skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Zoom RP is amazing. We upload and order parts by noon, they are delivered by Fedex at 10am the next day in Portland. And their Polyjet printers make the best quality small parts.

Can't wait though until these printers get sub $5000 and it makes sense for every designer to have one next to their desk though. HP is getting into the mix, so prices will surely be driven down. http://develop3d.com/blog/2010/04/the-new-hp-designjet-3d-pr...
I started recently learning with a pretty good book on Python. It teaches by having you create little games. "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 3rd Edition" By Michael Dawson.
For Ruby on Rails, a great, if a little wacky introduction, would be: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/
1. I started coding in QBASIC, then VB, then VB.NET, then HTML/CSS/JavaScript, then Java, then Ruby, then Python, then C#. If I was starting today, I would use Ruby or Python.

2. Built-in documentation, college classes and web documentation. Generally I find documentation far more useful than tutorials. I would highly recommend checking out Zed Shaw's new book: Learn Python the Hard Way (http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index).

3. I don't think I've ever learned anything when I didn't have something specific to build. Just playing around trying to learn stuff never works for me. I need to have a reason to learn, a project that needs the technology I'm trying to learn.

4. I've had very little direct guidance in learning to program. I had my professors, which helped me mostly by introducing me to the technologies and giving me things to build. I've had various people on StackOverflow help me with particular. Mostly, I am guided by inspiration, not direction interaction. People like Zed Shaw inspire me. People like why. Sometimes libraries inspire me. LINQ is incredibly inspiring. As is pyparsing. These people and libraries give me an idea of what I want my contributions to the programming world to look like.

5. Best guidance in my mind is giving you a tool and then giving you something to build with it. I never would have found Ruby without one of my professors (or I would have found it a lot later). I may never have cared without Ruby Quiz and Rails inspiring me to build things. This is why I think you should check out Zed's python book. He teaches the language by giving you the tools and then asking you to do things with them.
In reality, web development is quite a hostile environment, in my opinion. Too many different technologies. Better to keep him 'sandboxed' in a single environment, say, Ruby. The great thing about web development of course, is that it's easy to see what you can achieve. Hacking Ruby command line scripts not so much. When I started back in the 90'es it was Visual Basic 6. As horrible a language it was, the instant gratification of pointing a button to a certain method etc. was invaluable, in my opinion.

Edit: O.K., I don't have any current ideas, sorry :)
Their open letter on the other hand is relevant to the entire credit card industry.
http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/
Pledge $1,000 or more

Get all of the above stuff, plus access to the nightly build server for Diaspora, so you can check out our progress all summer!

Huh? Wouldn't that already be public? This sounds like a cool project, but the secretive way of doing things is worrying. If I wanted that, I'd use Facebook.

EDIT: On further inspection, it looks as if this is open source, but only four months from now. Really guys? Is that your way of making this more open than Facebook?
Is "counting code files" a good alternative to "counting lines of code"?
Ahh, I misunderstood tabstops - I thought they were only the left and right margins. Thanks for clearing it up.
>"Once you can't remove stuff any more the design is optimal."

That's when the design is minimal, not necessarily optimal.

Optimal is subjective: optimal for whom, performing what operation?

Having been on HN for a couple of years now (yes I've changed accounts - part of an experiment in aggressive commenting) I find that collapsible threads a la reddit seem to be really missing. There are other things I think reddit does more optimally too - like providing hints on formatting with one click (and no page change) of the post. I could go on (and on) but you get the idea.
New LLVM C++ Standard Library
Posts like this really make me want to move to Clojure.

Python is now my go-to language, especially because of Scipy, NetworkX and bridges like RPy.

I would definitely put in the time if someone with mathematical modelling experience can support the idea that I'll be more productive in Clojure. Anyone?

I really would love to see a list of testimonials and anti-testimonials of people from various fields that switched to Clojure and either got much more done or got burned.

Sorry, I realise that this is a wee bit off the main topic.
heya! Yes, I should've made this more clear :) but we've already promised xkcd book profits to Room to Read (it says so on the copyleft page of each book).

2 years ago when I started breadpig, I had ambitions for a vague 'breadpig prize' -- what your proposing is a much more concrete idea. It's great and I think you're absolutely right on with this (and would love to have your help in the near future, if you're up for it). I'm officially retired from reddit, tho, so there'll probably be no blog.reddit takeover ;)

But I do like this idea. I'm proud to be one of the AwesomeFoundation trustees; the org itself is nothing short of awesome: http://awesomefoundation.org/

Creating something with a more 'help the world' bent would be great, especially if it's software-based. To even play a small part in starting the next Ushahidi...
Well I think if the rise was too fast too take advantage of, the opposite must be true of the way down, no?

I remain very doubtful that very many people were hurt by this action in the market.
Congrats on their launch, but I honestly can't see too much of a market for their product. I would expect most businesses to get a proper merchant account and maybe a mobile payment device from Verifone or Visa.

Square can't compete directly with those companies which have established brands and a long history in the payment industry. They might be able to target the folks who only occasionally need to process credit cards - say at a farmer's market, food cart, or when selling something on Craiglist.

But are there really enough people doing that are:

- Too small to get a full merchant account
- Not willing or able to use PayPal
- And wanting to take credit cards instead of cash/checks and eat the fees?
I'd start with python or javascript these days (I personally did my first self taught hacking in basic on DOS -- some simple text processing for a statistics class). I think the learner resources might be better for python. If he doesn't know anything about programming then you might not be allowing enough time on the different technologies, that's pulling together a lot for a first project.

If you have a modern enough browser you might be able to keep it to html/css/javascript and use web storage for a database. That'd be good for some little single user system or browser based game or something.

Depending on the type of person he is and what you work on at your dev shop you could get him to fix real-but-small problems -- language in error messages, pixel level interface visual problems, etc.
Or even better "Enter your e-mail address here and we will notify you when our service becomes available in your country"
New York Scanned by Airborne Sharks With Fricking Lasers (Minus the Sharks)
Will People Bid Online for a Nose Job Just Like an Airline Ticket?
non-paywall source:

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?stor...
Killing Mosquitoes with lasers
With an appropriately offensive fortune file and xscreensaver's noseguy hack, you can continue to experience the pleasure of an insulting computer.
Automated Drift Parking from Stanford
Is there a FIRST Robotics or FIRST tech challenge team at his school or in his area? (http://usfirst.org/) Programming robots is a great way to pull in kids (for FRC, they can use C/C++, LabVIEW or Java, FTC is LabVIEW or C I think).

I'd avoid HTML/CSS/PHP like the plague for a newbie. Have him write an ELIZA-style chatbot in Python or do some Project Euler questions in Python/C++/C#/Java
Drifting satellite threatens US cable programming
Open Letter to Steve Jobs: It's Time to Stop the Censorship
JavaFX is cutting edge! (Released in 2008)
Actually, since they were bought by Google their IP probably belongs to Google now. Google could have prevented the licensing under the GPL.
Rock climbing is a great idea! Some of my friends used to climb in San Luis Obispo but I never set aside the time to join them and learn. I'll have to add this to the list, thanks for the suggestion :)
WSJ showed the full article when I opened it through Google News Search... didn't know even WSJ does the dirty tricks with referrers.
I like to think of it as having the courage of one’s convictions. It’s one of the most admirable qualities a person can have.
It seems you are confusing JIT and bytecode interpreters.

Why wouldn't Scala/Clojure/Groovy et al be possible without JIT? It's possible to run on the JVM anyway, whether said VM supports JIT or not.
I found the quote from Scoble ironic - "We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it." - meanwhile, Scoble has gone quite stylized, what with his new logo and all.
You should spend a little time playing with Clojure. I don't know if you'll be more productive in it or not; people seem to either prefer lisps strongly or dislike them strongly. If you like lisp then you'll have no problems being tremendously productive, especially with libraries like Incanter available.
Senate votes for toothless, meaningless lipservice. This one-time 'audit' isn't going to accomplish much, unfortunately. I'm glad that this step is being taken, but I'd much rather see the original language restored.
'Hangover' Molecule in Brain Found
They say "you can do whatever you want with it" ... but then license it under the AGPL. The name is funny but fleeting.
I tried to get into programming several times before it finally stuck. I ended up with a collection of c++ and java books that I never got further than a few chapters in. JavaScript of all things really got me into programming. I stuck with it long enough because I received nearly instantaneous gratification. I could actually make things happen on screen. Manipulating strings and tossing numbers around in a terminal window gets boring fast and the bar to entry for GUIs in java or c++ is tedious and frustrating. Once I understood the basics of programming, it wasn't much for me to pick up python, java, ruby, AS3, etc.. So, you're bang on with starting him building a web app. For so many reasons really...

To answer your questions directly...

1. I'd start with JavaScript because it's fun and useful (despite its warts) and either python or ruby.

2. Stackoverflow.com, The Pragmatic Programmer

3. I had a client/server computer science course that was making me build very small apps but it wasn't until I had an idea for something I really wanted to build that I started staying up all night learning. Before I had either my own "itch to scratch" or a professor requiring me to building something I floundered and got bored quickly. I needed a clearly defined goal to accomplish.

4. Sadly, no. My professor wasn't really interested in his students. Google was my only friend.

5. For someone to sit down and clearly explain fundamental concepts to me like OOP, MVC, etc. It's one thing to read about it but someone over my shoulder pointing at things and explaining why a block of code sucks or not would have really helped.

Best of luck. If you nephew sticks with coding, he will really thank you later!
Sure absolutely. It's been a good learning experience. As soon as I finish the blogging features of it I'll start blogging about it. :)
Ah, didn't have the list of teachers available yet when I originally posted.
Two words: Raptor Awareness
Don't forget one-line lambdas.
Why Snakebites Are About to Get a Lot More Deadly
It is true. I really, really, really do not like those. I dislike them to the point of irrationality.
The funny thing is I actually meant SINGULAR, not the company formerly known as cingular =)
I question why they want to see where the FED spent the money. Is it actually because they care, or they want to get in on all the wheeling and dealing with the banks? I agree with transparency, but what is the true motive of the politicians? I think it will be to line their pockets.
FWIW, we're doing lots of math with Clojure in a startup. Mostly using Incanter and Clojuratica as a bridge to Mathematica.

So far the experience has been great. Apart from the language being really well designed, there is the wealth of java libraries accessible just by adding a single line to your project.clj. And there is Clojure support for parallel programming — there is nothing like spending all of 5 seconds on making one of your hotspots use 16 cores just by adding a 'p' in front of 'map'.

All in all, so far it has been a great experience. There were amazingly few bugs and problems.
"I'm sympathetic to software devs, musicians, movie makers, etc. who don't want to see their work pirated, I really am. But as a customer, I FUCKING HATE being treated like a criminal when I try to play games, watch movies, etc. that I legitimately fucking payed for."

How is copy protection treating you like a criminal? Do you FUCKING HATE when the website for your bank makes you login with a username/password to prove your identity?

"I don't see how this is a sustainable situation, particularly when each new generation of DRM seems to punish legitimate paying customers harder than the last generation."

If you really want to blame someone, blame the pirates. DRM was created as a direct result of things like Napster and most recently, thepiratebay. Most people laughed in the faces of the software, music, and movie industry. They never offered any kind of solution for those industries to make money and continued to download their work for free. Now, customers are complaining and wondering why there is so much copy protection on software and games.
> Nobody thinks it would be efficient to privatize the federal highway system and turn everything into a toll road.

Not sure it's safe to say that. The usual arguments against making the Interstate system toll-based are practical ones: it would be a pain to operate, you'd have to have tens of thousands of tollbooths, you'd create giant traffic jams, etc. (Anyone who's ever driven down the Jersey Turnpike, pre-EZPass, can understand the horror that a lot of people think this would necessarily entail.)

But from an economists' view it would probably be very efficient. Right now there's not much of a direct linkage between road users -- those who cause wear and tear to the roads -- and those who end up footing the bill. The net effect of this is a huge government subsidy to over-the-road trucking. Trucks get to drive on the roads for free and, due to their high axle loads, do the most damage to the road. The public foots the bill for maintaining and repairing that infrastructure. It's an externalized cost on the part of trucking companies.

Using tolls (based on miles driven and axle weight, perhaps) would force internalization of these costs into the goods being transported, which would be more efficient from a classical economic perspective. You'd be making the price of the widget in the store more accurately reflect the inputs it requires to make it and bring it to market, which is generally regarded as a Good Thing. It might also have the side-effect of making other transportation methods (rail, ship, air) more competitive in certain edge cases.

Such a scheme might be impractical, difficult to implement, or prone to siphoning for purposes other than road maintenance, but it's not inherently less efficient.

[Edit for punctuation.]
yeah, that might be a bit aggressive with the number of technologies. He can probably get lost in HTML/css/javascript for a couple of months. I'd just like to give him an opportunity to build something he currently uses so he doesn't waste a bunch of time figuring out what to build. I'll have to dig into python and see if any of my guys around here know it. I don't and I'd like to keep him working in something that we use so we can help him out. Thanks for the comment.
The N900 is definitely an awesome phone. Amazing browser. Nokia doesn't seem to want to market it much though.
Google And Verizon Launching iPad Competitor
I like the concept and wish you the best of luck.

I'd consider adding a few different preloaded questions on the main page (or perhaps recently answered questions).

Some people might be intrigued by "Would you rather?" while "Which is your fave?" might sound a bit bland causing them to click out sooner. Just a thought.
Python has no parallelism story. Once you start using the Clojure parallel primitives, there is no going back: you will never want to deal with managing threads and mutexes again.

It's kind of similar to the feeling you get once you've programmed in a language with GC. You really don't want to go back, unless you have to.
Apple Patents Hint At Innovation On Steroids
F.T.C.’s Review of Google-AdMob Deal Gets More Time
Is Apple losing its cool factor with techies?
Toward a Hydrogen Economy: Clues from Nature
Apple/Flash/H264 infographics [pic]
It's unclear what licenses will actually be used. It looks like the code is GPL, and the "assets" are under some noncommercial license. But the "game data" (beyond demo levels) is not going to be distributed. I think "game data" means level design, whereas "assets" are models and textures? So you won't get to play the game, you will have to make your own levels.
The AGPL won't allow others to do anything they want with it. A public domain license would. And a BSD/MIT license would be closer to a public domain license.
That video (and Birdhouse itself) is actually both Cameron Hunt and Adam Lisagor (with a Merlin Mann cameo). Adam's the one that introduces Cameron.
Three reasons for me.

1) The power of the editor. Lot's of great resources to learn more about it on the web or in vim itself. I learn something almost every time I read an article about it or watch a screencast. The learning curve is steep at the beginning, but totally worth it. I bookmark a lot of them on delicious:

http://delicious.com/claytron/vim

2) Portability. I use the same configs on FreeBSD, Arch Linux, Debian, Windows and OS X. I'm not tethered to an OS anymore for my fancy editor anymore (read TextMate). Not only is it portable, but it works mostly the same from the command line as it does in the GUI version. Having a full fledged editor on a remote machine is priceless :)

I made the switch about 6 months ago after switching to Linux for my dev environment. The only other editor I would consider using is emacs, for the same reasons.

3) The crazy world of vim. It's not just for writing code, I use vim everywhere possible now. Command line is bound to vi bindings, Vimperator in Firefox, It's all text to edit the web and external editor in Thunderbird to write emails. In fact, I'm writing this in vim right now :)
September 2010. http://joindiaspora.com/project.html
This whole thread is a joke that's gone over your head. "Perl is the glue that binds the web together" (or variants thereof) is an old pun on how Perl often gets used. Not so much to write large systems (as is the case with C/C++/..) but as a glue layer to stitch them together.
There's some excellent commentary on YouTube, especially from ChessNetwork [ http://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork#p/c/825C29F1B294C19...] and jrobichess [ http://www.youtube.com/user/jrobichess#p/c/31E306A93108AFBE ]. jrobichess is yet to release commentary for game 12 thought.

Overall some really good games, I thought Topalov was going to win, but he sure made a blunder in game 12 - - maybe he was under too much pressure.
Sorry. Here's the link:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=nrxzAAAAEBAJ

That's General Washington's signature in the middle, and Edmund Randolph's (first Attorney General) on the bottom.

The cabinet was the PTO in 1790.
Mind characterizing the differences between the original and the passed amendment?
Heroku Pricing vs VPS (Linode,Slicehost)
Hey,

I have a new app that hopefully will have many users and is going to require more than the FREE Heroku plan (hosted on Heroku atm).

Does anyone have experience in scaling apps on Heroku? What's the price comparing with scaling on a VPS system?

I'm not sure if I should stay on Heroku or migrate to a VPS such as Linode.

Thanks.
1) HTML/CSS -> PHP/MySQL -> Javascript -> Python

2) Random tutorials online and an O'Reilly PHP/MySQL book.

3) Yes, and that was critical. I basically learned what I needed to get the next thing done

4) A friend helped get me pointed in the right direction, and I took it from there.

5) General best-practices. I started with just notepad and had horrible coding style. I think just having someone to answer questions and occasionally review code would have been a tremendous help.

Although PHP pretty much sucks as a language, it was extremely gratifying to see my work progress quickly ("Look, I made that dynamic list out of values in a database!").
While the engine itself is decent, it's not like you'd want to use the existing assets anyway if you were building a game of it. I still don't understand why they went with rabbits instead of people in uniform (samurai, pikemen, ninjas, ...). It just doesn't feel right.

Besides given their past actions, if you really want to use the assets for a commercial project I'm sure they'd have a reasonable license for it.
The hefty fee that Groupon can extoll from their users shows that it's not that easy in practice.
Is it variety that wins, or is it wider availability that wins?

iPhone: 1 network, arguably the worst network
Android: All networks including the worst network
Surprised to see this on HN since I've actually been working on it. Basically, the original gave full, permanent audit authority to the Government Accountability Office. This one requires a one-time thorough audit of the bailout-type expenditures and not much else.
I've been reading "Skunk Works" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003), which talks about the development of the SR-71 and other planes (such as the U-2 and the stealth bomber) at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility. It's a good read. I think it may have been suggested by another HNer.
'''
"This amendment begins the process of lifting the veil of secrecy of perhaps the most powerful federal agency," Mr. Sanders said at a news conference after the vote.
'''

Am I mistaken in thinking that "the Fed" is not a federal agency? Or is "the Fed" as a whole generally considered one because of the Board?
Quitting is too easy. I've changed my profile pic to contain a visual clue, and plan on staying. Here is how it looks like: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31350767&l=c685419...

With 300+ friends, this should make more impact than me just pulling the plug on FB (if my friends do not put me on ignore because of the eye pain caused by the red dot).
Not remotely news. I appreciate the sentiment, but this is a two year old article from someone who has been heavily linked to on HN. I've been seeing a lot of this sort of thing lately and it's really starting to get on my wick - this isn't nearly as egregious as links to 30+ year old hacker folklore, but I still find it irksome.
Square is operating online too. That's what the mobile internet-connected computer is, that their reader is attached to. PayPal App + iPhone + reader = Square except cheaper, more reliable, and probably accessible to more people.

PayPal was revolutionary. The only thing I see here from Square that's even kind of new is the reader component, and that is hardly novel.
I don't think Wikipedia is making things more WYSIWYG, they're mostly just collapsing some data heavy sections until you click on them.