skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you're on to something here, there are many articles on the homepage that score considerably lower than yours both just the points on the article and taking in to account the comments. For instance there is #29, the crocodoc link, 37 points in 7 hours with 5 comments (yours has 8 comments). The 'ask' page is messed up too, it contains a duplicate (#27 and #28 are both 'what were your naivetés in your twenties).
Oh, that's cool - I didn't know you could use matches from a location in an alias. Is that a new feature in nginx?
Sounds like you take pride in doing a great job. But unfortunately PHBs are too caught up in watching the P&L to even understand the value of you efforts. I did my share of clean-up jobs, but eventually no money would compensate for the pain endured.
GCons: Free All-Purpose Icons for Designers and Developers
In your case I would try and participate in a lot of online communities, then have a link to your twitter and blog for all posts. Make sure you provide quality content for your blog and twitter.Some times when you make a good comment on a post people will check you out if you have a link for them to follow.

That should help out a bit.
While I am keenly aware that the GPL only covers code, some major contributors to the Mercurial team have indicated that they do not believe it would be possible to make a compatible implementation without consulting Mercurial's source code. Whether you agree or not is immaterial at that point; why bother doing so when it will at best alienate the community, and at worst end in a messy lawsuit?
You guys could probably add some export functionality. It feels like a bit of a data sink at the moment.
The article is mistaken in interpreting the warranty as a sign of GM's confidence in their product. GM is offering the warranty because no one will buy the car otherwise, and they really have little to lose if the battery turns out to be a turd. They'll either get another government bailout or declare bankruptcy, which is just what would have happened anyways. Consumers know this, which is why other car companies won't necessarily feel compelled to match the warranty.
Luckily (California at least) law states that there have to be posted signs within 300 yards of a traffic camera :D
Chris Pearson's defense is thin at best: Switching to GPL wouldn't affect my business at all! It just rubs me the wrong way!

Additionally, he comes across as a real jerk.

EDIT: After listening to the whole thing I am appalled by Chris Pearson's lack of understanding about licensing and his offensive attitude.

Matt Mullenweg deserves an award for being so gracious and patient.
Why not just be more direct and say why your product is better than the competition providing scientific studies as evidence?

Why advertise in this way instead?
It reminds me of "Ask a Ninja". It was, in fact, funny for a few videos. Then they got sponsors and showed ads and generally jumped the comedic shark in short order.
Trying my best not to sound rude, but Chris Pearson sounds extremely obnoxious. His analogies are all over the place and very defensive; most likely because he realizes that he is on the wrong end of the debate.

The license explicitly says it has to be GPL. End of discussion. He is making up his own rules!
As odd as it sounds, I actually enjoy being able to and sometimes having to dip into other people's code. For a bunch of jars that I had to use in Java (or C++ or VB even), there would be some feature missing and I was plum out of luck and had to write something completely around what they were doing to make special cases.

Now, with Ruby(and Rails), 99% of the time, I just grab the latest off Github and roll with it. I need to get better at forking in my changes so that others can share, but that is a self esteem problem of a different kind. Some of the time, I have seen solutions that I would never have though of implemented more gracefully than the brute steel glove I was going for.

As for sachin, to me it looks like now that he has hit success, he is no longer hungry, and just biting the hand that feeds him out of aimlessness... or would this be excentricism? Looks like he updated to say how Rails allowed him to deploy as fast as they did. But still, the post sounds a lot like a duke crossing a river by running atop the heads of his subjects and then complaining when his coat tail and shoes got wet when he gets to the other side.
I'm trying to see the practical reasons of why NOT to use the GPL in this specific case. If people are going to steal thesis they will steal it. GPL doesn't change that. Here's what I want yo know: how many people has chris asked to stop illegally distributing thesis? This is interesting to me as I'm releasing something very cool re: wordpress themes next week.
It looks like there's a "Library", "Compiler", and "Templates". The Library looks like a Javascript library, the Compiler looks like a Javascript optimizer, and the Templates look like the GWT-ish thing that builds HTML from Java (or Javascript?).

source: http://code.google.com/closure/
We'll see how many gamers actually jump through the hoops and confusion that is openid. It's one thing to get programmers or IT to use it and adopt it. It's a whole different story to get an average gamer to use it. These are the same distrustful stubborn people who have been getting hacked for decades by giving up too much personal information. In addition many gamers don't want their game identity anywhere near their real identity. This is compounded by those same gamers being the most active participants and most ardent in their attempt to separate game and real identities.

Now - even though technically they should prefer openid over normal login - that doesn't mean they'll roll with it. There is a lot more involved in making a decision when it breaks convention like their login.

Clearly I prefer the direction that HN and most other startups are going - away from openid. I don't like or agree with limiting users to openid for years old 'industry politicking' reasons. But in the end I use the content and don't give back, so the loss is on the community and site not me. On most stackexchange sites that don't have critical mass, simple decisions like this can still cause a huge problem.

EDIT: Grammar Syntax ...
Comparing the officially supported iOS SDK to 3rd party open source libraries is more than a bit disingenuous.

I wonder what 3rd party libraries they are using for the iPhone. We've had the same experience he had with ruby libraries with 3rd party iPhone libraries.
Funny how about 1 out of 10 posts is about dwarf fortress.
Denial and hesitation seems to be Apple's modus operandi (they aren't the only ones).

As a software developer the bit about their algorithm for determining signal strength is absolutely ridiculous. IMO they probably released an update that actually faked your signal strength in order to cover up the crap antenna. That sounds more reasonable to me.

Remember back when Snow Leopard was deleting user data if you used the guest account? Refresher here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10373064-260.html.

Does anyone remember how long it took apple to solve that problem? It was despicable and completely disrespectful.

IF Microsoft had the same issue with Windows they would have patched it overnight; not waiting to fix things with the same time table that BP uses to stop an oil leak.

I'm a linux user (#!) and I also own a mac. I use windows professionally for my job. Things do not "just work" on a mac. If you think so then IMHO you're not using much of your OS.

In the end I would choose Linux, Windows , then OSX. I used to claim that Apple's hardware was superior, but never again.
iPad As The Ultimate Navigation Tool
No comments, hate mail, questions? :)
My experience has shown if I want something in Java, I can usually find it from a source I think is reputable for stability and serving large numbers of customers: Apache, Codehaus, JBoss etc.

If I want something in Ruby, I throw my chips in with some guy on GitHub (who was nice enough to pack it as a gem), usually choose based on whether it was good enough to at least come with half-decent documentation.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that JS or non-Apple Obj-C libraries are all that much better than the Rails community effort though.
You said one of the ways you initially got users is by going to 3-4 house parties a night for a few months. How did you find out about all those house parties and what did you do when you got there?
If a description and links explaining something eg. a new network monitoring tool [1] don't constitute content, then by that measure sites like Delicious and Wikipedia are also content-free. :)

[1] http://monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/
Brilliantly evil.
At least one truth comes out of this article, big questions lure big egos.
Exactly what I was thinking. He also mentioned that the code base "is littered with monkey patches". I suppose the author does not realize that monkey patches can be very costly for maintenance. Just because you can monkey patch something doesn't necessarily mean you should.
The thing I love most about Java versus working in Ruby / JS / anything else, is the IDE (read: eclipse). Right now we are building an app in SproutCore and I find my life spent mostly in TextMate, which is quite nice and their JSLint integration makes me very very very happy (hunting down missing commas is much easier this way).

IMHO there is nothing like the refactoring tools in eclipse, and the code completion. Say what you want about the verbosity of Java, man is it nice cranking out 200 lines of code in 2 minutes with eclipse.

And extract method / variable are just fantastic.

.joe
You said you partnered with people with email lists and offered them a booth at your event for them sending mail to their list. Do you think this method could be a general way for other startups to get traction?
Ruby platform developers are much more likely to trade stability (edit: that's API stability) for API quality than the platform devs in other communities.

If you're an active refactorer, that's a good thing. It means those crufty APIs that you had to hack around, they get better, and you can clean up your code.

But if you're a "write it and forget about it" kind of person, that's going to sound like extra work to you.
Child porn scene correlated with Google maps to caught pedophile
1. Do cool things.

2. Tell people about them.

There's a pretty big industry surrounding how to promote yourself effectively, but ultimately, most of those things are secondary concerns. You shouldn't ignore marketing advice - there's often useful insights on what appears impressive to other people - but you'll always get more bang for the buck by actually doing things that are impressive to people rather than trying to make what you're doing appear impressive to others. Actions speak louder than words.
What, you actually think I would illuminate you all with my brilliance for nothing in return?
"However, law enforcers homeland kangaroo decided to find out where strawberries lover took the forbidden video."
The site is served by Apache.
Excellent point. Nothing is more frustrating than forum posts that are clearly trolling for dev responses or to make statements they hope devs will see.

Ironically most of these questions should be directed at producers and designers not developers. Yet the catch-all name sticks.
What did Steve Jobs know, and when did he know it?
Wow. This is unprecedented. What are they going to do? 60 day return period with no restocking fee? Free bumpers for everyone?
Having used Eclipse for 6 weeks now I still despise it. Give me Visual Studio any day.
This is what Joel Spolsky was worried about a while back. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/does-slow-growth-equal-...
Flavors of Product Management, Tasting 4Food & More Hotness in August
Orkut used to be big in India, too, but Facebook killed them there: http://www.google.com/trends?q=orkut,+facebook&geo=ind&#...

I've heard from a number of people the same thing is happening in Brazil. Here's one report citing 800% growth in Brazil: http://www.breakingnewsonline.net/technology/2836-facebook-v...
3 Rules to Actionable Metrics
Since you are comfortable interacting with a small batch of people, attending barcamps/unconferences is a good way to network and promote yourself. If you live in an area with a startup scene there are probably multiple such events a week.
Whats even better, though, is not needing 200 lines of code in the first place. The thing I hate about java, is that you're required to use an IDE, or you'll never get anywhere. In Ruby, you just metaprogram in 10 lines what takes 200 in java. Its `attr_accessor :foo, :bar, :baz` in ruby, vs 8 loc for each in Java. Want to change the name? Go change the one word in ruby. No need for an IDE with refactoring support.
First thing I do is get rid of all the bling on xp or 7, make it look like 2000. 7 almost becomes useable with this, although it still annoyes the hell out of me. When everything works, it is just fine, but when you need to go to the control panel, or do anything out of the normal, you find Microsoft has moves everything around just for the hell of it.
Love to see "I'm feeling Lucky" on that site.
Are any of us really super concerned about our karma rating? Don't get me wrong, it is a great little perk; however, I doubt the community at large is biting their nails in concern over their rating. Although, I did learn in this thread that there is a threshold where you can start down voting items depending on karma? Completely unaware of this.
The best analogy in this somewhat lengthy yet useful read (I've found) is that caffeine is like a wood stuck under the brake not a brick on the gas.
Change the subject by revealing some minor new thing the Apple and tech blogs can spew out piles of articles and summaries about.
On a related note I've read Erickson. The text of Ross Jeffries's books is FULL of what he claims is Ericksonian Hypnosis. They are REALLY long and really weird sounding -- I can't imagine anyone falling for that kind of thing.
Cold Calling Techniques
If deodorant were a new product that solved a new problem, the informational approach would be appropriate. But since deodorant is a commodity and they all pretty much work, this kind of marketing isn't effective anymore, so the brand-building marketing begins.
Because most people don't care about scientific studies, and your competitor can also "fund" and "report" on a scientific study that favors his product.
This post is a bit confusing. At first glance his post appears to be directed at the Rails framework itself. Reading further, he seems to be referring to the overall ecosystem rather than Rails itself.

That seems about right to me. The trunk and the major branches of the tree are generally solid. Minor branches and the leaves of the tree, not so much. I think the pace of the community creates a lot of leaves and minor branches. Anything really important will mature into a major branch and become solid.
...or drink their milkshake.
With Django, I've learned to avoid anything that tries to do too much. Small apps or collections of code that aim to solve very specific problems seem to work with the least hassle. With a carefully defined and limited scope, these apps have a much easier time integrating into existing projects. You want something that handles OAuth. You want something that handles Facebook Connect. You do not want something that handles "integration with social networks" or anything so grandiose.
You have to talk to people to find out what they are like.
Filter by unanswered threads.
I do, and it's already used all the time (e.g. DailyCandy charges thousands of dollars for a Dedicated Email for a given city's email list).
What we did was sort of roll our own campaign, trading the positive association with our unique event as well as a booth, signage etc. there for cash-free marketing for us.
Switch to IntelliJ:

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/index.html

I even prefer Netbeans to Eclipse.

http://netbeans.org

There are 3 fully featured Java IDE's. You have only tried one of them.
The Decorative Art Called Dissertation Template
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Sure. There are quite a few. Here is a non-comprehensive list:

http://www.bnrobotics.com/
http://www.resquared.com/
http://www.aethon.com/
http://www.redzone.com/
http://www.seegrid.com/
http://www.bostondynamics.com/
http://www.irobot.com/
http://www.cyphyworks.com/ <-- started by some of the original iRobot folks
http://www.mobilerobots.com/
http://www.willowgarage.com/
http://www.evolution.com/
http://www.sensiblemachines.com/
http://astrobotictechnology.com/
... etc ...

NOTE: Some of the companies are further along than others but all of them (to the best of my knowledge) started as startups and/or university spin-outs (which is a subset of startups). You can normally find startup robotics companies near/around the schools with the best robotics programs (i.e. CMU, UPenn, Stanford, MIT, etc.)
I don't think it is specific to Rails! I find myself thinking the same with Django and lately, with Node.js... I'm talking mostly about the abundance of 3rd party librairies, and not really knowing which one to pick, which ones are still maintained etc...
My guess is they're going to announce they started putting a coating on new phones to fix the issue, and will offer free exchanges or cases to existing iPhone 4 customers.

*Either that, or Jobs is going to come out on stage and give a demonstration of how to hold the phone the right way.
I recommend using 1.2 head. Even if you are learning clojure I'd recommend 1.2 head. With clojure, unlike most other languages, using head is relatively easy, it's stable and faster and it has more features. Pretty much a win from most perspectives.

As soon as put a minimum amount of effort into researching or learning clojure you'll likely switch anyways. I think I switch after about five hours.
Wazzzzzzzzzzzzzup?
I completely disagree with this article. Rails and ruby have a great amount of emphasis on TDD and BDD. I would be surprised if there is another open source community that is as focused on writing tests as the ruby community. The fact that their code base is "littered with monkey patches" might have something to do with the maintenance problems they are facing.

I also don't see how this problem is specific to rails. Any project where you choose a ton of 3rd party libraries can be riddled with complexity and upgrade costs.

How this article makes it clear that objective-c, java, or ... is more maintainable or easier to work with, is beyond me.

I might be making a bit of a stretch here, but it sounds like Posterous might be complex software. Maybe the iPhone project he was working on did not have as much business logic and 3rd party libraries involved.
They'll announce the iGlove, which will fix your faulty left hand.
Really? The cost comparison of switching to a mac or linux system vs. windows 7, infrastructure and tech support-wise, must be minimal for a large company. Or am I missing something?

I think it has more to do with the fact that people are going to want to keep XP for a long time, because it works for most business use (spreadsheets, word docs, and the internet).
From my understanding, only the code that interacts with the Wordpress method calls would be subject to GPL. You can abstract out the code that is not dependent upon Wordpress and avoid GPL overall.

An example of this is using RESTful APIs in a cloud environment, where your logic runs on an entirely different server.

Another example is to imagine a plugin that integrates Microsoft Outlook with Wordpress. Would Outlook then be subject to GPL? No. But, the code that sits between Wordpress and Outlook probably would be.
My wild guess: $50 gift certificate until the manufactured units have a mitigating change. At that point, a limited period of swap-ups if requested.
There's definitely a tendency among library/framework writers (not just Django) to include the kitchen sink. Ultimately it becomes problematic for the end-user and maintainer because more time is spent trying to understand everything that is going on (and often times removing unwanted functionality).

It's really hard to find functionality in the "hammer,screwdriver" size - more often than not I get a whole tool set with all sorts of things I'll never need, and end up having to devote more time figuring out how it all "hangs together" with the rest of the system.

It becomes a matter of whether you end up piecing your system together block by block or chiseling away to your end product.
The only way I see this as a Rails problem is that Rails makes it easy to get saddled with lots of external dependencies. Otherwise, it's a problem with how external dependencies are managed.

If it's not the number and quality of dependencies then it's the wrong type. I usually stay away from gems that provide syntactic sugar or provide an alternative to ruby / rails defaults. If I'm using 5% of some library, I'd rather write it myself and only address the 5% that I need. If it's not maintained, I stay away. Etc.

A little discipline on what gems get included would go a long way to solving the perceived problems. Gems are generally designed to solve a much more generic version of the problem you're trying to solve and maybe not even the exact same problem, if you're messing with the innards too much, that gem is probably not a good enough fit.

Less is always better when it comes to dependencies.
We use this one in our CMS:
http://code.google.com/p/jwysiwyg/

It does the job and Ive found it easy to hack/patch when needed.
Finding out about them was mostly my cofounder Rebecca, who's a social maven in her own right. But, once you attend a few you start to find out and get invited to a lot more, so it's not hard to sustain.

What we did when we got there was definitely something we tweaked and thought about. Obviously we mostly wanted to be very friendly and just let people know about us if they cared, no pushy sales pitches at all.

We
- made cards
- had a very 'normal' conversation with people, but asked what they do
- that typically resulted in them asking us back, which was a natural segue into mentioning Going (HeyLetsGo at the time). Since we already were at a social event, and HLG was about finding more cool things to do, it was usually relevant to them.
- we would them offer them an invite as we were in private beta at the time, often asking them to send us feedback
- and we'd hand them a card with an invite code (we later made cards for some Ambassadors)

Not only did this help our early growth, we also found a lot of advocates, people who wanted to pitch in, and smart people with good feedback.
I honestly thought I was the only thinking this!
I was one of the guys that wrote it - it's not BS - its just a random starting point. Most people play with the bars to try a few different scenarios.
Sure, I own few open source projects github.com/niravthaker

I also contribute to Eclipse and other related projects but that seems too time consuming.