skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Basically, because not every class is used polymorphically, many are designed to be used primarily on the stack or as members.

I also see classes used as members in Smalltalk. I wonder if a language can make the use of these sorts of objects explicit? Seems like there should be a good opportunity for better optimization.
Sydney lower north shore. Recharging for another startup.
nelstrom, may I request for screencasts geared toward beginners? :D
One of the many web apps I have worked on do something similar to the following:

before any feature rolls out each feature (from a list) is tested with different (but not every possible) set of inputs. This catches 90% of problems.

The other 10% that get past our testing are either sent in by the user through a feedback from, or by the system sending messages (errors warnings etc)
Hi Drew - I'm trying to find an email to contact you but cannot, I'll try here then: I'd like to add vimcasts to learnivore.com, is it possible ?
Hi! Just north of Sydney.I love AbstractServiceLoaderBasedFactoryBean's (aka a Java hacker)
>Many said expanding a company in France can be hard because of stringent employment laws and the country's small market.

I'm not too sure on employment laws in France. For an entrepeneur Sarkozy has made some pretty good concessions as far as tax obligations. Probably not as good as what you could do get in the US, but better than what it was. Previously, to start a company you had to have the entire year's taxes paid up front, before you made a penny.

And you have access to the entire EC. So I don't know what small market is. Unless they mean french-speaking only. But even French companies know they can't rely on all of France to carry their market so much more is spent on localization of applications.

One weakness the french do have is an unwillingness to take risks and accept failures. Even in 2010 a lot of college grads are still looking for jobs with the state. But the entire system is stacked against them that way. My first apartment, I had to get a "caution" from my job. A guarantee that if I couldn't pay the rent the company would. For a small startup, this would be impossible unless all your employees came from rich families.
How to write a simple undo system for your app
wait a minute... that sounds remarkably like one cuil.

If you asked me for a hamburger and I gave you a raccoon.

If you asked me for particle physics and I gave you the World Wide Web.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It doesn't matter that people can create their own databases, the NYT can still revoke access and stop anyone from accessing their api. It smells of the ideology behind DRM oddly, maintaining the illusion of control.
Of course - and you're not the only one asking. The latest episode on modal editing ("the newbie killer") is a step back to basics. However, I don't intend to cover the material that you can find in the vimtutor.
Fred Wilson's Principles of Successful Web Apps
Layout is a bit broken for me probably due to my large font sizes - particularly the menus. Kubuntu-9.04 / FF-3.5.8.

http://imgur.com/YlYvI

On http://my.swfstats.com/Register.aspx, at least, the logo does not link back to the homepage.
Selenium is what I'm using, Selenium IDE (firefox plugin) makes it easy to set up tests. http://www.seleniumhq.org

UserTesting.com is great for usability testing, they have people follow some of your instructions and record their screen/voice as they go through it. Feedback from this has lead to a lot of critical improvements.

Another article you might be interested in is about how software is developed for the space shuttle (they test like crazy). Someone posted the link on HN last night and it's fascinating: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

Not only did I by it, but I read it, and enjoyed it too!

- Paddy.
This is an important point, and one that it seems is too often forgotten, believe it or not.

The framework of much of our political debate seems to assume a particular political direction.

For example, the terminology "progressive" indicates that we're only making progress when we engage in these policies, particularly redistributive tax policies.

Another example is the common usage of the term "special interests". It seems to me this is commonly used as a synonym for "corporate interests". But more realistically, everything is a special interest. That includes the education establishment and the NEA, unions, and environmentalists. Yes, businesses are a constituency of special interests, but so are those others that support the other side of the spectrum. It can't objectively be said that one side is the common interest of the people, and the others are special; they all hold equal roles in the debate.
I guess it's a bit dangerous listening to podcasts while biking, isn't it?
Am I the only one in this whole world who prefers to download just one single html file with everything included?
You'll get me with drew at the domain name. Sorry that's not more obvious.
Glenn Beck is worse than Rush Limbaugh because he wraps his warped logic in logical sounding soft talk.

Where Rush would say, "Black people all have disgusting hair!"

Glenn Beck would say, "Isn't it odd that most African-Americans have disheveled hair?"

It's obvious to intelligent people that these are both generalizations about black people meant to insult. However it's easier for simpler people to agree with the latter because it's not out right racist.

Why should I view this as Apple 'Doing the Right Thing' instead of viewing this as Apple just catering to the views of the people who tend to buy their stuff?

Right and Profit aren't mutually exclusive goals.
I've been in a few web projects and all had a testing phase just as any other projects: creating test plans based on the requirements and specification, doing functional testing, integration testing, load testing, and so on.

For what is worth, most of these applications were internal apps for large companies (users are the employees, not customers) and might as well have been developed as desktop or client-server apps. I see no reason why the choice of architecture/deployment would affect the QA policies. It might affect the particular way of testing (tools, etc) but not whether to test or not.

I can't see quite see why is this even a question. Perhaps your colleagues are assuming that all web apps are like the typical apps they might use: B2C, free or "freemium", etc. Other things being equal, these are more likely to be released without careful testing.
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As an avid offshore fisherman, in Florida, I think about nautical apps all the time, the problem is that the iPhone is not safety rated at the level that you would want to use it for an app that you life could depend on. I don't know much about the laws but you could run afoul of safety regulation by simply creating an application with the express intent of using it for these applications. I know Navionics provides their map software on the iPhone so it may be possible, but it definitely warrants more research before investing the time to develop a product.
Thanks, I was just about to ask about the badly-resized video.

Also, thanks for revealing this "open Video in new tab" feature I've never seen before. Chrome is very pleasing in this manner.
Funny as hell
Downvote because of your assertion that "Every other major channel has some moralistic sense".

In fact, Fox is intensely moralistic. You just happen to disagree with what those morals are.

Also, you imply that holding these morals indicates that one is less intelligent than those that share your morals. I'm sure this is incorrect, and it's certainly true that you haven't offered any reason to believe it.
Rails comes with automated testing baked in, and it's one of the best unit/automated testing packages I've ever seen.

Then...people went and made it better with things like RSpec, Shoulda, Factory Girl, and other enhancement packages.

I've given up trying to convince others to do automated testing, but for me and my projects, there's really nothing that beats what Rails and the Ruby community provides.
(I would make a large bet that danudey's mistake was about which way round Proposition 8 was, not about which side Google and Apple are on when it comes to same-sex marriage.)
Except that there's no actual explanation in that article, is there?
I've had a standing desk for about a year, and largely for the reason you're describing. I have a tendency to stay up late coding, and a standing desk makes it harder to waste time staring at a bright screen when I'm tired enough that I should be sleeping. It's a feature in my book, but probably not so much if you're someone with a morning deadline.
I couldn't agree more. I traveled to Croatia a few years ago and stayed with locals. One of the first things each of them said was some variation of "I don't like George Bush." Simply saying "I don't either" brightened them up considerably.
Chinese censors disable Google searches
When your palms face the ground, the orientation of the two bones in your forearm compress the tendons slightly. So, I'd really like to try a vertical keyboard. Kinesis makes them, but I'm not convinced I'd find the keys as comfortable as the aluminum Apple keyboards, which require very little pressure.

What I'd really prefer is a makeshift vertical arrangement with two of the small Apple USB keyboards back to back. The trouble then is that modifier keys don't work correctly (like shift plus a letter on the opposite keyboard wouldn't capitalize.) Is anyone aware of a hack that could solve this?
Intel Prototypes Low-Power Circuits
Please elaborate. What I meant was that if they did make a black hole, and it for some reason would stay on earth (instead of being flung out of the solar system at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light), all the matter on earth would form a black hole with a Schwarzschild radius of less than 1 cm.

Thus, a black hole created at rest at CERN devouring the earth would never be seen -- it would just fall down and let the pressure of earth push matter into it. Done properly, the webcam feed should show a pretty major earthquake that just keeps getting worse.
That's what I say when someone complains about missing comments too!
Would it be better then to just do audio (mp3 is probably most universal) and create separate slide shows? Then people could have the audio on a personal audio player (ipod, phone, whatever). Or, provide an audio only version of the video.
Somewhat tangentially, it's interesting to watch news when traveling abroad. Even aside from Fox, the stuff you're like to see is quite a bit different even from CNN.

The international perspective is quite a bit different from that of Americans. I don't mean that (only) in the sense that we tend to be America-centric. It's also in the way the stories are told, and indeed what stories lead and how much time is spent on them.

I can't recall any specific examples, and it wasn't obvious on just a short viewing, but over a period of time I was very much struck by the difference.
It's also terrible on Chrome/Linux.
Please: Fox has realized there's an ignored niche market the rest of the MSM has been ignoring.

About half of the country, in fact....

Once the initial demand for the iPad has been served and the initial viral marketing has run its course, I can't see how this can be a good thing for Apple.

ADDED: my mid-70s parents are up to using Windows XP with some help from me (and of course I do the work behind the scenes, like build the machines) ... but when they're in their '80s, will any WIMP computer be the right solution?

(And, yes, like me, they're "arch-conservatives". They're be annoyed buying a machine from a company that's got AlGore on its board, but they'd get over that. On the other hand, if Apple strongly positions itself as a company for only the other half of the country ... well, that would be a mistake, in the evil category, I'd say).
Start Up Founder Legal Mistakes – Having Ambiguities In A Contract
Part of the legal river series going over the top 10 legal mistakes start up founder makes - good but not great article.
Python Packages for Social Scientists
The data is correct (for 2007), but misleading. It represents the % of online sales for companies that have retail stores.

The categories exclude sales from nonstore retailers. So for Hobbies (includes books), the percentage of retails stores revenue that sold online was 1.9%, however online retailers accounted for 20% of total book sales (in 2007)

The source of the data:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s1021.p...

As of 4th Q 2009, 4.3% of retail sales are online:
http://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/html/09Q4.html

Forrester predicts online sales will account 6% of total US retail sales in 2009 and 2010, 7% in 2011 and 8% in 2012 and 2013.
http://www.dmnews.com/e-commerce-is-flat-as-a-percentage-of-...

In 2007 20% of book purchases online
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/407236-Chains_Intern...
Ask HN: review our startup - Tweetsworth
Twitter Symbols
Tweetsworth is the world's first guaranteed accurate Twitter account valuator. Unlike the other Twitter valuation sites which talk a big game but never put up the dough, we'll actually purchase your Twitter account for 90% of the calculated value on the spot.

In other words, we're the first Twitter account valuator with a business model!

Please try it out and let me know what you think.
"Given Fox's ratings I'm sure they can fill the void with less picky companies."

Did you know that gold is at an all-time high? Gold is the standard you can rely on in troubled times! BUY GOLD NOW!

Did you know that gold is at an all-time high? Your gold can get you through troubled times! GET CASH YOUR GOLD NOW!

The commercials on any conservative TV or radio show are more than enough to get me to never watch.
I've got a makeshift standing desk like that also. My plan is to replace the boxes and books with small shelves made of plywood. Shouldn't be to hard and will only cost a few bucks.
uhh BMW and Mercedes Benz are targeted at a richer upper class.

Apple markets to a "me to" younger market.

They are very different IMO.
I was planning to upgrade to JavascriptMVC 3.0 before open sourcing it but if you want to see the source as-is let me know.
there is no way that picking a girl would be such a good idea. unlike business, you can't forecast happiness from you gained from a girl based on previous data or market research. if she'll dump you the next day you'll be jobless and girl-less.
do expats count? Melbournian living in Scotland.
My dream is for my existence to make a positive change in the world. Be it by starting a company that helps people in some way, or by simply helping that old lady cross the road.

I haven't figured out how to do this on a large scale yet, but I will someday. I challenge all of HN to do the same.
Any way to invest $100/200 in startups ?
Dear Hn,

Do you know any website where small investors (around $200) can invest legally into a startup ?
Every video features someone with their legs propped up on a desk or ottoman. I predict Apple will release iOttoman - a portable piece of furniture to prop your feet up no matter where you use the iPad.
This reminds me of my almost-always full dishwashing racks which I use as a second chance FIFO cache for dining.
Does Hacker News have an API? Didn't find an official one :|
Do you have an example of a CEO who has gone to jail for putting the interests of "humanity" above the interests of shareholders?
Get the Anti-Startup and Anti-Angel Provisions Struck From Dodd's Banking Bill
There is a rather large missile rapidly approaching America's innovation culture. Predictably, it has been hurled in the most careless of manner by a group of uninformed politicians and their staffers in the form of Senator Dodd's sweeping Banking Bill. Putting aside the merits and thrust of the Bill itself, (which ostensibly seeks to regulate the banking industry), there are two provisions in it which, if not removed ASAP, will essentially wipe out a large chunk of one of America's engines of innovation- namely angel investing. These provisions will raise the bar on the definition of an 'accredited investor' from $1M in net worth or $250K in annual income to $2.3M in net worth or annual income of $450K! It will also hamstring angel investing by slapping any such investment with a 120 day SEC review.
this is a similar situation to me. I'm a college senior at a shit school, from a not technical major. Masters/PhD would be great but they are either extremely competitive or very expensive. I guess that's what push me into entrepreneurship/and more biz oriented, because that's probably the only thing I could do.
The key point is actually taken from someone else's blog post at http://jetnexus.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-does-application-a..., and it's this:

You might think that there's no point using transparent compression for a website most of whose content is in images, since image files generally compress poorly if at all. However,

1. those images are presumably embedded in web pages, and if compressing those gets them to the user faster then it's a win;

2. many of those images will already be in the browser cache, so the fraction of your traffic that's in images may be smaller than you think.
On a related note, one of the authors of Selenium IDE founded a startup called BrowserMob (http://browsermob.com/) that uses Selenium recordings for load testing and monitoring.

Great guys there, and a fantastic service. I've been a customer for over a year - it's one of the few companies I'm impressed with enough to evangelize.
Here's a guide on penetration testing you might find useful. I would assume some frameworks handle some/most issues "out of the box" but it's still a good guide to follow.

http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Testing_Projec...

Other than that, testing a web app is just like testing any other software. Look for edge cases, try different combination of things, etc. to say the least. But here are a few things to look out for off the top of my head:

* Don't be too restrictive on validation on fields like names, addresses/zip codes (if there are international customers), e-mails, etc. However, make sure people can't enter numbers in an SSN field or letters in a date field either.

* Make sure weird characters in different fields don't break anything. For example, entering O'Hara as the last name should be stored correctly in the DB and then rendered correctly to the user whenever you need to show it.

* Make sure your text box max lengths are not greater than the DB's column definitions. You don't want someone to enter a 50 letter name and have the field in the DB defined as varchar(20).

* Make sure the web app handles session time outs gracefully. You don't want a user filling out a registration form to get a phone call and then come back to complete the form, only to be redirected to the starting page when he clicks Submit.

There are also automated frameworks you can use to script automated tests, such as Watir/WatiN. (Please don't ever waste money on QTP.)

And as others have mentioned there's always load testing and stress testing you need to do at a certain point.
Yeah an audio only version is probably a good idea. Should keep that in mind while recording. Thanks!
Seven Mile Beach Luxury, Secret Harbour - At the Ritz-Carlton
Secret Harbour, 120 vacation homes inspired by the world’s most beautiful maritime villages, is the next major development within Grand Cayman’s only sea-to-sea resort community. With over forty floor plans and a large variety of choices for location, style and views, potential owners of Secret Harbour can develop their own unique home to suit their lifestyle and taste.
> Also submitter(-ess) seems to be using hn only to submit his/her own stories.

Now now, that's not quite fair. On three occasions she's also used HN to comment on her own stories.
Really good actually, give it a read. The last time I offered a summary of an article to the community I was voted to -4, so this time I'll just say: worth the read.
Interactive Sistine Chapel
very interesting story- loved the blog, but please refrain from using 'twatting' and 'flicking'. If you must, use 'tweeting'. 'twat' has negative connotations in many places, and flicking is just lame. :)
Prom Limo Services, Limousine Services, Luxury cars
My dream is not caring about things I don't want to care, to have friends and family around me, to live with the woman I love, to eat well, to sleep as I want, to have good sex, to live near the sea, to be in health, to die satisfied of life.
Well, as it happens, this does indeed run incredibly badly in Flash. I didn't try to optimize it at all (I probably couldn't anyway) and it ran at about 8fps, whereas the JS runs at about 12-15 in Chrome.
See also: Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran, which discusses Capgras and lots of other awesome neurological conditions:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688172172?ie=UTF8&ref_... (referral link)
I wonder how large the proportion of social scientists is who actually know that Python is a programming language.
(I am a social scientist myself).

In my own experience, it is already pretty hard to teach them R.
Jmeter for load testing. Selenium for regression testing. Penetration testing is also a pretty vital aspect if there web application has access to sensitive data. Web applications should be tested like any other applications.

Graduate students stating that "no one tests web apps" are showing why they are still called students.
Nice goal. It definitely sounds like an alternative American Dream to that of the Gatsby variety. Wealth and things are obviously not your end goal, but what about personal lifestyle choices: is stuff important? or any particular stuff, things that you own? (your home, a big home, etc).
Looks fun. One of the few remaining complaints I have about Clojure is the lack of a Lisp-style debugger, and Jarc has one. No compiler, though.
I don't understand the video, its like the LHC got eaten by a worm hole or black hole or some kind of other hole. Can anyone please tell me what exactly this means?
I think you overestimate the value and difficulty in learning the less often used aspects of C++. C++ still includes the asm keyword and in some areas you are going to see it used. However, while I might like people to know at least one ASM language it's far from required to call yourself a C++ programmer.
To be pedantic regarding your last sentence, these sorts of collisions do happen in nature. It's just that they're pretty much impossible to observe given that we have to look really, really close and they're so spread out.
Well, a database dump is fine if you have some new metadata to manage it. Basically, a versioned schema ... Imagine that you end up wanting to synchronize your DB dump with someone else's DB dump. The thing that's nice about the API is that you can be loosely coupled with it. Having access to all of the data is both a blessing and a curse, because you can't escape a stronger coupling.

Or, if it's couchdb, then each object has its own revision. The parent blog post is anticipated by one of the major use cases of couchdb in the "millions of couches" vision. Having a nice RESTful API is great for some use cases, but consider that you're on a high-latency connection. Here, it would be much better to use a local, embedded database instead of the REST interface. Take a look at couchdb - this is already possible.
This is potentially really handy, but it failed my math test:

∃ x | x ∈ ℝ

But, then again, it's Twitter, not Mather.
You paint a nice picture. How much of this have you accomplished? Obviously, you can't answer re: the last point, but, do you live near the sea? Is eating well a bigger focus for you than working long hours? Etc.