skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When has Negative PR kept a dominant technology company from remaining dominant?
:s/may\( have a window or two smashed\)/will\1
The best way to hate a language is to implement it. It forces you to learn all the ins and outs of the language, every nook and obscure corner that something, somewhere, depends on.
I use Gentoo and OS X for my desktops and laptops and Solaris x86 for my servers.
I am not advocating that Blizzard shouldn't use this technology to reduce/eliminate their bandwidth bill. I am a huge proponent of P2P and Bit Torrent. It's all about disclosure.

All I want to happen is for Blizzard to tell me upfront...listen, this is what we are going to do and this is why. List the benefits to me.

Don't make me have to download some sleezy 'downloader' (I hate downloaders by the way, but that's another story) and feel my net connection go to the dogs without understanding why - only to find out that my upstream is being blasted through the roof.

Just tell me upfront what I am getting myself into. That's all I am saying.
There's millions upon millions of lines of production code, some of it (for instance, at the financial exchanges) millisecond-optimized, running in Java. What's your point?

Again, I simply call bullshit on the idea that you couldn't write ProTools or Photoshop in ObjC. The portions of those systems where you care deeply about performance can be written most effectively in bare-metal C anyways; it's a delusion of C++ programmers that all the shellac and geritol that C++ offers is giving them a major performance benefit. It's C++ that forces you to make a lifestyle decision by pretending that pointers are anything other than register-sized integers. ObjC is just enough object goop layered over straight C to make large programs maintainable.
+1 for Android support. A "summary alert" once a week would be nice.
Give your users a board seat.
I had enough time to go to all of those things... SF is not a big place. The scene is not that much better than say, Minneapolis.
A smart company would use its own forums to respond directly to its customers.
Nobody cares about government corruption anyway. But if you mess with my iPhone I will class action the crap out of you Apple! Especially since I can't go to the beach anymore.
I'm sure that they will respond publicly to this. They already did, and they might very well change direction. But it's not too reasonable to expect a whole organization to do an about face within 24 hours of a bad review from CR.

Apple likes to shoot first and ask questions later. They banned a number of apps and only reversed the ruling after PR problems. So we'll see if this happens.
That's not fair though, because society frowns on golddiggers. Just imagine the confidence it takes to declare yourself a golddigger as opposed to saying you like hot chicks. Social pressure is by far the dominant factor at play here.

The interesting question is why is it so? Maybe because money-making ability is a somewhat less intrinsic quality. Maybe it's the undeniability of the biological response when you see someone beautiful. Some would call it sexism and leave it at that.
looking at the xml on the url he is using for this experiment, the tag for the number is "num_queries" which makes me think that it is, in fact, the number of queries and not the results.
view-source:http://google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&q=how%2...
Are blocks available in the iOS version of Objective-C? (Not trying to refute your point, just curious, since that would be exciting news for me if I do another iPhone app...
In theory these are user volunteer help forums, not "oh look at that article over there" forums.

I've been lurking on the iPhone 4 boards since launch. Apple is leaving extremely negative threads open and active.

They generally do not leave threads that are begun as pointers to, and discussions on, outside sources.
NSString has plenty of methods to deal with this, and you get boxing for free between CFString and NSString.

And that pesky char * that you get from C.
Surprise jump in trade deficit worries economists
"Just hold the phone differently, peasants!" - Steve Jobs
Bridging technical and HCI research: my transition from engineering to usability
I used to use FreeBSD and switched later to Mac OS X (never really liked it though), which made me quite lazy. After my macbook pro gronked out, I switched back to Windows out of convenience. Besides I wanted to play some games again and had a few applications that would have required emulation, so I swallowed the (once) bitter pill and installed Windows again and I have yet to regret it. Been using Windows 7 x64 from the beginning (MSDNA) and I haven't had any problems. So, this is me, using windows 7.
Funnels are never done because a) the market changes as you become more popular, have new competitors, the economy tanks, etc and b) there's no perfect funnel - you might see diminishing returns but you never know what will make a big difference.
I guess they undeleted them, because I see both threads on their forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2503667...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2503228...
That is good feedback and we should make that more clear. To answer your question, the domain admin (when he installs the gadget for the domain) gives us access to each email header as you open the email. To install Etacts, the user clicks through an openid+oauth login screen that details which services we use (gmail and google contacts).
OS X mainly, but Ubuntu and Win7 for testing stuff, looking at GUI.
Thanks for the feedback, we do have an Android app planned.
Well, I heard someone mention that on twitter, and the javascript does contain the "qx" toplevel object. Don't know if it's heavily modified or not. Also, judging from the page names it's using ASP.NET. Considering that a lot of the usual web games (all those boring fighting sims) are a dreadful hodgepodge of PHP and Flash, this is quite refreshing.

Also, the gmx.com web mail service seems to be written in qooxdoo (and was probably the reason for writing the library in the first place). It's interesting to compare that to the rather dated original European GMX webapp (gmx.net), which seems to be lingering on in a barely modified Perl CGI incarnation.
Not having actually lived in Brooklyn I can't say for sure but there are a ton of interesting bands coming out of Brooklyn right now, you're in the publishing heart of the world, you've got some of the best art museums on the planet right next door, and you're not going to find better theater anywhere in the U.S.

Compared to that the whole art-car, techno, cyberpunkish thing in S.F. just seems so provincial and quaint. I don't doubt that people put a lot of work into it but it just doesn't compel me at all.
We also allow you to quickly set reminders on individuals with whom you'd like to stay in touch.
I moved to the Inner Richmond (sort of by accident, long story) and I'm surprised at how great the neighborhood is. It may be better just for living, but I think it could be practical for a penny-pinching startup too.

- Much cheaper rents

- Services: lots of restaurants, especially Asian, many open very late (you have lots of options even from midnight to 3AM), bookstores, bars.

- If you pick your location properly (close to California or Geary, and near certain stops) you can catch express buses to and from downtown at peak hours. 20-25 min to a BART station or SOMA. Off-peak it's more like 30-40 min.

- Unlike SOMA, my cell phone works here ;)

- Downsides: no techie neighbors, except Archive.org who recently took over the old Christian Science building on Park Presidio & Clement.

Just generally, the place feels like a real neighborhood rather than some sort of Potemkin village constructed for yuppies or hipsters. That's important to me, anyway.
_The former is much faster and provides the same functionality. Why is not all RAM in a machine SRAM? The answer is, as one might expect, cost._

But since the density of transistors is pushing the cost of everything down how expensive is expensive? Does it make sense to product a SRAM-based laptop with 512MB of fast memory?
Settlers of Catan with Cities and Knights of Catan expansion
[citation needed]

Seriously though, despite how anecdotal this page is, it gave me some food for thought. Does Google really care about how far in the future I have registered my domains? I'd love a source on that.
ILife for Linux
A San Francisco startup is creating a suite for Linux that is likened to the "iLife for Linux".
It's a cool link, but it gets reposted a lot, last one being 5 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496377

That link is a PDF/scribd version. I find it easier to read than a webpage.
> How can multiple insert statements be considered duplication if they are inserting different things to different tables?

Because they're all the same pattern of code. Whenever you see common patterns, you're missing an abstraction that can greatly simplify things.

Why would I write 100 different insert functions when I can write one that generates itself dynamically using reflection over whatever object it is given? You only need one insert statement, it just needs to be smarter rather than static hand written code.

You need only tag your objects with a little bit of metadata using attributes to give a generic insert/update/select/delete everything it needs to dynamically generate parameterized statements on the fly for every table in the db that you use. Put simply, the only thing I need to do to use a User table in an app is write something like the the following...

class User : ActiveRecord<User> {
[PersistentString(MaxLength=50, Required=true)]
public string UserName;

[PersistentString(MaxLength=50, Required=true)]
public string Password;

[PersistentString(MaxLength=5000)]
public string About;

public User(){}
}

And I'm done, I can now Find, FindAll, Save, Delete, Count, Sum, Min, Max, Avg, Count, Exists, Not Exists, etc... on those records without writing a line of SQL. All of these methods are inherited from the superclass and work on the table User. The same thing applies to view and stored procedures.
s/ballon/balloon/
Let me get this straight - people are being asked to donate to the rebuilding of a commercial franchise that was fully insured?

And rebuilding Mel's diner is the only fundable project on this Groupvestor website, which is pretty much a straight clone of Kickstarter?

Astroturf alert.
I hate C++ as much as the next guy but the idea that the people behind essentially all the performance-critical desktop apps on the planet are just too dumb to move on is quite strange.

Again, I've seen first hand a big, native UI project crash and burn on Obj-C dispatch overhead that is now trucking happily along in C++. Have you?
SRAM uses 6x times more transistors to store the same amount of information, so do your math for a hypothetical "512MB laptop". On the other hand maybe they do exist, did you look?
Migraine Statistics &ndash; people suffer from migraine
Yeah, but every time the discussion is different though. To me, most of HN value is in comments.
Intuitive? I have no idea what's going on! Why are those two elements being compared? Why was an element tossed to the end (or beginning) of the list, and then it bounces right back to where it came from? This doesn't at all give me a sense of big-O time, or if the sort is stable, or what its characteristics are for best and worst cases.

Pretty patterns do indeed emerge from these visualizations, and it's definitely a nice piece of work from the author/artist. But let's not pretend it's a useful algorithm teaching tool.
Homeless broke people say FU all the time. FU money means never having to work another day for the rest of your life. $20k might mean that in a few places in the world, but some happy-go-lucky personality who doesn't know where their next buck is coming from doesn't count.
I will go out on a limb here and say you live in Berkeley. The description should read "Recommended for foodie hackers who don't mind hippies and homeless."
You realize you're responding to a solo founder of a standalone startup that sells bingo card creation software, right? I have mad respect for Patrick (he's sitting right next to me at the moment), but if you were under the impression that being a Bingo Card Mogul meant Cristal and Rolex watches, uh, no.

How much more credible a testimonial can you get than "I built my business in 5 hours a week, I sell bingo cards to school teachers, and I easily expect to recoup the investment I'm making in KISSmetrics"?

For what it's worth: I sell enterprise software at a price point several orders of magnitude higher than Patrick's, at a company with more employees than most established YC companies, and KISSmetrics isn't worth it for me right now, because I'm simply not prepared to feed it the data it needs or to make the decisions it's expecting me to make.

I don't take it personally that KISSmetrics is pricing me away from paying for it. In fact, I appreciate it; it's preventing me from wasting time.
750words.com + GTD = Focus
http://nostarch.com/about_ebooks.htm
If the Canucks are smart, that "how can I kill my baby?" search term is a honey pot.
They're available in iOS4 natively, or can be used with earlier OSs with this project: http://code.google.com/p/plblocks/
It's probably wise to think about it while you still have some perspective.

Imagine the let-down of working your ass off and getting the big payday only to screw it all up because you were psychologically unprepared.
SRAM vs. DRAM
This is extremely anecdotal... but in my experience, it's all the stuff that actually works. And until Google releases a definitive guide to how their search algorithm works, I think anecdote is all we have to go by.
What kind of schleps have you bought yourself out of? If you prefer a less personal question, what kind of schleps could one buy oneself out of?
Things to Avoid while Utilizing SEO Services
Among various techniques used in this wonderful service is the one that should be used carefully. It is known as the off page optimization. It allows the experts to make use back links, referrals and keyword rich content to increase the footprint of a webpage. Overdoing it may also result in the decreased ratings of a webpage.
The rankings of a webpage affect the internet traffic it attracts. This can have a great impact on the online business of the company.
Starlet catapults law professor to fame via Twitter
If you mean the EV1, it worked out to somewhere between $80K-100K per vehicle due to the small number of vehicles produced. Keep in mind that there was no way to buy an EV1 (it was lease-only) and that only 1117 of them were ever produced despite a never-empty waiting list. Seems GM never found a battery pack that priced in at anywhere near the same level as a stamped gas tank, so the margins were lower than they had hoped for...
Startups are easy
A citation would require a source with knowledge of Google's algorithm. Some of the best research that I've found on SEO is SEOmozs Search Engine Ranking Factors: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

It's based on a survey of SEO professionals/experts, which leaves a bit to be desired, but I still think the conclusions are on point.
Ok, I'm totally a noob with Clojure, but I thought all I had to do was java -jar ~/clojure.jar and I got a REPL. Did something change recently? This seems like an awful lot more work than it should be.
I have never seen an ObjC program crash and burn under the weight of ObjC. I have seen two major C++ projects get rewritten, once to straight C and once to new flavor-of-the-month C++ (from ACE-style objecty GoF-y C++ to Alexandrescu-y template-y C++).

You talk like adoption of C++ is a testimonial to C++'s power. The fact is, the market picked C++. Your realistic choices for bare metal app dev are straight C, which you can use anywhere, or C++, which you can use anywhere. If you want native objects, you're going to use C++.

There are two places where ObjC is even an option:

* On Apple stacks.

* In SaaS/ASP/service backend code.

In both of those places, ObjC is better than C++. If you care about portability, write in C or JVM+C.
Using the expiration date to determine domain legitimacy is in one of Google's patents: http://www.searchengineguide.com/bill-hartzer/does-the-lengt...

I've updated the post with a link to that article. Thanks for the inquiry.
I would think there is so much money in "nailing the SEO problem" that there are probably folks out there whose full time job is to simply try things out and figure out what works experimentally.
I knew that HN would have an awesome list of resources on this topic, thanks for the info guys!
Google is a registrar and they look for patterns in how domains are registered. We know in their efforts to "fight" spam they certainly have some measurement in place that looks at domains that are registered for 1 year versus domains that are registered for more than 1 year.
But I would imagine a lot of those market makers are betting their own money. This is a fund i.e. they're betting other people's money. I won't be investing!
Yeah, but the removal policies are regarding the suggest functionality, not the actual search engine, so I don't think this can be considered censorship to any extent.

Like even if a lot of people were searching it, you might not want to be inadvertently suggesting morally questionable queries to people who don't want to see them.

As such, it seems like they err on the side of caution with it. Like there are no suggestions for the word "fuck" despite the fact that it is a wildly popular query.

Their algorithm probably just ends up tagging "is my son gay" as a query that people can enter on their own if they want to search it.
At the hardware level, it already is. And it seems in the Mobile Space, we are seeing that on the software side.
Recursive Make Considered Harmful (1997)
It just occurred to me that "Explicit is better than implicit" has become a part of my deeply-ingrained ethos. It even affects how I communicate with people, not just the Python interpreter. I wonder if that's awesome, or if I should really take a Python break...
Search Engine Ranking Factors
I can't help but suspect that part of reddit's revenue problem just comes from how they display adds on the site. Instead of lots of relevant text adds, there's only one or two big graphic adds somewhere in the right column of the page.

I wonder if their revenue would change any if they arranged their pages to work more like Google search and email, with a string of text ads down the right side.
I looked briefly and didn't find anything humorous, but I'm glad it exists.
Getting Started with vi
Umm... it's a support board for people who have bought a product, not a soapbox to whine on. It's one thing to have negative threads about how their product they bought doesn't work, it's another when people who haven't bought one complain. (And/or a continuation of the same subject that needs to be merged into the parent thread.)

EDIT: I should edit quickly to say that what I mean is that support boards specifically for support are for one purpose: support. Complaints need to go in the complaint box or the FCC or something.
Behold the awesome power of our brand
Doh... missed the conversation. I am one of the lead developers for the open source ClearOS server/gateway. The software is targeted at small and distributed organizations and you can find the gory details @ http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html

We have always talked about adding a new edition for the home market. In fact, it is on the project roadmap for next year. It will be a labor of love of course since it would be difficult to build a business around an open source home server. As already mentioned in this thread, all the pieces already exist -- it's just a matter of putting them together into a coherent package. The "storage device of his dreams" is running in my house.

- file server w/ RAID
- media center with PVR
- backup to the cloud (documents, music and photos -- videos are too large for my crappy DSL line)
- remote access via iPhone or web

Unfortunately, geek credentials are required to get it working and keeping it running. It saved the day when I had to start recording the World Cup overtime on Sunday. Fired up the iPhone on the road and added the new recording -- screenshot @ http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png
Zendesk Allows Users To Turn Tweets Into Help Desk Tickets
It seems sad to own a second home and not share it with your friends. The thing that makes me the happiest is hanging with my oldest and dearest friends. That often happens at one of our parents second homes (I don't have one), so maybe that really changes things.
Hey, it's Willy! Thanks for that link, I put it at the bottom of the post. Very interesting!
What makes a programmer "senior"?
You are absolutely right.

What confused me was this paragraph from the Google Suggest page:

"
Google Suggest returns search queries based on other users' search activities. These searches are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. All of the queries shown in Suggest have been typed previously by other Google users.
"

I put a correction on the page, please let me know if you wouldn't want your name to appear there.

However, I disagree that nothing can be learned from the data, because all these are real queries that have been issued multiple times. At the same time, I admit that the ordering is totally different from what I understood it to be.

It seems that when you use Google Suggest, the 10 suggestions are ordered differently than this number (the # of results) would indicate, perhaps that is the true popularity of a query, however, those partial orderings are insufficient to reconstruct the full ranked list of all queries.

Thanks again for pointing out the (major) error in the article.
For some reason Apple spawns such hatred within the industry that fans of other products will actively create accounts and start trolling on their message boards. I don't go trolling on Blackberry forums about how their devices require reboots regularly, or Android forums about the Evo4G battery life issues, so why do people that don't even own a product feel it is necessary to do so?
I think this issue signals a problem with the UI in Chrome or Firefox, or any browser that creates this kind of popup. The problem is that, by placing the popup above the webpage contents, the webpage creators can mimic that native UI and create the same effect with the page contents themselves, and you don't know if the popup was created by the browser itself or if it's part of the webpage.

I think the problem could be solved by modifying the UI in the browser in such a way that you don't allow the webpage to create a similar popup because there would be a visual barrier that clearly indicates when the popup is part of the browser itself and when it's not.
Charity store uses RFID tags to give items a back-story
You can see why this would work by imagining that you are a Google search engineer that's trying to lower the rank of spammy sites so that quality-ranked content appears higher.

* Spammers tend to have tons of crap sites, so they have less money to spend on registering all of their URLs for a long time.

* "Good site owners" tend to have few high quality sites, so they can afford to spend more on registering their domains for longer.

Thus, you would probably want to use the time-until-URL-expiration as a "ranking factor" while sorting results on search pages.