skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Brilliant campaign. I am glad to see they are getting rewarded. The mix of technology and creativity is impressive. I expect some copycats soon that will get ignored.
I think the attitude is different. Projects with a homepage outside of github I tend to treat as black boxes. Projects that are just up there with a README, I tend to take as someone saying "here's this thing I built, use the source if you'd like." The difference with the latter is that I do not expect support or a community. I consider the plugins and gems that are like that to be under my ownership, they are just saving me the time of writing the majority of the code. While I do have to fork and monkeypatch a lot, that is still faster than DIY. When effort to "make right" exceeds the effort to rewrite, I'll rewrite, simple as that. I think the "just put it out there" attitude is useful. We should also be better as a community when we give up on a project, though the metrics that gh provides give good ideas about the activity and life around something. If anything, reading through 10 implementations of slugs lets you know the pros and cons that you may not have considered before you go on and roll your own.

In short: in ruby community, libraries are starting points, not black boxes.
I'm surprised that sleeping is still a group activity for you after that.
What were you paying before, and what are you paying now?
Padmapper rocks! Thank you for all your work on it.
I love mine. I stacked two IKEA tables on top of each other. It turned out to be perfect height for me. YMMV.

I love love love standing while working on the computer. There was a transition period of 2 weeks for me of leg and foot soreness. Best of all, my pre-existing knee pain went away!!

I don't have a pic yet. But I will post it to my software blog sooner than later: http://bp321.com/code/
10 year old hacker in silicon valley
My little guy and I are going to be living part-time in the SV. He's 10 and fairly adept at html and getting decent at basic php. He would like to meet anyone working at Capcom, Sega, Nintendo, etc. He would also like to meet other enabled kids his age. Please contact!

He has built a site for a lawyer and a security co. He is starting a game site and has a little php going on here: http://HiddenNinjas.com

Any ideas on his meeting of compsci engineers/kids welcome!

We will be living near San Antonio Rd. and will be often in PA and RC.

Thanks!
Well, naturally. Otherwise it will get a poor reception.
Is a better fit a good fit?
Themes are GPL too: (Interesting read)

http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/
How about compared to Google Sites and MediaWiki?
"_a_lot_ of the people developing ... are missing some very fundamental CS." FTFY ;)

Adequate culture can compensate for lack of fundamental knowledge, but Node doesn't have "The Node Way" (yet.) DC taught us what to avoid, but we don't have a strong body of blessed examples or expressed philosophy.
Anyone used janrain or gigya for socnet authentication?
Sure, I've got several...

http://twitter.com/photomatt/status/18536188489

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mg315/4792383313/ (Matt claiming Chris verbally abused Jane Wells)

http://twitter.com/photomatt/status/18529673700 (Matt calling Chris a "non-coder" and impugning the Thesis theme)

http://twitter.com/photomatt/status/18533505517 (Matt calling Thesis "scammy")

http://twitter.com/photomatt/status/18535500457 (Matt blatantly patronizing Chris)

And in the interview, when Chris brings up the issue of Matt being more responsible with his actions, Matt deftly dodges the questions. As I said before, while I think Chris came off a bit wound up, it's understandable given the context of the accusations that had been leveled by Matt prior to this interview.
And this was posted to Hacker News why?

Isn't this something bested left to idle chat with your friends or a tweet to people who, well, give a damn?
I sit on a Swiss Ball, constantly bouncing up and down. It doesn't seem to have any impact on my typing or ability to read code.
Reminds me of my car... it's a 1979 Toyota Land Cruiser. I found the owner's manual online and it's surprising what was expected of an automobile owner 30 years ago: lubricating the chassis, servicing the oil filter (not changing, but dismantling and cleaning the parts), lubricating the distributer, differentials, changing electrolytes, etc.. It's like back in the day... men were men... even if they were dorky men with computers.
The admin program (at http://localhost:5984/_utils if couch is installed and running) is such a program.
Neyric's javascript wiring library is inspired by Yahoo Pipes.

http://javascript.neyric.com/wireit/guide.html
Did you notice that Matt wasn't able to produce a lawyer who successfully contended that themes were derivative works? Sure the SFLC chimed in but what do you think their opinion would be given that they are the Software Freedom Law Center?

While Chris may not have stuck on point about the gray areas within the license (it is FAR from explicit), that doesn't mean they don't still apply. And last I checked, we're still innocent until proven guilty in regards to the kinds of accusations Matt is making.

Matt is the one with the burden of proof here, not Chris and Matt most certainly hasn't achieved the requisite level of proof IMO.
I think that exists as a spray. Basically a clear coat, but highly reflective.

I don't know if this one is legit, but I've heard of at least one brand that is. http://www.photoblocker.com/
It's certainly not unique to America, here in New Zealand it's known as Tall Poppy Syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
I know the fans will vote me down for saying this, but Github has greatly increased the level of fragmentation. With the exception of the core projects, people seem to fork more than they join forces to build a better gem.

It's a very easy problem to solve though- build fewer dependencies on thinly supported libraries. That applies to all languages.
>* cold calling alone can create and be a business in its own right - because cold calling is effectively the ability to make things happen - whereas every other business activity needs cold calling to start up and survive

Huh. even if you expand cold calling to include all 'approach someone to ask for a sale' this is plainly untrue, especially after the advent of the Internet. I don't think I've cold-approached even one customer. And really, my business model simply wouldn't work if i had to. with my margins, paying even a mediocre salesguy a commission would eat me alive.

Actually, this is everything I don't understand about sales. What sort of person responds to a cold approach, when it is almost always the case that you can get a better deal (either a lower price, /or/ something that better meets your needs, sometimes both) going out and searching for something on your own? Are you targeting people who don't care about price only?
I'm listening to this while posting this question, but if Matt is correct, does that mean Thesis and therefore all wordpress themes must be available for free?
Seeking Start-Up Help? Give Bain a Virtual Pitch
So, it's not Rails that's the problem, it's the post modern software developers that would rather use a buggy, thinly supported library than try to write their own code...
Well, if it does fail, they'll need more than Steve to run interference, or else they'll really drop off.
Um.. are you blogging for your own health or so that people will read what you write?
I'll be starting as a Graduate Developer (in Sydney) next year. It should be fun be part of Atlassian and watch it expand.
I think there's probably a deeper explanation of this.

Our brains have a strong tendancy to see results as being caused by "essences". Our brains naturally think of all results and their causes in this fashion, and it takes work to override this kind of thinking. Science has been largely a matter of showing that causes are not essences but mechanisms.

And "entity theorists" are people who see human capabilities as the result of essences - as an intrinsic "essence" that you either have or haven't got.
While there are a _number_ of 'in-production' right now, the one I can personally speak to is at https://connamara.cloudant.com/cme/_design/app/index.html [disclaimer: this is my employer].

For what it's worth, I must say that I was very impressed today with how much 'better behaved' this release was in comparison to bother previous "major" releases (0.11 for example) _and_ recent trunk snapshots. In particular, they seem to have ironed out the nagging dependency issues couch had displayed on debian-based installations and are now reliably passing all of the unit / end-to-end tests.

Great work.
Does anyone know how this affects companies exporting software from NZ to, say, the US?

I am assuming you're fine until you have an official/legal presence in the US, at which point you come under US patent law. Does this sound correct?
Either on the whole females are fundamentally less capable of excelling in mathematical subjects or it's a societal thing. I believe it's the latter. I think the article hit it on the head: "girls are often told that's OK and try something else, but boys are encouraged to work harder."

Math is fun because it's challenging and part of my motivation comes from my peers', parents', and teachers' expectations that I excel.

I think the problem rises from a combination of:

"Math is hard... let's go shopping!"

and more insidiously

"Physics is hard... let's go to English class!"

I've seen a few really smart girls get frustrated with physics or chemistry, give up, write it off, and then focus their effort on english or history or some other humanities class.
Sitting all day is probably bad for you. But everything productive I do is on the computer. How do I avoid sitting?
Matt Mullenweg is, in general, the nicest person in the world and if you can actually find a point of contention with him then you are doing something wrong.
* A small transparent electrostatic piece of plastic to cover the antenna (i.e., scotch tape without the glue).*

Would this even work? Capacitive coupling?
yeah, but if the bottom wrung has 512-1GiB ram, if your OS doesn't run on the bottom wrung, I think it's legitimate to criticize you. If you want the OS alone to eat more than that, you had better bring some compelling features to compensate, and the perception, at least, was that vista did not bring those compelling features.
I can't claim to be an expert either, but for what it's worth I think you're pretty spot on there. In the realms of high fashion - along side the artistic considerations you describe - you're dealing primarily with the ideal of female beauty as it is seen from the perspective of certain kinds of women and gay men, as most fashion designers, commentators and other such interested parties are women or gay men. As opposed to the stereotypical, heterosexual male ideal that one might see on display in Maxim et al.
I'm glad to hear they're continuing to do so well. Atlassian is one of the great Australian IT success stories - I really hope the government and people see them as a shining example of IT in Australia and why the industry should be further encouraged.

They're also quite generous to a number of causes. They sponsor the Sydney University IT Society and NCSS (which is a summer program in computing for talented high school students) and commonly come and give talks to the local universities on a wide range of topics (technical and entrepreneurial). They also provide free software for open source projects and host the local Java User Groups.

Overall I really do have a fond spot for them, even if they work in Java ;)
No, even if Matt is correct people can still charge for themes.

GPL themes are able to be shared and redistributed however the end user sees fit.

That's the big difference. I can sell GPL themes myself for half price & they have no recourse. People can give GPL themes away for free and the developers have no recourse.

That's what the debate is about, whether themes inherit the GPL or not.

No one (that I know of) is arguing the GPL doesn't apply at all. What people, such as myself are arguing is that the GPL doesn't automatically apply to wOrdPRESS themes.
Vim-debug
Jacket for MATLAB now available on NVIDIA Fermi GPUs
7.5 requests? Does it mean that out of supposedly 8 requests only 7 were successful and 1 was half way through then caused an error?
Everything is dependent on your market. To paraphrase Dharmesh Shah, "enterprise products are sold, not bought." Part of that selling process is making sure prospects know you exist, and understand the value you provide. Cold calls are one way to do that. Not a very cost effective (or effective) way to do it, but still one way.

Personal example: today I got a cold call from a guy who runs a shop that produces short video interviews with companies and their customers. Their product looks awesome, but they're so small and I new I probably would have never found them otherwise. We'll probably use them.

On the other hand, if we do it, that'll be the second cold-call product I will have purchased in 10 years running this business.
Mainly expansion.

It looks like Atlassian is planning to use the money on getting more into Europe and Asia; getting some more acquisitions and giving some liquidity to employees.
The features and advantages for GPS Navigation
Very cool website, nice work. Question: how do you get the data from craigslist...is there an official api,or do you scrape the site (and if so wouldn't you eventually get blocked)?
sounds like cliki.
Girls have dreadfully few role models too, and certainly aren't properly encouraged by mainstream culture to cultivate ability in the hard sciences and mathematics. I think it'll get better in future generations, however. I've spoken to a lot of programmers who are now raising daughters who are curious, tech literate, and not afraid to act smart. That ought to be encouraging.

It's certainly a problem in this generation though. I was just at the Minneapolis Hacker News meetup, and it was 100% male.
... so you care about other peoples' karma!
According to WordPress' intent stated here: http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/ the themes are being considered a derivative work. I'm not a lawyer and honestly not a huge fan of the GPL, but this seems pretty clear-cut to me.
Well, yeah, but the metaphor is what I think is interesting. It's technically nothing more than shifting from a deterministic to a statistical model, but the idea of applying statistical algorithms to many aspects where computers need to emulate human design is a powerful heuristic.
The Southern Freedom Law Network does consider that derivative: http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/

(I linked this in my other reply to you as well. Sorry for the repetition, but I think it was worth mentioning in both places.)
Things I learned from this article include:

There was once a word processing machine named Wangwriter.
More follow-up: have you seen this site?

http://techcofounder.com
The legend is true. I've seen them. You can choose to 'showdead' in your options.
Stand: http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/computerworkstations/positio...

It takes a little while to get used to it, but once you're there, standing all day is just fine.
Ideas making sense has nothing to do with ideas being valid. You are correct that doing the right thing and doing things right are both important. What good is it to do the right thing if you do it really bad? I think he makes an implied assumption that if you're doing the right thing you are doing it right. You need both in order to operate best which makes the entire comparison moot. If you have no balance the next thing to expect is an article touting doing things right is more important than doing the right thing.
"However, I think any astute economic analysis of economic systems of the way businesses and economies actually work would very quickly notice that a GPL does some very inorganic things to what are otherwise organic systems. So, from a systemic standpoint, on a systemic level, I disagree with the way the GPL perpetuates economies."

What on earth does that even mean? Also, he's one of the top three most important people by his own admission. Not any of the people who actually write the software that allows him to have a business.
Wait, what? This is what I have to do in any language. Writing Perl? Yup, have to read my libraries. Writing Haskell? Yup, source diving is helpful! Writing Java? I have to single-step into the internals to get my programs to work right!

Understanding your libraries and their implementation is a great thing. Once you realize that library code is not a magical black box, and is instead very much like the code you are writing, you can really become a productive programmer. ("But what about abstraction! If I have to understand my libaries, they're not abstract enough!" Wrong. Abstraction prevents parts of your program from knowing about each other. You, the programmer, still have to know how each part works. Abstraction means you only have to actively think about once piece at a time -- nothing more.)

The Posterous codebase is littered with monkey patches, modifying gems to work as we need them to.

Yeah, you know that "fork me" button on Github? You click it, then you edit the code, then the bug is fixed for every single person on Earth. That's the point of free software; if there's a bug, you squish it and move on.

(I do this all the time. Does it take time to fork someone's project, fix the code a bit, and send them a pull request? Yes. But it's worth it, because now you have a robust and permanent fix... and a community!

Monkey patching is for monkeys. Collaborating is what humans do.)
Nah, your comment wasn't funny.
Presumably 0 before and 10c per day now...
I give a damn...
Let me see if I follow you. If Matt is correct, Chris can still charge for themes, but isn't required to make it available for free.

If you purchase Chris' theme, and sell it to me for $10, if Matt is correct, Chris has no claim against you, but if Chris is correct, he does.

Is all that right?
Business school exists for people like you.
"14 requests every two seconds" just doesn't have the same punch, I'm guessing.
They talk about CSS, JS and Images being excluded from the Wordpress GPL. Isn't this 99% of what most themes are made of?

What Chris has is not a theme but more of a dynamic theme generator.

What he should do is make Thesis additionally compatible with another CMS/Blogging tool so that the claims about Thesis delivering nothing but a blank page without Wordpress will no longer be true.

I appreciate the work of the open source community and donate to projects that I use most often but I also fully support Chris in being able to make a choice as to what license he wants to apply to his software.
the interesting bit here is that the guy didn't seem to /even consider/ a broker. I wonder why? just too expensive?
I think that would be bad timing for a Verizon announcement. Wouldn't that just piss off anyone who signed with AT&T for the iPhone 4 just because they couldn't get it on Verizon?

Besides, if they're going to announce a Verizon phone then they're effectively announcing a new model; the GSM iPhone 4 obviously isn't compatible with Verizon's network. In my opinion this is the kind of thing you'd do at the launch of a new iPhone generation, not just a few weeks afterward.
Well, if you're asking about the ability of a language to prevent the ability of a corporate army of 1000 developers to blow it's collective foot off, then no, Ruby and almost every other language will forever pale in comparison to Java.

On the other hand, if you're talking about the ability to mix, match, configure and replace components of Rails in order to meet your particular requirements, then Rails 3 shows real promise, though it's not yet officially released and a lot of the modularity needs battle-testing.
You mean 15 requests.
Welcome aboard - looking forward to having you here. Any idea what team Talent have placed you in?
Speaking as a young woman in the industry whose startup has successfully turned into a solid small business and had to deal with condescending remarks from my male colleagues and clients (though very, very rarely on purpose), I would say it is due to both societal issues and the way computing is currently done.

Another issue is that young girls just don't generally like to spend a lot of time alone, and technology is overall an isolating pursuit, at least while you hone your skills. It's pretty easy for me to sit down with my young nephews and hang out on the computer together, but my nieces get bored of staring at the screen and prefer to make things, so I get their attention more when we play with sensors and robots.

I expect at some point technology will break out of the two dimensional confines, and young girls will pick up computing as much as they can excel at knitting and sewing, which I use primarily as an example of complex pursuits requiring attention to detail and logic but with a physical result.

Give it time. Bring your girls up to love technology as much as your boys and they'll be participating equally but in different ways. Accept, and enjoy, that girls and boys approach technology with different goals.
"According to WordPress' intent stated here: http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/ the themes are being considered a derivative work. I'm not a lawyer and honestly not a huge fan of the GPL, but this seems pretty clear-cut to me."

I don't see how they can automatically assume that all themes are under the GPL license. If you make a theme that does not use any existing wordpress code, it wouldn't be considered a derivative work.