skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But how many non-geeks will be installing software outside that store? The first doorway matters, and it's been left wide open. There's even a note pinned to the frame inviting vampires across the threshold.

Personally, I'd think a multiple-store method should work best, where each store can control what's in it. A "kid-safe, parent-approved" store would be useful, as would "experimental", "anything goes", and "cryptic dogma but generally good". A way to select which ones you want to look in, and you're golden.

Though I realize I've just described a package manager with configurable sources.

(unless this is possible currently? haven't heard anything, and it would make the blog post nearly a moot point...)

--- edit:

I was referring to the openness of the store, not the platform, as evidenced by referring to "[Google's] Android store". Maybe it would've been clearer if I said "Android Marketplace"? Should I edit it while there's time? The openness of the platform is utterly fantastic, I wouldn't want them to change that for anything.
Thanks a lot for the reply
Yup I did not mean that Non - Commercialized research was unimportant.
Trying to get a job in a good company seems to be the only option for me.
Thanks again for the discussion
I like how the newest language in your list was essentially created in the 60's and yet the oldest was created in the 80's. Makes my head hurt.
I like cats, but I am really allergic to them, and thus hate being around them.

What is the similar situation for a programming language?
I am actually staying in a Columbia Dorm as part of my internship. Though I am not from Columbia. I am staying in Carlton.
I highly recommend Desire. Sort of a no-glitch phone. And it comes with the same class of 1ghz processors that most of the recent phones have come with. If you don't mind the delays in getting the newer versions of Android unlike nexus one, then go for the Desire.

I would insist of getting a phone with 1ghz (or faster if available) processors and around 512mb (N1) or 576mb (Desire) ram. That way you could be sure that these phones would get an upgrade to newer versions of Android and would be able to run them properly.

And going by manufacturer's commitment to offering upgrades to newer versions of Android, I would rank Google on top, HTC next and the others follow.

Maybe HTC delayed the Hero update for close to 1yr, but they did release an update.

P.S: HTC's site isn't cluttered like the other manufacturer sites. Easy navigation to support and updates pages on their site is a must for me (which is why i hate Nokia's site).
Thanks, just read through that.
I'd say the number one best practice for a programming language's main website is to show actual code on the home page.

And the number two best practice would be to get the novice to the point of writing and running their own "Hello World" program, in that language, as fast and as easily as possible.

Almost everything else is gravy.
Based on several years experience optimizing Internet ad campaigns, here are a few banner advertising tips:

1. Test and track EVERYTHING. Every variation, headline,layout, domain ad is on, etc should have a unique ID, so you can see not just what gets the highest CTR but also which ad converts/backs out the best.

2. Good design does not necessarily mean good ads. I've had the highest CTR and conversions come from the simplest, ugliest ads. See Plenty of Fish banner ads for an example of ugly,yet effective advertising.

3. Regardless of the direction you take your design, have a clear, easy to see call to action ("click here!" button for example). Design the ad to draw the eye towards that button.

4. There are two main strategies in banner ad design, blend or clash. Either blend in with the design of the site your banner appears on with similar colors and visual elements, or go the other direction and make an ad that clashes with it and stands out.

More specific banner media buying advice:

Taget smaller sites your customers are likely to visit. Ask to buy remnant inventory, and pay CPM. Don't pay more than $2-$3 CPM except in specialized cases. Don't go through ad ad network unless you have a big testing budget, instead go direct to webmasters. Use your own adserver and pay based on your adserver's numbers, not theirs. 1% CTR is fantastic for banner ads, but your EPC/conversion numbers will be the way to determine if an ad is succesful.

My email is in my profile, you(or anyone else here) can email me if you have other questions.

PS I don't think you need to hire a copywriter, you're obviously good enough at writing headlines based on how many upvotes this submission has!
If you're only going to get the median outcome, don't do a startup. If you have a real chance at making it, do a startup.

Yes, people mis-estimate their ability all the time, but that's part of life. If you want a safe good outcome, become a doctor or something.
1&2) Would definitely love the contact info! Unfortunately your email is not in your info. Could you leave it on here?

3) Wouldn't tracking it yourself be the best method?
4) What was your last business? Ours is a SaaS product targeted to small businesses. Would be very costly to attend events.
I use the Philips DirectLife. It is a pretty good design, however the fitbit is interesting with the clip.

The DirectLife site seems a bit dumbed-down to me, and I thought the fitbit site had some interesting information about diet, etc.

I was very interested to see that fitbit attempts to track sleep patterns. Is it successful with this?

Another interesting thing is the fitbit base station - the DirectLife has a USB connector that you have to manually hook up, and you get an email nag if you haven't done so after a week. The fitbit download appears to be passive and that appeals to me. On the other hand, downloading the DirectLife data brings up the site in the browser and so may be a necessary part of reviewing your progress.
Be careful not to confuse science with pure mathematics.
As someone who doesn't use FB I wouldn't be switching, but I will probably give it a try if after a week or so I don't hear anything insane from the early adopters. Unlike FB I have some faith in google not intentionally screwing their user base.
$ lein new myproj
Created new project in: myproj
$ cd myproj
$ lein deps
[copy] Copying 2 files to myproj/lib
$ lein repl
Clojure 1.1.0
user=> (use 'clojure.contrib.json.read 'clojure.contrib.json.write)
nil
user=> (read-json (json-str {"1" "2"}))
{"1" "2"}

I admit I cheated a bit: clojure-contrib comes with a JSON parser, and lein automatically includes a dependency on clojure-contrib. If I needed a different library, I'd have edited project.clj to include the dependency.
I have to agree here. I love my N1 but the 'touch' part blows.
The navigate away warning on the main/demo page (without being signed in) is unnecessary and reminiscent of early alert("Welcome to my site!"); messages.
That's true but he is still correct. While Android can (and should) keep the ability to download and install "apps" (I am surmising that an app is some kind of packaged binary or deliverable like a .tar.gz), the need to make their App Store more like Apple's App Store is critical. They need to have strict guidelines and restrictions and say "you can't put this crap on our store." The difference is that if the dev disagrees with Google they can go post their app on their website. Is this Google controlling their ecosystem? Yes -- and rightly so. Google's App Store has their name on it for a reason and the apps accepted into it should reflect at least some of the professionalism displayed by the company itself.

Of course, the problem with this is that Google is completely awful at product management. As far as engineering goes they have a great deal of success but I don't think anyone would deny that their customer service is abysmal.
Since you say yourself that you are not speaking from personal experience, perhaps it would help to have the words of someone who is speaking from experience.

The meditation retreat is difficult and uncomfortable because of its unfamiliar rules: no interaction with other students, no talking, very strict schedule of waking, meditation, food, and breaks. All of these are tools to eliminate distraction from the reason you are there: to develop a basic capacity to perform the meditation technique properly.

The course materials and instructions repeatedly stress that nothing they say is important; there is no philosophy you have to accept, no ideas you have to believe. As someone who is very logical minded and anti-all-"isms" and beliefs, I would have left after the first day if they didn't stress that you can ignore 100% of everything and anything they say if you just do the meditation technique.

The entire benefit of the experience is derived within you, in the same sense that no matter how many books you read about how touching a flame "burns," the experience of touching a burning stove is how you actually learn "ah, fire BURNS".

Ten days seems a long time to devote to learning "how to meditate", but it simply isn't possible to do in any shorter length of time, nor would it work if you simply did several 1-day sessions.

Suppose you went to the gym every single day, but you only did 1 pushup and 1 crunch every day. You might complain that this whole exercise thing is pointless. This would be a great loss.

Feel free email if anyone has questions. I'd be happy to discuss but the topic would overflow many pages so I'll just leave it for now.
Shipping Lanes, Road Networks
I use this extension:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...

which provides a noprocrast feature for the whole internet, or at least the parts that you blacklist for yourself.
tl;dr version.

Learn rails. Write some demo apps. Read other people's code on GitHub.

Appears like a useful article but half way through it turns into an advertisement for why you should hire the author as a consultant at $150 an hour to help you land a job.
I agree with your sentiment (I upvoted you), but I see noobs in #clojure ask about IDEs almost daily.

You can pry my preferred text editor from my cold dead hands, but not all developers think that way.
shit, I deleted my facebook account because I became addicted to stalking almost everybody I know... with google me, it's going to be tougher to delete it..
I haven't held one but the picture I saw looks much better.

http://www.droid-life.com/2010/06/10/exclusive-first-photos-...
Most of the problems you describe could probably be policed by Google, but Google has asked the developers to do this, and it is definitely a problem.

POINT 1 -- There's no in-app upgrade option.

True, but you can quite easily link RIGHT TO the app you require your user to purchase. It's actually super easy to do, I don't know why some don't do this. However, maybe you are referring to the ability for an app to initiate a self-update, in which case, I'd love to know how to do this.

POINT 2 -- Apps without meaningful descriptions should be deleted or hidden by default. A changelog is not a description.

App developers are given 325 characters to tell the entire story of their apps AND describe why we require an update. It's awful. Have you ever written a Haiku? Every time I try to create an app description AND include a changelog, it's like geeky Haiku.

I feel like an idiot replacing the word "for" with a "4" because of this space limitation. It's embarrassing.

POINT 3 -- Apps that start off saying "doesn't work with..." should be deleted or hidden by default or only shown on the Android devices it does work with.

App developers can put a target SDK, minimum SDK and even max SDK in their Manifest. I'm not sure why more don't.

-- It would be fantastic if you could sort searches by downloads, ratings, etc. You'd think since Google is a search company they could figure this one out. Maybe in 2.2?

Agreed.

Though I'd like to one-up this and ask that there be a "Featured Apps" option where Google employees show off obscure but cool apps.

Then, how about a "Sports" category in Games? I for one would be really happy to see this.
This looks very staged. I can't help feeling the children we're given strong guidance in what to write/say in their after pictures.
IPhone 4: the Ars Technica review
Gary Vaynerchuk demonstrates how to get advertisers by cold calling
I have an Incredible as well and my suggestion would be the same.

The weakest point on the Incredible is definitely the battery. If you use it like a phone (ie. just for calls) it will last a day or two without charging, but if you play with it a lot or browse the net regularly on it, you'll have to charge it every night at least.

Other than that, it's a great phone.
Times sure have changed: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055913
176 pixels, rather than 90.
The Droid X will have a 1540 mAh battery (big for a stock battery). This is the phone I would go with if you actually like the 4.3" screen, which I do.

If you want a slightly smaller screen with a physical keyboard, wait for the Droid 2 coming soon.

If you have even more patience, there are rumors of a 2Ghz Android phone coming in 4Q.
The main difference is that you can modify your $LOAD_PATH at runtime in Ruby, while on the JVM it's fixed at startup.

This is particularly ironic because it's a cultural norm in the Ruby community to launch lots and lots of short-lived ruby processes to run your tests, while in Lisp-land it's much more common to have very long-running repl sessions with uptimes often lasting in the days range.
What a strange article. He's upset because it's easy to experiment and test with Forth? OH NOES, TEH TERRIBLES!!

If you don't like interactive development, then just type everything into a file, compile it, and run. The choice is yours.

If there's something to complain about with respect to Forth it's the flakiness of concatenative programming. I'd rather write a program in terms of function application or sending messages than in stack transforms. That's why I don't like Forth, and is probably the only real reason to dislike it. Everything the author dislikes is in his coworkers, not in the language.
Not relevant to hackers.
I have had people assert that they are allergic to parentheses, causing them to hate Lisp.

Of course, offering to make them a read macro to let them use any two other characters in place of parentheses didn't help, but such is life.
> That being said, I do believe the "noob experience" is improving, and the community Clojure fosters is inviting and welcoming to newbies, as far as I've seen.

Indeed, if anyone complains about the noob experience in Clojure, it's probably a good sign that they don't use IRC. =)
Bill to Highlight "Conflict Minerals" in Computers
OK, maybe buggy wasn't the right word.

Maybe, "sloppy and ill-defined" - the only Ruby spec is the implementation of Ruby.

Maybe, "main implementation problematic" - the main Ruby VM never gives allocated memory back to the system - it garbage collects and keeps it for further allocation. That means that if you copy a 1 gig file, your Ruby instance allocates a gig and keeps it forever (one of the Twitter people described to me his horror at discovering this - two years ago!). That's why its standard to kill Ruby instances after a while in most large Rails installations.

Tell me those problems and problem like them are solved and I'll look at Ruby again. It's a beautiful language, the nicest syntax and approach I've seen.
Judging from the people trying to buy an Evo on launch day, it wouldn't surprise me to find that the apps listed are the most popular.

Some of the best apps simply aren't popular. Locale is an essential, but it's $9.99 price point (!!!) makes it unattractive to all but the most hardcore users. Free ringtones may be useless, but people like free, even if it's shitty.
Thanks chaps...
John,

95% of people would agree with you. But they (and you) are wrong. What is your end game? Do you want to be worshiped on HN or do you want a six figure job some where?

If you want either of those, you could just as well write up all you know spit it out in blog posts and free eBooks. Someone is going to recognize your skills and take it from there. At this point the worst thing you can do is keep all your failures to your self, because then no one can benefit from them.
Thanks for your suggestion. Your app looks nice too.
> That's the really big "IF" that the article is trying to address, I think.

Seriously? Java comes with most modern operating systems and is easy to install on the remainders. The article is about getting a dev environment set up beyond the JDK.
I only run Ubuntu these days but a language that can't make itself multiplatform is just advertising its non-functionality. Languages of value should be abstract and multipurpose.
That's paranoia, unless you happen to be the general counsel for a Fortune 100. Because the biggest user of libvpx isn't you or me, it's going to be Google, and they're the juiciest target of any patent infringement lawsuit regarding the implementation.

If the codec works well, then just frigging use it. Google released it because they want people to use it. If you insist on peace of mind, MPEG-LA will be more than happy to take your money.
the ability for an app to initiate a self-update, in which case, I'd love to know how to do this.

Seen Sparkle[1]? It's all the rage in the OSX world. Thousands of applications use it. It'd be a good place to start. Beyond that, there's also Google's Update Engine[2], also for OSX, which does updates file by file, and I believe can even work with just changesets (Sparkle replaces the whole .app bundle). At least, I think Update Engine was started by Google...

Or, if you want to go for "epic" in-place self-updating, something could be done which mimics how some Linux kernel upgrades can be swapped while the OS is running. That's a neat trick. I believe Nginx can do the same, it'd probably be an easier start. Unless the binary is locked when downloaded, I don't see why that at least shouldn't be possible.

Though, all that said, IANA Android developer, and don't know what limitations are in place. Could be it's just flat out impossible, I honestly don't know.

[1]: http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/ [2]: http://code.google.com/p/update-engine/
Thanks for your suggestion. I've removed the warning message now.
These kids are pretty terrible artists. Seventh grade is old too, these kids are like 12-13?
The End of Oil, and Government
To be fair, at the very least Zack has links in his profile and >2000 karma on HN. Yours is a brand new account with no bio.
> I want to meet the person who named that project Leiningen [...]

Jokes just aren't as funny if you have to explain them: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html
Scaling COMET to 300K connections per server [Audio]
I fully appreciate you have a language barrier, and have considered that when reading your post; maybe I'm wrong but my first impression is that you are yet another young uni student with a big ego, no notable accomplishments, and absolute certainty of greatness and success.

> Here is my case: 1: I am 22 years and 3 weeks old

> by the time I graduate I would still be 22 years and 11 months old

Why are you so concerned with your age such that you think it is somehow important to be precise to the level of months and weeks?

> I am really good at C.S.

yet...

>I am scared of doing Ph.D., if I dont get into top few universities.

Why would this scare you? If you are as good as you seem to think you are, your degree will be a footnote on your resume within years.

> I love solving problems, unlike people who got interested in programming by making websites

It seems to me that is an insulting statement..are you not (loosely) implying most(?) people in CS programs are there because they want to "build websites", or in other words, aren't nearly enlightened as you.

> Hence I dont want a job which involves significant amount of (for lack of appropriate term) enterprise fizz-buzz programming.

Yes, this is a totally valid point, no complaints here.

> I would love to become an Analyst in company like McKinsey or Bains or BCG etc. Though such jobs are extremely hard to get My beloved other option is to join any of Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft. These again hard if not harder than above ones.

My honest interpretation of this is, you want to get wealthy, ie: you're not in this field for your love and passion of it, but because of greed. That's the feeling I get from what you say, reality may be different.

> My Final Aim is to get an MBA from a really good university.

My personal opinion, but this is not a particularly honorable goal in life, at least a first goal....especially considering some of the stellar ideas MBA's have burdened the world with in the last 5 years.

> Lastly I would love to get a Quant Job

Again, just my opinion, especially at your age, and especially if you are as smart as you think you are, can't you aspire to something more than this?

Maybe I have the totally wrong interpretation of you, and I honestly don't mean to be rude, but from what you've said, you seem to me to be the type of person that has specific career goals and I would be afraid that you would walk over top of anyone that stood in your way to achieve these goals...like someone that wants to climb the ladder to the top and anyone that gets in your way better watch out.

Maybe I read it wrong.
Hey, thanks. I also managed to incorporate a bit about companion planting and its similarities to relationships in there without it being too bland or dry.

It was all well received and only trumped by my father who wrote something very original that had people in stitches. I should put both online just in case other grooms are looking for inspiration - almost all of what's out there is pretty basic and there is little worse than a cookie-cutter wedding speech.
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I have the GSM version - branded as the Motorola Milestone - so that could be a factor. But Droid's instability problems have been reported before (ie. this 56 page thread: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1587731-Official-...)
whereas in Python:

import frog
frog.nibble()
Collaborative Consumption...P2P Cars...Access.
The part of Java that I hate is having to read a whole lot of documentation about features and libraries that I do not want to use, and will strive not to use, and that I may not even have to use, and that the best critics agree are ugly as sin and overdesigned and counterproductive, but which I still need to understand because they're the standards.

I don't want "alternatives" to Ant and Maven and Swing. I do not want to have to know what Ant, Maven, or Swing are. If they are so terrible why are they still around? Can't we throw them away?

Well, no. We can't. Java is mature. You cannot throw anything away because existing libraries and codebases have dependencies on the old stuff. And you cannot throw away the existing libraries and codebases because they are why you are using Java in the first place; the language's maturity is its strength, perhaps its only remaining strength now that other languages are targeting the JVM. So you can only bolt more stuff on. Which just makes the whole edifice even larger.

If Clojure is forever tied to Java then I don't think it will ever be friendly for newbs, because I don't think Java is very friendly for newbs. ;) And if Clojure is nearly independent of Java -- and some of the comments here give me renewed hope that this is the case -- my advice would be to forget about advertising it to newbs for the time being. Get the Java out. Get it all out. Until you can write a book, akin to the Pickaxe book for Ruby, which teaches a newbie programmer all about Clojure and never mentions Java at all. Then sell me that book.
> And you end up having to learn maven anyway (or at least maven repositories?)

Minor nitpick, but there is a big difference between learning Maven vs learning how to use maven repositories.