skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not claiming it's definitive evidence, I'm just saying it seems to suggest it.

Apple has made a lot of really ethically questionable moves, and is being quite hypocritical in many cases. This is obvious to me, and others. So when someone on the outside brought this up, Steve Jobs responded in a way that almost seems like it's the first time he's having this debate. That's just my take on it.

Or do you really think that many at Apple had this same or similar kind of debate with Jobs, and then he's willing to publicly have it again with Tate? His arguments are just too weak and unpolished for it, and it's surprising he's responding to Tate at all if he's already deliberated it internally and settled on his position.
I don't understand why I'll want to use Facebook features when I'm not on Facebook, or why I wouldn't ignore Facebook ads the same way I ignore all ads. But maybe magic web 2.0 fairy dust can mystically make advertising not obnoxious.
I'd strongly disagree with that. I'd argue: it's rarely a normative process, and can (and should!) be made less normative. In fact, almost the only times it can be considered close to normative are when it's in a huge organization banging out boilerplate code, because in that case you've already assumed a fixed structure and placed "programming" into a niche within it, and declared that the structure isn't currently up for reevaluation.

But I don't think that fundamentally you can separate the act of expressing programs from the act of coming up with interesting things for them to do. The materials of the medium constrain what is possible or easy to express, and it's quite hard to produce anything good if you try to artificially separate them into levels of specification vs. implementation.
You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.

I think that's the main problem. It's not enough to simply have pure motives. Nobody actually understands the complete extent or realization of their motives, and whether or not they're truly 'pure'. Hence, the importance of listening.

You can 'envision' all you want, but if you don't have good feedback loops, you're going to run into serious problems.
Hello, since 2.0 (RC1 is near now...) we have "SETEX" that is SET+EXPIRE in one operation, and with max-memory directive set when Redis runs out of memory will sample three random keys and will delete the one that is going to expire sooner. So this usage is actually supported.

What I think about Redis as a cache is that in many contexts the rich data types and operations supported allow better caching.

An example: oknotizie.virgilio.it is a large social news site, for this site I built a Redis cache where the "latest" news IDs are pushed into a Redis list, but they are also added to the MySQL DB that was formerly here.

So to paginate the "latest news" page I only use fast LRANGE calls against Redis, but if it will return a short read (the cache is empty since the Redis server was restarted) I'll use instead the MySQL server. This actually never happens and everything goes on Redis usually, but since there is no persistent storage needed in Redis side, it is actually a cache.

When a news is deleted I use LREM instead. And so forth.
Incidentally, one theory as to why allergies are so prevalent these days is because chlorinated water killed off a gut parasite that hooks into the intestine and excretes an immunosuppressant. Without that suppressant action that we evolved with the "expectation" of having, we now all have more potent immune systems than "designed". The result is that it reacts to things that pose no harm, like pollen and dust mite debris.

On the other hand, dirty water has killed a lot more people than allergies have.
Things may be coming to a head. Lots of people see movies. Some really scary things are actually starting to happen in part due to the Facebook which may really see a different view taken of it soon. Check out the lead story in the main paper here in Melbourne (Aus) today:

"Facebook leads to death" - http://www.theage.com.au/national/teenager-found-dead-after-....

I think a lot of stuff like this is going to happen and we're going to either see regulation or something else really damage Facebook over the coming year or two as the public gains consciousness of the inherent risks in what they are engaging in when they expose their entire lives to the world.
I think the willingness of a famously reclusive CEO to engage in a debate at 1 AM on a Friday night with a random, verbally aggressive blogger with whom he has no familiarity is not indicative of an executive who shies away from internal debate.
No, you are really reaching. He replies to a lot of user email, seemingly at random. Years ago a friend of mine in a completely unrelated industry used to exchange email with him about odd things that happened in the Santa Cruz mountains.
I'm not happy with some of the things Apple has done in the iPhone realm but reading that email thread, I'd have to say Steve had a stronger and more mature case.
Compete on aspects other than price.

If your product is truly better--there is one advantage you want to hold.

Make sure you have developed and designed an amazing first user experience. Sign up and user the competitors app--What sucks? What could be better? What wows you? Make the experience so good people want to pay you

Another good one, compete on service/support. It takes commitment but if products are very similar, the service and support can be presented as what you are really paying for.

Check their user forums/FAQ/Knowledge Base/GetSatisfaction, whatever they have, find out what current users gripes. wishes, and problems are. Use that intelligence in your product development and messaging/marketing.

Out. Hustle. Them.
Apple has made a lot of really ethically questionable moves...

Selling people a product that will give them cancer and telling them it makes them look cool is an ethically questionable move. Restricting the programming languages that can be used to develop for your platform is not.
_why's influence isn't only in code, but in thinking. And if you look around, for example on github, you will see a lot of people hacking away for fun, trying out new stuff and just doing something they love to do. Did _why start this trend? He didn't, but he was a big advocate of it.
There are different kinds of cleanliness though, I think. I've often found it easier to modify idiosyncratic code than code written in the Standard way, though things vary in both kinds. I do agree documentation is rather important; well-commented idiosyncratic code that explains the author's mental model is light-years easier than idiosyncratic code without any explanation.

But, I do find that code written in sort of industry-standard style often is hugely over-architected, with a lot of boilerplate and cruft, and not all that easy to modify if I want to adapt it to my personal ends; i.e. my use-case is a single programmer wanting to put in 5-10 hours to make a small to moderate change. You end up in a maze of Factories and Interfaces trying to figure out where anything is actually done. The idiosyncratic code often just does away with all that architecture, which can sometimes be easier to deal with.
Radically disagree with you there. Wiring is in principle really simple - make sure the right wires are connected, insulated properly with appropriate safeguards; accounting is similar, where there are essentially only four kinds of things.

Putting together a large piece of software, or optimizing a particular path in a large codebase, or putting together a creative solution to a class of problems, requires a much higher level of thinking. You need to bring together far more concepts at different levels of the abstraction stack, and have enough of them in your mind to arrange them without them interacting poorly at one level when you're coordinating them at a different level.

Programming is more like building a whole new kind of house, without a plan, or altering an existing house, without it all falling down around your ears.

As to subjectivity: you're wrong that software quality can be measured objectively, because of two simple facts: software isn't static - it must be modified over time - and humans are limited in their capacity for complexity. The abstraction which yields most readily to the changes that matter, such that those abstractions mesh well with those people doing the modifications, are subjectively good - their worth is dependent on the observer.
I agree that some people don't understand their current privacy settings. I don't know if the number amounts to "a lot". Regardless, I don't think they're being strung along. The privacy transition dialogs back in December were very clear and not misleading at all. Making the changes opt-out isn't necessarily evil, and they were only opt-out for people who hadn't touched those settings in the past.

There are 25 hits for rectal surgery since April 27. Most of them are innocuous.
The blurring line between personal & professional activities
I never said it was surprising that he replies to emails.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) at work for you. Good call.

I'm not very optimistic about the market for a book on emulation... It's beyond geeky.
I love cooking as well - it's the cleanup after that keeps me from doing it more often - I hate doing the dishes.
"I don't consider programming to be a much greater skill than the ability to install fixed wiring in a house or balance a budget."

The vision you seem to be espousing is someone tells the programmer exactly what to do, and the programmer does it exactly to that specification. Wiring a house and balancing a budget are solved problems. So you seem to be saying that programming is also a solved problem.

Which is so out of touch with reality I feel that, surely, I must be misunderstanding you. A computer program can do pretty much anything. Depending how you feel about the equivalence of Turing machines and human brains, you can argue that a computer program can potentially do anything a person can do.

With the geometric increase of computing capacity available to us, how is it even conceivable that "programming" is equivalent to balancing a budget or wiring a house? You seem to suffer from an incredible lack of imagination.

"However, I think that is a much better position to aspire to than self-aggrandizement and glorifying a skill that is really no different than any other skill that any suitably motivated 12 year can acquire with a couple library books and an internet connection."

That is the same as saying a 12 year old can write or play a musical instrument. Sure, they can spell words and make sentences, or know the correct fingering for certain notes. But the potential for improvement in those endeavors is also unbounded. The same is true of programming, in my opinion.
Nice point. I made a comment about economics on the same thread, that Chinese statesmen 2500 years ago recognized that first economic improvements have to take place before moral enlightenment and the protection of individual rights. Mainland did do worse than these other equally Confucian societies, but I'd argue on where mainland did wrong and the solution. And I'm hesitant to say that these political reasons are the cause rather than the effects of bad economic performance of mainland. The mao period is undeniably a period of complete tragedy. But as much as a political tragedy, it is also an economic failure. So when it comes to the solution, I would again argue that political reforms at this stage in China will not bring benefits much less overthrowing the CCP. Gradual economic improvements is the best way to improve the political and social conditions of the Chinese masses
I don't understand how sjobs manages this. I can't imagine how many emails he gets now that people are expecting responses. He must enjoy interacting directly with his consumers a great deal.
Programming is in principle really simple - make sure the right lines of code are used, follow each other and are debugged properly.

Sure, putting together a large piece of software is hard, but then again, putting together the electrical system for a nuclear plant or something on that order of complexity is just as hard, if not harder (no 'undo' switch on that one).

There has to be a way to see that programming is really not that hard 'in principle'. It is hard in practice, and this goes for a large number of other activities as well.

To argue on a programming forum that programming in principle is a simple thing is probably an unpopular point of view, but really, we're not half-gods or somehow special, we're just bricklayers and watchmakers. And if you've never built a brick wall I challenge you to go and do it and afterwards we'll talk about how easy it was 'in principle'.
Agreed, except on the partnership bit, which I don't understand. Keeping track of partnerships always seemed like trivia to me. Can you explain a bit further?
How to Check If Your Website Is Blocked In China or Not
I'd say it's pretty ethically questionable to harm people's livelyhoods to settle a score with an unrelated company and to then make claims that you're doing this to ensure "quality" on the platform while simultaneously demoing a quality app that violates your own rules.

Umm.. Yeah. I've come to the conclusion that this debate isn't worth participating in anymore. People don't get the bullshit Apple is pulling or are willing to look past it because of the superb quality of the iDevices and the App Store gravy train. It's hard to explain it in a paragraph. And when you explain it in detail people don't listen. You get comments like the above. You get people saying "Flash sucks" when Flash has nothing to do with it. I just don't have the time anymore, sorry. Bury away.
INTJs : programming as science, maybe a little art
INTPs : programming as equal parts science and art

this comes from the fundamental difference between left-brain and right-brain conception. namely, the right-brain folks can handle the tiny little details directly and simultaneously and account for them statistically. because of this, they can often rule out or rule in entire chains of reasoning in vast swaths and hone in on the critical parts quickly. this is what makes artists seem magical: out of countless possibilities, they can select the good ones

the left-brain folks cannot handle the little details directly. they rely on subconscious abstractions. for left-brain folks, the engineering aspect of coding is perhaps necessary to keep track of the little details. on the other hand, left-brain folks have a knack for certain kinds of structure (abstract logic for example) that right-brain folks do not have naturally
_why is essentially really good at marketing, and he did what all great marketeers do best, he kept the people wanting more.

The move to 'quit while ahead' is genius, forever his legacy will be treasured and the myth of his genius will only expand with time.

That doesn't mean that his contribution wasn't great, I'm sure the Ruby world would look different without him, but for every _Why there are 10 others, maybe not as good at marketing themselves but at least as influential.

We really have come to the crossroads of popular culture and programming if we get programmers with 'cult' status comparable to minor movie stars. But I'd rather see some credit go to those that are less capable self promotors.

Watch for _Why's spectacular comeback in a couple of years.

Mark my words.
I feel that you are going Humpty Dumpty on us, picking a meaning for "programming" that makes your point but is far a field of what the term "programming" means in the minds of practitioners.

Basically, you have defined programming as a form of dictation. That definition makes your arguments true. But it does not follow the common usage of this term, especially as a site like this.
I'm am also an avid MMA practitioner... it's a much more interesting and complex sport than most people think.

In addition to training, I also run a little news aggregator for it (built it for myself). Here: http://mmabuzzsaw.com/
For all the complaining that "small businesses" do about bank fees, I wonder how many stop to think about how much extra volume those cards generate (albeit at a smaller profit).

I'm old enough to remember the days when people had to carry cash or a checkbook to pay for their retail purchases. I cannot see any way that impulse purchases are not way up in the age of debit/credit card payments compared to then. And online businesses certainly wouldn't be where it is today without the existence of debit/credit transactions.

I'm not speaking from firsthand knowledge, but I think that for the lower barrier to impulse buying, the reduced need to handle cash or worry about bounced checks, that it might well be worth fees that "averaged 1.63 percent of the transaction amount"
Fair enough - I was going for an "unbiased" metric. Could have been market cap, stock price, etc.

In a nutshell, my respect goes to the builders and hackers of the world, not the talkers.
I'm not sure how he was a savvy self marketeer when nobody knew where he lived or what he did for a living or even what his real name was.
> I always thought he was one of the most creative people currently working in any medium,

You live a sheltered life.

A few million creative artists would probably disagree without you, some violently so.

Yes, it was nice to have him around, no, he's not that special. Have a look at Alan Kay for an example of someone who is special.
I'd say it's pretty ethically questionable to harm people's livelyhoods...

Livelihoods? Or shots at a quick buck for relatively little work building on the back of someone else's invention?
+10 points for HN
I don't agree with a lot of points of view here but I'm so glad it's happening here on HN rather than on Digg or something. Almost everyone who expresses their political views have been in China or does business in China rather than just repeating what fox news said.

I have gained new respects for HN
Sounds like you're saying your respect goes to the businessmen and marketers of the world, if your primary criteria for greatness are sales, market cap, stock price, etc. Those might sometimes correlate with creativity and technical merit, but they certainly aren't directly measures of it (and often don't correlate).

To put it differently: What has Jobs made in the past 10 years? I don't mean: what have employees over which he's had supervision as CEO made. What has Jobs made? Is he really a "builder and hacker"? My impression of the early days is that he wasn't even then: Woz was the builder and hacker; Jobs was the suit.
I think the average is actually made up of a very low rate for big chain stores and much higher rates for mom and pop businesses with a physical presence.
Does this actually work?

It seems to me there would be a major bug since the existing auth.User email field definition is not unique and allows blank values, and this app doesn't do anything to check against that, nor does it do anything to remove the existing username field definition.
"What if it is being controlled by a foreign superpower ..."

Or a foreign minor-power with delusions of super.
Akademie Olympia (Einstein & friends)
It makes me angry that a company that appears to go against my ideals is so popular and successful, because I believe my ideals are better. It's not in any way a good argument, but I might as well admit it rather than claiming otherwise.
Where do you live that you can do the first two reasonably frequently?
I went to the trouble of finding the offending js a while back, but some aspect of its URL must have changed (server? directory? depth? name?), because the filter stopped working. So now I nuke everything; the loss of js hasn't harmed the text yet.
> Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.

What he's advocating for the app store may be a good thing, but it's certainly insane to call it freedom. Freedom is when you can do whatever you want. When you restrict stuff, for better or worse, that's less freedom. Taking away all meaning from the word "freedom" is a really bad idea.

There is simply no such thing as freedom from the option to watch porn if one wants to watch it. That's like freedom from truancy, or freedom from marijuana, or freedom from leaving your jail cell, enforced by the police. Some will argue those are good things, but none should argue those are freedoms.
Those unbiased metrics are a good measure of the entirety of a company's or a division's performance, but they tell us little about the product itself in absence of consideration of its marketing, competition, relevant social attitudes, and a plethora of other market factors which to a large degree determine the "success" of a product.

Agreed on more respect for the creators than for the talkers, though.
> People don't get the bullshit Apple is pulling.

We absolutely do. You won't find a more ardent opponent of 3.3.1 than me. But that doesn't mean I accuse every person underneath Steve Jobs of kowtowing to his every whim without a whiff of disagreement, or claim that Jobs doesn't permit dissent based on absolutely zero evidence. I can disagree with and express opposition to a particular action of Apple's without making it into a personal vendetta.
Should Education Focus on Connections/Understanding Rather Than Pure Knowledge?
I am furthering my education in psychology, political theory, and philosophy, and I would like to know what HN thinks.<p>Do you think a problem with education lies in how, or what we teach?
What would you like to see?<p>(I apologize if this is against protocol for HN, but I think it is a thought provoking question.)
I think you made a mistake again - now the third link is OP's link. Unless it's crappy summaries all the way down...
Native Client (as the name suggests) is not a VM, it executes x86 machine code (with some limitations to ensure security) directly on the CPU.
I can think of a lot of careers that are far more stressful, careers where real people are dependent on you doing your job fast and well. All we have to do is write code that does its job fast and well. That seems like a lot less stress to me.
Previous submission:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1348123

(showed the root URL without the "index.html," thus not string-matching this submission)
Nah someone changed the url of the submission.
How does the iPad prevent you from watching porn?
The ceo of a company is responsible for success and failure. When I was in the Army, the success or failure of my squad rested with me - I was ultimately responsible.

So, yes, in this case, the guy who took apple from the dumps to one of the biggest consumer devices companies in the world, he gets credit.
Stallman Video: If You Want Freedom, Don’t Use Proprietary Software
Then how was the ad shown on Google Reader, if not through AdSense?
I don't recall doing any of that, sorry if my comments made that impression.
Affordable Care Act's Hidden Massive 1099 Change
Outdoor bouldering is just climbing small rocks. Find a small rock somewhere and scramble up it. It is as dangerous as you want it to be. If you are concerned about the danger, bring a pad and let people know where you are.

I first got into climbing by scrambling around boulders on the Sonoma coast, mainly by myself. I had so much fun. When I found out that it was an actual sport that other people did, I was hooked.