skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How is the performance compared to straight Java?
I know the Clojure on Android project is at the moment, slower due to the functional nature of the language. Apparently the Dalvik garbage collector has to work overtime cleaning up because of the emphasis on creating new objects rather than mutating existing ones.
I used it to create a hello world app that clocks in at 18K.
Top 5 games of 2009
> Which is why PHP is so much less flexible than JS.

When running, I want enough flexibility to move freely but not so much that my knees break. When programming, I'd like to rely on "undefined" not being 6, and I'd even like to have a reasonable built in dictionary type that other code can't extend to add keys to by default, or overwrite "hasOwnProperty".
The most important piece of literature in the past half century was written by Salman Rushdie, an indian.

The spelling bee champions nowadays tend to be indian.

Once hard working societies like india/china catch on that there's money in arts, I'd bet that to be overtaken as well.

"And lastly, I've known a few foreign science prodigies who get PhDs from tops schools only to end up on the model validation team at Goldman Sachs"
I'd bet wall street gets more top notch work done than academia or productive industry. If only they'd get incentives worked out like wall street has, you might get a new industrial revolution going.
This surprised the hell out of me and now his choice of work makes sense to me.

Born in that period and being promised hell after death for being gay must have triggered a whole lot rationalizing process in him which definitely helped made him a crusader against the paranormal and brought logic and exposed so many of the hoaxes.

If only Alan Turing didn't commit suicide.... sigh
It took me forever to get it working for another app, and after I got it working, I decided to start this project, which makes things a lot easier since it just works.
I guess you're not one of those people that selects text as you're reading. :)
I have one app in the market that uses it and it runs great.
I worked as an IT consultant to USAA in '95. During the 90s, I had worked as a consultant to many large companies. USAA and one other large private company were the only two I would have considered full-time employment, with USAA coming out ahead.

My work with USAA consisted of 2 weeks there per month for a year. They worked 4 days a week, 38 hour schedule. I think somewhere around 80%++ of the company were there only Monday to Thursday. Their pay scale for IT jobs was very good. I worked as a troubleshooter for the various Smalltalk projects so I saw many different projects in different parts of the company: new banking stuff (they were just getting into it), customer service apps, insurance policy management and risk exposure analysis, marketing and sales pipeline management, etc.. all in all, I was impressed. Sounds like 15 years later, they still have this reputation.
the superhero stuff is fun.
i have only been programming for ~3 years, though, so i'm probably closer to sidekick than superhero at this point.

architecture is fun too, but i don't do it as much as i probably ought to.
and debugging is something i know i'll have to do, but try to avoid.
> "Provides convenience functions for working with prototype chains."

Yes, that's pretty much what an object system is, isn't it? It's some convenience behaviour, but it would be nice if the language had a built-in way of doing things that wasn't so inconvenient.
> A few unrelated thoughts: I've seen some of the brightest people get shipped back to their home country after their "practical training" (the year allowed for work after a foreigner's college graduation).

Much of America sees "import more low skilled workers" as a bad idea.

This is relevant because the tech industry and most other folks interested in importing more brains has joined forces with the folks who want to import low skilled workers.

Since most of america is willing to import brains, the wisdom of this pairing from the "import brains" side is unclear.
Let me start by saying that I am not opposed to the proposed healthcare reform, since I don't know enough about it to have any opinion, and I suspect that if I did invest the time and learned the facts I would be in favor of the reform.

With this out of the way, your argument seems completely wrong to me. In reality nobody can consistently get 1000% returns, or anywhere near it, from the startups they invest in. (If that was possible, everyone would want to invest in startups and the valuations would go up until the returns got more in line with other investment vehicles with the same risk profile.) In reality, for every startup where you invested $100k and walked away with $1M, there are many where you invested $100k and walked away with zero. On average the returns can't be much different from what you get elsewhere, I'm guessing I won't be off by much if I say 10% before tax and before inflation. And 4% difference in tax burden will also mean about the same it means for other investments, which is to say it's not insignificant. Think of the lenghts people go to in order to put a little more money in a tax sheltered part of their portfolios. Or, think of the risks many people with stock options grants took to convert their short term capital gains into long term (and many of them got burnt very badly when the dot com bubble burst).
Blows away the iPhone how?
Are Google fans too cheap to pay for anything?
Really really listen, and steer the conversation with questions. Focus on real pain they have that your product can solve. Let them come to realize for themselves that your product will solve real problems for them, and then get the hell out of the way while your partner closes.

You're selling something you believe in. That makes it easy.

A specific book I'd recommend is "SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham. He did actual research into successful solution sales cycles. He outlines the best way to go about making somebody realize that your product is exactly what they want. It's from 1988, but most tactical solutions-selling books since have felt to me like a branded rehash of SPIN Selling.
For some small applications, it can be handy to eval a configuration file that is simply a language data structure. It's like having a built-in config file parser. It also gives to lots of flexibility with your hacks :)
Only as a bookmark before adjusting text size, or to copy-to-clipboard. But that's a good point; intercepting those clicks would be annoying to the readers. The handler could distinguish point-clicks from click-drags.
How about:

def kill(size, nth):
lst = range(size)
offset = nth-1
len_ = len(lst)
while len_ > 1:
del lst[offset::nth]
offset = (offset - len_)% nth
len_ = len(lst)
return lst[0]

It will reduce the list by 1/3rd each pass, so it's significantly faster at larger sizes.
Move to Seattle. Washington state has no income tax or capital gains tax.
I agree, but hey, it's the weekend, I guess. We have trivia like "James Randi comes out of the closet at 81", the Iceland earthquake, and a shallow generic time management piece doing well on the front page too.
This is incredibly surprising. Whatever the case, I wish the man the best of luck; this can't go over well what with all of the combative kooks out there.
> I know the Clojure on Android project is at the moment, slower due to the functional nature of the language.

There are two things that can hurt performance for functional languages on top of the Java VMs ... the lack of TCO and the mapping of a type-system that's too different to be mapped efficiently.

In Clojure though what hurts is its dynamic nature, but you can go a long way by using type-annotations when you discover clear bottlenecks.
Summary: Stop trying to do everything.

Bit lame if you ask me.
Great point. In other words, there are things about internet service that are more important than the bandwidth between your home and Hulu or the latency between your home and your Quake opponents.
I totally agree with you in aggregate. If you take the entirety of the VC/Angel scene and figure out the overall return, it's probably not that much different than other investment vehicles (it's probably a bit higher, since there are barriers to entry, which prevents everyone from getting into the game).

But my point was for those upper echelon's of VC/Angels who actually make money. PG has pointed out in the past that there really are only a handful of VC/Angels that actually consistently make money (and more importantly in the case of VCs make money for their investors). You're right that my case was idealized, but investment losses can also be used to offset gains for tax purposes, and this is an industry of lawyers, so I doubt the tax effects are as clear cut as either of us paints them to be. And I still maintain my overall point that 3.8% isn't going to suddenly kill the startup scene. If it was that tax sensitive, it wouldn't be in California to begin with.
Can somebody explain what this is? i've tried opening it in multiple browsers, and though I don't get a javascript error, nothing is happening. Is it a slideshow? if so, how does it work?
They are different people.
I added a little more info to the AFS home page.
Agreed. It represents a trending technology use in mainstream culture. It's these kinds of little events that can lead to brilliant start up ideas. Let's stop being such pretentious 'hackers'.
We're watching the real-time evolution of a new net-mediated interaction style -- randomly-grouped video chats -- that will probably spawn a number of new businesses.

We're seeing people experiment with the medium to create new emblematic characters, and artists with other talents -- Merton/Ben Folds -- use it to find a new challenge/audience. (At the same time their arrival pushes the creative envelope in some ways, it will also moderate the behavior in others -- you might become part of a live show in front of thousands, or a YouTube video viewed by hundreds of thousands! That will police the behavior more than any 'flagging' functionality.)

I find it intensely interesting, with lessons about how technology changes social interactions and creates new collaboration/entertainment opportunities.
Note that the poster "MikeCapone" has been a HN user for over 750 days - the counterexample to your thesis.
The data validation is so you can display a nice error message. To protect the database, you need to use prepared statements instead of mysql_really_really_try_hard_to_quote_the_string_or_something.
Different UPC numbers for the same thing. Yup, really.
Permalink:
http://www.foxtrot.com/2010/03/03212010/
Possible, yes, but worth dedicating an engineer's time?
"Some guy" in this case is Steve Yegge. The document in question is http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-scre...
It is not a list of questions, it is a list of topics to cover in an interview. Having done over 300 interviews over the last two years, for all levels of experience, I have to say I mostly agree with Steve. His observations at the end are spot on.
I think this article ignores the fact that the US school system is failing to prepare todays youth to take on the jobs that these entrepreneurs would create in the future.

America has many cultural differences which lead and promote the entrepreneurial spirit, but in many cases, it is easier to transplant the entrepreneur to where the educated work force is.
Historically, the people who made 'good' music -- by which I mean music that has been replayed and/or re-released for decades or centuries -- made music FULL-TIME, not as a hobby. The same is true today of people who have the time and talent to do filmscores (which will, again, be heard for at least decades.)

Making music that will last, not just confection, is a very intense activity. It is always technical, requires staying aware of the competition and staying ahead of it. It's a full-time job.not a hobby. I'm not arguing that good music is 'elite' music, but that most lasting music is good in direct proportion to the energy used creating it.

This would be common sense in most areas, but many people who don't make music somehow get the astonishing idea that good music is 'easy'. Look at any recognized 'genius' composer or singer/songwriter and count the number of big works they wrote that have lasted once the confection has faded away. The list is nearly always small: competition is fierce.

If listening to throwaway confection satisfies, what the here-today gone-tomorrow bands create may satisfy many consumers. Yes you'll find exceptions, but the bulk of music which is art, not just product, isn't made by weekend warriors. Like great furniture, great sculpture, great architecture, great anything: it needs support.
You can probably read thousands of books, take classes and seminars etc. but in order to be a good salesman, all you really need to do is to be willing to listen to your clients, and really try to understand their problems and how your solutions can help them.

Once you really listen to your clients, understand them, and make them feel like you understand them, you're good. The rest will come easy once the client feels at ease, and feels like you are willing to take them time and effort to listen to them and put yourself in their shoes.
People compared Perl to Lisp once, briefly, when it was one of the few dynamic languages, but they don't anymore.

They should; Perl 5 compares quite well and Perl 6 fares even better (of the nine fundamental features of a Lisp, lacking only homoiconicity). See the book Higher-Order Perl, for example.

http://hop.perl.plover.com/
This is not at all surprising to me, as someone who has been subscribing to the magazine that includes his column for years. As he points out, the connection between his personal life and his work is primarily that he desires people to apply rationality to their decisions about how they view other people's choices in their personal lives. He belongs to a generation with such different experiences that he may have been habituated to staying "in the closet" long after when he needed to.
I like ING Direct. No fees, high interest rates on savings + checking, and a nice web interface. (And if I recall correctly, some regular HN contributers worked on that web interface.)
Must-See Movies for Entrepreneurs
Well i think lots of people are trying to do too much some times even me. Some times this just does not cross your mind when you are too busy.
Nice, I like it -- cool idea, good design, and straightforward UI.

Although it seems you might have some competition in sites like yelp...
There was a lot of backlash over the fees, and the big banks are starting to scale those back. But admittedly, I would never bank at a big bank, as I would rather have no fees at all.
I wish USAA did business banking! I tried to sign up with them, but they only do personal banking.
This is pasted from the terms we were sent in October:

IF YOU TERMINATE THE AGREEMENT WITHIN THE FIRST 3 YEARS FOLLOWING THE DATE OF YOUR EXECUTION OF THIS AGREEMENT (THE “PAYBACK PERIOD), YOU AGREE TO PAY DE-CONVERSION FEES OF (I) TWO HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS ($250.00) FOR EACH MERCHANT LOCATION and (II) AN AMOUNT EQUAL TO THE STORED VALUE TRANSACTION FEES INCURRED BY YOU DURING THE CALENDAR MONTH IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING TERMINATION, MULTIPLIED BY THE NUMBER OF MONTHS REMAINING IN THE PAYBACK PERIOD. IN THE EVENT THE PAYMENT OF SUCH DE-CONVERSION FEES IS LIMITED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE AMOUNT PAYABLE TO US PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW. SUCH AMOUNTS WILL BE FUNDED, TO THE EXTENT POSSIBLE, ACCORDING TO THE SAME METHODS FOR COLLECTING AMOUNTS DUE UNDER THIS AGREEMENT. We reserve the right to place you or any person owning or controlling your business in the MATCH file (Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants) maintained by Visa and MasterCard in the event this Agreement is terminated for cause.
Also sales channels--the Nexus One isn't available in the real world. Most people don't want to plunk cash down for a device the have never used. The Droid and iPhone are in thousands of retail stores around the country.
I agree that if it was just "random video from Chatroulette" it wouldn't belong here. But this has a kind of "culture hacker" aspect to it, IMHO.
Chinese netizens' open letter to the Chinese Government and Google
A hardcore introvert can't develop an appropriate skill level in such a time frame. Not possible.

Hire a pro. Have a pro sales friend help you interview him. Read a few sales books too, so you know what to look for.
This is a pretty good example of how not to write Javascript.
You need to make people like you as a person first. Then you can sell your product.
> But don't you think that listing table columns in Django model code is a violation of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)? Database already holds meta data. Repeating it in model code is unnecessary.

No, because the columns definitions in Django are complete. You specify their meaning, not their internal representation. And you can also add your own types easily.

In ActiveRecord you have to look at the DB schema for, well, the table definition, and you have to look again at the model's definition for validation rules or for relationship rules. It may be DRY, but it's not KISS.

And I never have to work with the database schema directly, like writing SQL for the schema definition (I only drop to the db's console for debugging purposes, nothing else). A migration utility like South can detect the code-changes I've made and write the migrations for me.
But my point was that the complexity matters. If you throw complexity out the window, everything in the Universe is probably 100% predictable (unless you presume a deity with a sense of humor, or some other layer of non-determinism).

The issue is that the state space for software is so much larger than the state space for bridge building that we just don't have the tools to effectively model and predict yet. I won't argue that software is somehow an art, because I'm hopeful that someday we will have those tools, but I will argue that it's not engineering yet. The Alan Kay quote about pyramids in the article hit it spot on. We are still piling blocks on each other and hoping it works at this point.
Nice. I looked into using Scala for an Android app a few months ago, and the number of moving parts involved to get "Hello World" working scared me off. Automating that makes it less scary, so I am glad to see this.

I wish I could write my Android apps in Haskell instead, though. Scala just isn't quite as nice.
Tell HN: Meet Cloudomatic, an easy way to discover SaaS apps. (StartupWeekend)
I really debated whether or not to upvote this. I'm guessing that HN has a higher percentage of people who like (or at least know of) Randi than the general public, so it certainly fits the "general interest" guideline. But I'd also (like to) think that we're getting to a point (at least in this community) where this is so acceptable as to not warrant mention. I also worried that I'd be contributing to the "Look Who's Gay Now!" style of news that plagues conventional outlets (well, at least entertainment news).

That being said, I don't mean to take away from Randi's personal decision to come out and the hardships he had to endure for the last 70 years. This comment is my own little part of the "murmur of acceptance" he expected and I hope that he would appreciate me asking (as an honest question for the purpose of social insight), why did you, as an HN reader find this newsworthy?
Thanks. I'm not sure which direction the site will take. Hopefully not restaurant reviews but I can't really control it.

I'm also focused on the reputation system and the Q&A model as oppose to filling a database with restaurant et al candidates for review.
Quite a hack. Over in the Perl world, we just say "perl -MCarp::REPL your_app.pl" and we can have a REPL in the correct lexical context when an exception is thrown. Without adding methods to random classes. (And it all goes away when you run without -MCarp::REPL, of course.)
"Twitter" in 1935
Self control is bolstered by abstract thinking
I like to say, "There's more than one way to do it, but your way is wrong."
Hire someone who likes sales.

Seriously, hire someone who likes sales.

I hate selling. I like building. I started my company in 2006. In three years, I signed 3 deals. Then I found a partner who lives and breathes sales. In the past three months, I have signed two additional deals and have five more in end stages of negotiation. Thanks to our new head of sales, went from actively talking with 15 concurrent prospects to actively talking with 150 concurrent prospects.

Don't kill yourself doing sales. Kill yourself finding someone who will do it well and love it.

Edit: I should mention that the average value of our contracts is going up too. Well-executed sales strategy can generate more revenue off of the same quantity of goods sold. Don't underestimate it.
Nah, I had the same opinion when I first saw this show up here on HN.

At the same time, the chatroulette stuff should be here because, by definition, all of it is a gigantic hack performed by hackers. :)
Not sure why that is the case, but e.g. python would always include the value it failed on in a DivByZero Exception.

I bet it is usually 0.

The big innovation is including the variable name that is problematic.
8 studies demonstrating the power of simplicity
Last year I submitted a patch to Dalvik which adds support for JNI in Scala. So Scala calling C (via the Android NDK) should now work in all recent versions of Android!
These suggestions aren't about how to add time, they are about how to not waste it on things that are less important -- prioritization.

To add time to your day, make yourself more productive with code libraries, more experience, and leverage.
USAA is amazing. I cannot say this enough. They were one of the first banks to make available check scanning so you could deposit checks over the internet and they've just been consistently improving their service. They are actually a joy to deal with. Can you say that about your bank?

Technically they are a credit union, but the result is the same for the end user - truly, and I hate to use this cliche, they are the "killer app" of banking.
you should definitely bring JasonF to your show too
Myself, Andres(cofounder grooveshark), and many others made it as part of startup weekend here in Miami, so its a very very rough first version. The startups listed are there due to the generosity of everyone on HN yesterday, so thank you thank you thank you. We're planning some pretty cool things to make discovery better for end users and most importantly solve a big problem I used to have: improve customer acquisition for SaaS startups. Looking forward to feedback, which we'll implement over the next week.

ps- another thank you to the people that have been pushing me to get off my ass and do this since I brought it up here on HN last August.
I wasn't disputing that, I'm saying it's irrelevant to the discussion (the commenter implied that prototype modification is related to how this is determined in a given function call).
I'm also a huge fan of ING Direct (have been with them since 2002) and would gladly send out invites to anyone that wants them (disclosure: you get $25 and I get $10 if you use my invite to open your account).
Sometimes we get a little different content on the weekends, and thats OK by me.
Looks good. One problem: it was very difficult to actually find a link to each app's website. The little "Go to app" doesn't even look like a link. I suggest making the site link much more prominent, underlined, and perhaps use the URL of the site to make it even easier to see.
the point is, the Tube thing is still losing money and the F thing is making some intangible amount compared to investment it (the idea) got.