used MongoDB before, I still think we finished faster than if we'd used MySQL. Just like Cassandra is a premature optimization if you just need an RDBMS, an RDBMS is a premature optimization if you only need an object store.
Er, sorry -- I don't mean to dispute that skilled laborers were involved, nor that those skilled laborers were likely compensated in some fashion.

I was just questioning that the entire base of labor for the construction of the pyramids was skilled and compensated.

I think that if we were to still disagree, it would only be on the relative involvements of the two forces, and frankly I don't know enough on this specific subject to make that kind of argument.
Well, since you need a safe way, you'll need a locking mechanism, too. And since it needs to be language agnostic, you can't just dump the internal representation of your object to disk, so you need some sort of serialization.

At that point, it's probably easier to go with an already existent object or document store.
Why the iPad Will Change Everything
Hey man, I was an intern at Yahoo! last summer and I asked you why, with all your talents, you wouldn't want to work on your own company/startup. You answered you'd never leave Yahoo!; obviously that's a hyperbole. But I have to say, never came pretty fast. What happened?
The importance of a URL is how heavily it's used by the web, not how new it is. The cost of maintaining a URL is far less than the cost of maintaining the content behind it. If you aren't throwing your work down the memory hole, breaking every link to it damages the web and makes far more work for everyone else than you are saving yourself.
After his contracting he worked with me at IMVU; I learned a lot from him. He left IMVU for the University of Chicago Economics PhD program.

I can't wait to see what he'll do next.
Student research paper – several information on proofreading
Proofreading a student research paper is just as important as writing it. If you are not careful about spotting possible errors in the paper, there are chances that you would lose your grade, merely because of a couple of mistakes.
I dunno, I see the opposite: RDBMS's are a premature optimization. In my experience, it's /much/ easier to hack together a quick webapp in MongoDB, because you don't have to worry about relations, migrating schema, etc. Sure, it might be slower than Postgres on a billion-row table, but wait until you have a million rows before you shackle yourself to the relational constraints.
Windows Phone 7 development: first impressions
Hey, I'm interested.
Could you elaborate on the location and the pay ?
I got downvoted awfully last night for trying to say this, but I'll say it again to back you up:

Developing with mongodb is _lightning fast_ and holds up very very well. If you end up with problems, switch to SQL later!

I don't think a lot of these people hating on the nosql projects have actually tried building something with them.
That snippet appears to be out of date. Version 0.8.34 does something similar to what you suggest.

#define ngx_str3Ocmp(m, c0, c1, c2, c3) \
*(uint32_t *) m == ((c3 << 24) | (c2 << 16) | (c1 << 8) | c0)
as long as you're willing to do it the Steve Jobs way.
Look forward to playing with this, but honestly your intro image is a bit confusing. Had my eyes going everywhere with the needless pictures of layered windows.
There are a rash of these articles popping up. While there are usually valid points in urging people to avoid the hype of the "next big thing", a lot of these guys seem to be bitching that they might have to learn a new skill set.

I have been in this business long enough to remember Clipper and FoxPro devs bitching about SQL when it was on the rise. This sounds about the same to me.
Probably working on HipHop at Facebook.
You think using mj has no impact or risk on other people? How about driving baked? It's probably not as bad as driving drunk, but when you're on the same road as me piloting a 2-ton missile around me, 'not as bad as wasted' isn't quite good enough.

This is exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
LOL glad I could help. :)
Africa is not unique. S. America's, Asia's and Europe's conflicts never seem to end either.
> I'm sure you can cede sovereignty to Iran if that seems like a golden age.

Please, oh please tell someone from Iran that he's an Arab. Don't forget to upload pictures of your face afterwards...
> but this kind of shit never happened under the British Empire

Is obviously factually incorrect to anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge. I'll give you benefit of the doubt and assume you're ignorant and not a bald face lier.
Government is a necessary overhead that must be constantly minimized to avoid eventual societal suicide.
My most confortable furniture hack is a monitor stand, cloned from one the local IKEA had on exhibit. Made by screwing 11cm Capita legs onto an Effektiv file frame front 80cm wide. Looks like this: http://imgur.com/rlxEK.jpg

It's also large enough for a monitor base on one side and a laptop on the other.
Html audio generated music
I agree. 'Calendar' & 'RSS Reader' aren't much of a categories and shouldn't have the same weight as "Gaming" or "Ad Network"
Protocol Buffers will work fine and their documentation is very clear. These are my findings based on my experience -

* Serializing data is ok but parsing takes quite a bit of time especially for large requests. (I am talking in milli seconds)
* PBs always require a copy from your internal app data to its structures. Couldn't find a way to avoid that.
* They have variable length encoding and it might be a good option if your data comprised of large percent of integers. From our experience don't use it if you are sending within your corp network as packing and parsing takes more time compared to savings in amount of data transfer. They might be a good option if you are sending data across slow networks.

Some of the metrics show that Thrift performs better than PBs. Also Thrift provides options of using different protocols. If Performance is prime criteria JSON + zipping should be a good option. Also they won't have an intermediate step of generating marshaling code.
Let's Do Some Engineering Pt. 1: Design Patterns
on one hand stunting the natural evolution of their societies

What does that mean? What was pre-colonial Africa evolving towards? And what is your evidence?
I'm about to adopt DVCS but can't decide between git, hg, bzr or whatever. These flame wars are paralyzing because they look like I have to pick a religion.
That graph is in US dollars. If you look at a currencies graph, it should become clear what's happened in the past decade.
Absolutely right.

He has it backwards. You use NoSQL to 'get shit done'. When you have a billion rows, then worry about schemas. By that point you will have a much better idea, a - what said schema should look like, b - what the architecture of the Postgres, or mysql, or Oracle should look like, and c - how much money you will have to solve the problem.
Couldn't you make a Clojure macro that would let you type arithmetic expressions in infix? Not having Fortress-type support for math in a language is bad enough, but having to type everything prefix is really a PITA when you're just trying to type in a standard formula from a book or a paper.
I've always assumed our society is made up of people who have reflexive violent overreactions to certain ideas, and people (like me) who just don't have that reaction and can't figure out why it's such a big deal. It's reassuring to see some of the people who feel it can still recognize it's not rational.
I, Pencil
This is not just caused because of the USA. We also have addicts that increase the demand for drugs in Mexico. No one is putting a gun in the head of this people to become drug traffickers. People in Mexico are poor but I don't see anyone that is not a drug trafficker dying of hunger because they don't have money. This people just like the easy live they can get by becoming drug traffickers.

This criminal culture in Mexico is a very complex issue and it's not like it can be magically fixed if the USA and Mexico legalize drugs. To fix this we need to make profound changes in all aspects of our culture & society and it will take time if it ever happens.

I believe in sovereignty. The USA can do whatever it wants in its territory same as China(Google respect local laws or GTFO) same as Mexico.
It's not prohibition, it's illegal. I love how the pro-drug people use this word when you wouldn't say we have a prohibition on rape, murder, or burglary.

The distinction is important: drug prohibition is a choice, and other societies (including our own society at other times) have made different choices here, often to their benefit.

There isn't much choice about prohibiting rape, murder, burglary -- to have any social order at all, they must be prohibited.

See also the difference between conduct that is malum prohibitum versus that which is malum in se. These legal terms draw a distinction between things that are wrong because a law was chosen (regardless of their harmfulness), versus those things that are inherently wrong/harmful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se

Even those who like to ban intoxicants called their period of greatest influence "prohibition", when alcohol was banned. So there are good legal and historical reasons for calling anti-drug-laws "prohibition".
I find his claim that India has declined since Independence from the British ignorant, and yes, idiotic.

I'm arguing against his point of view as well, but name calling doesn't accomplish anything. Anger doesn't make the world a better place (even if it's well justified).

My ancestors died in British jails.

It's likely that some of mine did too (Irish), but honestly I don't think that makes me any more qualified to speak on this issue. I understand this topic is very emotional for a lot of people, but it's best to avoid bringing in stuff like this. I think it ruins objectivity.

For what it's worth, I agreed with a lot of your points in your original post. I just think you're undermining yourself with the name calling.
The classic essay: "I, Pencil"

"I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy..."

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/i-pencil/
Real Kick: iPhone Foosball
I was very different. I learned basic addition as a toddler, and then demanded that my uncle teach me whatever was "next". Bless his heart, he made me a basic math game on his commodore 64 with flashing lights, progressively harder levels, time limits and hints. Through his patient instruction and a lot of free time on that game, I learned to multiply before entering elementary school and passed a college calculus class before entering high school.

Then, somehow after going to high school I got really into sports and less nerdy subjects and never progressed much further in terms of math than where I was at the age of 14 or 15. I regret it and OpenCourseWare beckons.
I've been using it for a couple of days, internally, and love it. I've since added features such as adding through the url (url/a/your note here), a bookmarklet, and better search.

I thought that maybe if someone wanted to use it I could start offering accounts.
Entrepreneurs: You have four years.
It doesn't make sense because it's overstated. Let me try to state his opinion differently:

NoSQL, as it exists today, is a tasty souffle composed of more air than substance. That's how the hype cycle works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

NoSQL is somewhere on that initial "peak of inflated expectations". (I don't think it's hit the top yet, but it sure is soaring.) Rails passed the peak many months ago and is somewhere to the right of the Trough of Disillusionment. [1] (I don't think it's plateaued yet: Rails still isn't quite done being invented.)

Once the hot air leaks out in a year or two, NoSQL databases will still exist, and will in fact be better understood and better built than ever, but they will no longer be a trending buzzword. That's the day that the author is devoutly wishing for.

(I, personally, find the hype cycle to be kind of fun to watch, and educational too, so I'm not as bothered by it as he is.)

---

[1] Though your mileage may vary. The world isn't perfectly connected, so there isn't just one hype cycle. It's fun watching (e.g.) Facebook sweep through the world of my parents. They get really excited by "new" technologies about two to four years after the folks on HN have moved on from them.
Careful with casting strings to ints like that, it'll break on architectures that require aligned accesses, i.e. if you try to load a uint32, the address of the memory location must be a multiple of 4. x86 happens to be fine with non-aligned access, but many other architectures aren't.

If you look at the nginx source, that #define is guarded under NGX_HAVE_NONALIGNED and there is a fallback that does straight byte by byte comparison.
I don't really see the point of starting with NoSQL and then going for Oracle. NoSQL DBs are real tools you know, not toys you through after your app gets traction. It's actually the contrary that has happened so far.
If Rails == ActiveRecord == SQL, then NoSQL implies !Rails. (This isn't true of course, but we're already dealing with oversimplifications here.)

Or maybe he's just saying that irrational NoSQL hype has replaced irrational Rails hype.
The New York Times overlooks that Microsoft has one of the largest, although not numerically, active social networks with its Live and more importantly Xbox Live service. This is a key part of Microsoft's strategy currently as well as moving forward as evidenced by integration in their upcoming mobile phone and most likely other platforms.
I dunno... I find the combination of the Django ORM and South (in particular the --auto flag for auto-creating migrations) is incredibly productive. With the ORM, I can conjure up a query that answers pretty much any question I might have of my data. I've experimented with MongoDB (and a bunch with Redis) and I find I'm much more likely to end up with a query that I can't resolve without having to do a bunch of extra work.

Most of this is probably having expertise with the tools, but I find that for rapid prototyping the ability to run relational queries is really important, especially since query performance during the prototyping phase isn't really an issue.
I love it, and would happily pay money for it (please, tell me you are going to charge for this).

I was pacing around my apartment late last night trying to figure out how to quickly integrate help into my new product. I was convinced I was going to spend the time in rolling my own system rather than launching. Thanks to this, I'll be able to launch much sooner.

It's easy to say "I could write this in a few hours" (which I doubt), but why? Why would you waste cycles on something that is not core to your product?

Anyway, great job, and I can't wait to see where this goes.
I don't know if this is what he was trying to say, but it makes a little more sense if you change it to

NoSQL's hype will never die, but it will eventually get marginalized, like how Rails' hype was marginalized by NoSQL's hype.
Screencast of Freebase Gridworks: open source tool for data cleanup and analysis
Europe was at war for one or two thousand years before settling down to its current state.
Sure. You can do it with a regular function, for an example see page 12 of the upcoming Joy of Clojure book: http://www.manning.com/fogus/Fogus_MEAP_Ch1.pdf
Rip a book at 200 pages per minute
I've been learning Arc. The fact that so many got disappointed and left soon after release hasn't shaken my interest (at least not yet). It's the only language since C that I know of [1] that doesn't try to protect the programmer from themself. This means you can have more confidence that any problems you run into will be your fault and not the language's.

Arc community is small right now, but the people left are brilliant. I've learned so much by listening to what they have to say, and they've been remarkably friendly to me as a newb.

[1] Please note that I haven't tried Haskell, Erlang, OCaml and some other formidible languages yet. Am I'm totally missing out?
He's saying they don't anticipate the damages they will cause driving drunk, so there are laws against drunk driving (the 'means')

I don't think anyone is arguing mj should be outlawed because of driving, or that alcohol should be either, the point is there are careful considerations that must be made and you can't just remove all regulations and expect things to go swimmingly
Buy a Boxee Box, hack Linux on it, and develop your prototype.
Ubuntu Will Switch To Base-10 File Size Units In Future Release
True, but services like Calendar and Reader bring Google TO you and thus raise the odds that you'll use their search engine again.

Google's recent work, including Android, is all about reach and becoming part of various aspects of our online lives. And when they are part of our lives, search revenue follows.
Enough are - look at Apple's market cap.
JS.Class - A Ruby Inspired JS Framework
Not as much time as I'd like, but game development. I'm planning to take part in the upcoming pyweek.

Also, ocarina.
Painful and a little embarrassing. The GoF patterns exist primarily to make up for the fact that you're not in Ruby. The timeless response to any article referencing them:

http://norvig.com/design-patterns/

Sort of funny that he mentioned dependency injection as a benefit of one of these approaches; building things around DI was one of the reasons net-ssh got rewritten. When you find yourself writing Java in Ruby or Python, stop, take a step back, and reconsider.
Bread and circuses :/
There have been prior experiments to synthesize audio with javascript, and feed it into the <audio> tag via data-uri.

http://ajaxian.com/archives/generating-and-playing-sound-in-...

But I've never seen it done realtime like this! Very cool.
The Rails message is "you don't need a DBA, you don't need to know SQL, just have your developers do the default install of MySQL and we'll do the rest". That is also the NoSQL message.
90% of my interactions are on email (and I will say that is the same for almost all highly efficient people I know)

There is something fundamentally important there. I'd say the asynchronous and load-carrying aspects are vital, but there is some ugliness we've not been able to get rid of in 30+ years. Not for lack of trying, but there is something still missing ...

Aside: my first thought on looking at the article was "The next PG book is going to be titled 'Hawkers and Schmoozers'". No malice intended (honest hawking and schmoozing is also necessary work). I had read about H. Roizen before - a regular presence in magazines in the T/Maker days. Seems a genuinely nice person.
I once worked in a Notes shop. Notes has no schema for documents and nothing to enforce migrating data from older documents to the current format. After a few years of customers manipulating data with various versions of the code, they had documents in such bizzare combinations of states that it was no longer possible for anyone on our dev team to inspect them and say which behavior would be right for the workflow.

Schemaless data should only be a summary of data properly maintained elsewhere, which you can regenerate at need. If your authoritative data has no schema, it will decay to garbage.
This article should be renamed:

"Why we wish the iPad will change everything for us publishers".
Taurus: a seated version of the Segway
China Publishes 2009 US Human Rights Record
I realize this was killed, but I think many of the comments were insightful, valuable. The original link is propaganda, but it doesn't make it all false. It's relevant to the ongoing discussion we've all been having about Google vs China, GoDaddy vs China. I think we're all mature to take this story for what it's worth, and arrive at some meaningful conclusions. May we have another go without all of the unneeded negativity, please?
The breadth of topics in this poll makes me pretty sad. What do we do on Hacker News? Well, we figure out new ways to put forms on web pages, new ways to collect the things people put into those forms, new ways to get people to look at those forms --- oh, and game development and AI.