skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You are a great contributor, speaking out for so many.
Stick around much longer, you will find yourself stepping up towards your goals.
Much hard work and and faith in yourself are two very important things you need.
Good luck!
I came in here to mention this, but it is invite-only to keep the quality high, so it might not work for the OP.

It's great for inspiration though.
Mary J Foley (Microsoft blogger) buys an iPad
If you are talking to recruiters you are doing it wrong 90% of the time.
I looked at that. I quickly realised that they would hate me. A developer asking for design feedback.
Google has made this a lab option in gmail called 'gmail preview' if shows a quick snapshot of your email while loading ... pretty cool
You can't, all you can do is be open and humble when you're wrong. When you say something that turns out to be incorrect, don't get defensive or extremely, apologetic - a simple "Oh, really. Interesting" will suffice and move on. It can be difficult if the other person is extremely insecure and is trying to shove it in your face that you were wrong, but so long as you yourself are secure then you will be ok with being wrong. The smartest people I know are also the most humble because they are open to new ideas and willing to be wrong.
Hogs a lot of brain resources. It's syntax is complex, and ...(snip)...forces me to spend more resources on dealing with language than with dealing with the problem.

I love lispers. I always learn something from their writings, and generally admire their prose. There seems to be some correlation between deftness of expression in fingernail-clipping languages and deftness of expression in English.

I don't quote the above part as an example of that, but rather because I find the contrast to be damned funny. Somewhere in the deep, misty recesses of history there was a divinely-inspired Ryu for some natural language that was an ascestor to English, and that Ryu said that sentences were simple - subject, verb, and an optional direct object: "Thag hunt beast", or "Narg die".

Yet those who want an obscenely simple syntactic kernel to build everything on seem to be adroit with compound-complex sentences, replete with gerunds, prepositional and participle phrases, appositives, interjections, and modifiers galore.

Just once I'd like to see a critique of a syntactically complex functional language like haskell that's written entirely in caveman. It would sound more honest.
you are a fucking idiot and don't understand basic logic. eat a bag of dicks.
I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time.

I'm not so sure this is true. It's true of me; it may be true of you; it's probably true of most HN readers. However, non-geeks who know me well enough to observe this of me think it's weird, which leads to me to think it's not true of people in general.
I think it is a risk factor. I was almost not hired at a startup specifically because the owner was worried about the level of risk I was taking with wife/kids/house etc. That's a good boss to have, one looking out for me. Things turned out fine.

Personally, it does alter the level of risk I'm willing to take. Pre kids, I'd be willing to risk a lot more. Having kids makes me value my time which does force me to be focused. I'm willing to work long hours, but I split the time up. I work until 4-5 and spend time with the family. If there is work to be done, I'm back on after the kids are in bed. This could present a problem at some startups.
OT: I have a cousin who owns/runs an IT Business in Clontarf, Dublin! (Although I see that according to Hackernewsers you're actually based in China).
The Web2.0 style looks more like a frontpage scheme. It's not even a good attempt to look web2.0-y. Most of the stylesheets are just poor executions of various styles that are even still in use in many places...

I don't know if this was supposed to be a sarcastic or academic look at web design but I think it falls short on both accounts.
What? You're phrasing something that you don't actually know as a fact that you know? That's called lying. You recognize it by learning to not lie and deceive people as a child.

Not sure what else to tell you. If you're passing off knowledge you pulled out your ass and are getting called on it, maybe you shouldn't do that. If it's speculation or if you're trying to be helpful but don't know for sure, then phrase it that way. Or if you can't take the criticism just keep your nose out of it.

I don't understand where the disconnect is to be honest.
YHBT YHL HAND
Everyone has some failing, no matter how high they rise.

The nice thing about being humble enough to admit it is that you can seek out people who are strong where you're weak and ask for help and advice in that area.
In my experience, using rsync to do just a raw copy is not faster than the ssh+tar approach. rsync wants to poke around and optimize, and that's incredibly awesome, except when there is absolutely no chance of optimizing at all, in which case it's just dead weight. I don't know of anything that can beat ssh+tar (possibly with the encryption tuned cheaper, as mentioned above); it especially blows raw scp out of the water for lots of small files.
Librato’s Silverline Server Utilization Maximizer Service Launched
Clicking the DataPortability site the first time gave me some malicious ad that took over the whole window trying to get me to install some sort of Windows virus protection (even though I'm on Linux). The second time gets me to the site... Oddly enough the site doesn't seem to have any adverts on it (now that it's loaded)...
Facebook has become the third largest nation
I'm reminded of someone (maybe John Taylor Gatto) who wrote about the education he got as a boy from long hours spent at a pond.

If you discover what you were referring to, please post. I am curious to read about that. I did a bit of searching and as far as I can find, Gatto discussed ponds and education in relation to Thoreau's Walden Pond experience.
I absolutely agree. I work primarily on an local network at my work, so I don't often think about it.
Not my experience.

I was looking for a job out of my country and through a recruiter I was able to move and get a job with double the salary I had in my hometown.

Three months has passed and due to a stupid policy I don't like I'm switching job again. A second recruiter found me a better position in another company, with a higher salary (which is already quite high).
Is violating TOS unethical? immoral? considered lying to something you agreed to?
You would think a site called "Nature" would provide a less human-centric point of view:
"The elimination of Anopheles would be very significant for mankind."

"A stronger argument for keeping mosquitoes might be found if they provide 'ecosystem services' — the benefits that humans derive from nature."

Just because we (might) have the means to eradicate them doesn't necessarily mean we should.

Though the article ends with a quote about how the niche could be filled by something better or worse, most of the article claims that the other organisms that would fill the niche would make things better. There is a pretty big possibility that things could become a lot worse (say, instead of spreading malaria, the replacements spread ebola).
Assuming they could stomach doing it, how much money cold a technical person with good interviewing skills make as a head hunter? Perhaps after a year when they had time to build up a rep as being a good filter?
I really with I knew.

Even here in Seattle, surrounded by the likes of Amazon (probably the most technologically backward sweatshop in Washington), Google (who knows, the guy that did my phone interview was a dolt), Microsoft (probably the most technologically advanced shop in Washington), and even Adobe (now run by clueless marketers) and Disney (which is turning into an amazon clone), it's tough to find worthwhile work.

So far the only decent job I've had in a decade is with a small company developing software for libraries.

I think that to have a good job you either need to be very lucky or create it yourself. This job is paying the bills while I do just that.
Quantifying Usability
It is fortunate that Apple still has a small enough market share that they aren't being attacked as vigorously as Windows is. For now I still feel like my Mac is safer from viruses than the average Windows machine, but that security is definitely shaky if Apple gets a larger market share and starts attracting real attention from viruses and hackers.
Generics requiring type casts and a common base class is Java type-erasure braindeadness.

CLR (.NET) generics compile separate code for each value type parameter, so you can have eg. vectors of structs, with the same performance as in C++. (for reference types, it uses the same code with an additional hidden "generic context" parameter, but that's an implementation detail).
CLR has pass-by-value too, and although older versions of the MS.NET JIT did not inline such functions, the current version should have performance similar to C++.

Unfortunately, few programmers know how to get the maximum performance out of the CLR.

About not being to able to reassign references in C++ - the main reason is probably because that would require a separate operator, since assigning to a reference calls operator= on the class.

C++ has subtle interactions in many areas of the language, especially operator overloading, allowing you to override even assignment. If C++ can not do something apparently simple, there is probably a good reason for that, only obvious to those who know the spec inside out.
Thats a nice idea, pretty complex. I wonder if the complexity of the game chosen would scare away people though. I'm not sure I would even know where to start to build an AI for that. I typically would want to tinker at first (get a unit moving around) and go from there. Small progress and victories keep people interested. And like others have mentioned, the challenge will be finding a way to let advanced AIs play with basic AIs.
> I save my downvotes for comments that lower the quality of discourse.

Interesting strategy. I usually reserve mine for people who use ruby.
don't make the mistake of conflating status with success. remember that status is zero-sum (other programmers succeeding is you failing) while the economy is positive sum (humans create wealth). There's room for all of us to win.
Sorry about that! I develop on a Mac, and in Chrome and FF 3.6 on Mac the text-shadow seems to help readability, but I just took a closer look on Windows and can totally see how it is a distraction. I removed the text-shadow from the paragraphs and have updated the site. Hope that makes it easier to read!
And, to cover CS in particular, expect to see a ton of innovation in the area of data storage. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in the relational db, non-relational db, and file system fields.
People will embrace any speck of evidence in order to validate their economic theories.

Cuba grew faster than the US in 2008. Should the US have embraced a centralized economy then?
I'd say a smoother transition would make for a better time.
Want to Know How VCs Calculate Valuation Differently from Founders?
People in Florida seem to stay fairly happy, never actually reaching the red at any point during the day. Perhaps it is because there are more retired individuals, and less people in the workforce? It would be interesting to have more data about the cause of the moods, or how the mood analysis is done, what keywords were used, etc.
Not at all @wrs. I develop on a Mac, and in Chrome and FF 3.6 on Mac the text-shadow seems to help readability, but I just took a closer look on Windows and I can totally see how it is a distraction. (The font rendering and thus text-shadow rendering is quite different) I removed the text-shadow from the paragraphs and have updated the site.
Are all of your gaming activities under the Maltese license?

Sorry if this is too business and non-HN oriented. I will remove this question, if requested.
I'd love to see a larger scale version of something like Defcon (http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/).

Closer to realtime too (rather than a huge multiple) - which would make close to 24x7 interaction necessary, requiring automation, teamwork, mobile device interfaces....

Damn - yet another project to think about :-)

Edit: I've just noticed that they are trying to encourage the development of nuclear war fighting bots within Defcon.
Sure, I think this exactly describes our current situation. Ironically, that "more wealth" is very disproportionately distributed between the owner of the automation mechanism and the workers that have been automated away. Similarly the notion of "more free time" is equally disproportionate.
One better go get another job, one can sit back and enjoy life.

Only if you care about relative wealth. Do you really care if somebody got awarded a billion bucks while you get awarded a 100,000 dollars equivalent in lifestyle quality increase?

It is a misconception to think that you can just sit back and enjoy life. There is competition from other businessmen after all. They will automates, and continue to drive down cost. One of the reason why some people can do these kinds of thing you talked about is because inefficient markets exists and people are too lazy to challenge the guy. That's not always a problem if it is not too hard for an entrepreneur to recognize and move in.

However, the cost of maintaining a given lifestyle should goes down, as long as people don't keep increasing their consumption expenditure.
1) You cared enough to mention WinXP and an IDE. Why bring this up, unless you realize there are alternatives. If it really bothers you that much, delete WinXP and your IDE, and jump into the deep end; install $BetterOS and learn $BetterEditor. (And spend the requisite time setting up $BetterEditor to do code-completion.)

Realize that it also doesn't really matter, as long as your code is good, you can code on Win98 for all I care.

2) In my mind, smart is worth zero. Motivation is everything. (And I'm telling myself that as much as I'm telling you.)

What are your ideas? Better yet, what are your ideas that you could do overnight? Do one a week! Realize that there's very much a survivor bias - you don't pause to consider the ideas that you never heard of that went anywhere because, well, you never heard of them.

It's frightening and inspirational, but take it as motivation to stop standing still!

3) Well done on a successful posting. You've written a navel-gazing AskHN post that got you 200+ karma. (Read: the community has given you a good amount of karma, a community-based metric of how much something belongs to said community, and it was for your thoughts (as opposed to posting the latest TechCrunch/Wired/Ars/etc post from the rss feed before someone else got to it).)

So you're working on a startup, and, despite your convictions that it's the right thing, the best thing to do, there's will always be an air of uncertainty. An unproven business plan, a failed-before business model, a different pricing structure, a questionably useful product; some question with no right answer. A competitor in a similar market is great! It validates some part of your startup. You should relish competition, from this crowd specifically, because it means YOUR idea is a GOOD one that someone else who isn't you has decided to pursue it in a serious fashion. (That said, leave my customers alone :p )

--

Yes, I do get overwhelmed occasionally that others are doing better than I, but that should be motivation to do better, do more. I frequently find myself thinking "Psh, that app is so lame, I could do better in my sleep." To which my retort is "Sure, but what did you do last night? Sleep? ...yeah".

Do the idea that you have floating around, write down what your MVP is, cut that down to a proof of concept that you could finish the engineering essence of in a day and do that. Stop feeling overwhelmed and get to work. Feel guilty for not working as hard as you could on everything, and work harder. While you're working harder, define your own tiny metric of initial success... If only one person visits, if only 1 persons reads this, if only. Be happy with what you have, but work hard to do even better.
No advertising campaign is going to make people rush into their bathroom, throw away all their old supplies, and rush out and buy new ones. You'd need to look at least a few months of sales to determine how successful it was.
The Weather Channel on Microsoft Surface
Is the End of Privacy the End of Shame?
Many of Apple's flaws are not in its operating system, Mac OS X, but rather in software like Safari, QuickTime, and iTunes.
>Are the women targeted by the ads not actually the ones making body-wash-related decisions for the men in their life?

Those ads are clearly not targeted at women.
I'm general in favor of prudence when dealing with the environment, but after suffering through another summer in mosquito-infested northern Italy, I would be fully in favor of exterminating every last one of the damn things. And that's without thinking about the very real benefits from eliminating malaria.
No. For the collections (which have opposite type needs from things like hoping for generic functions and control structures), the ability to write things like Map<Integer,Map<Integer,Double>> (poor man's sparse matrix) are a bit win for readability.
What could possibly go wrong? We've done so well engineering complex ecosystems that there's certainly no possibility of unintended consequences. For a great example of success take a look at rabbits in Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia) and perch in Lake Victoria (http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/lake_victoria_sick.php).
My problem with raw H-M is that it introduces a lot of very tight binding between modules; this can be good when it comes time to detect things you missed in a refactoring, but it is often still a bit too much binding even in my own code base, and it is definitely too much binding in a library. And large code bases structured sanely should usually be built like libraries anyhow. Being able to use classes and a selected handful of other constructs goes a long ways towards making Haskell more practical, even if the inference engine sometimes needs a bit more help.

(And yes, I know you can hide symbols and such, but with raw H-M you still get these rigid concrete types. An XML parsing library that emits only XML datatypes defined in that one library and every function you write then has to know about these datatypes, and you can forget about changing that library ever again without entirely rewriting every line of code that touches it. Theoretically "every line that touches it" should be in some interface that converts it to your internal concepts, but in practice I am not completely wrapping every damn library I use so I still end up with some concrete types from libraries throughout. Mathematically this makes perfect sense, as a developer it makes my laugh derisively. Fortunately the situation isn't as bad as all that, though I'm still not 100% convinced that I'm not still at least chuckling derisively. I've been fiddling with Haskell for nearly a year now and I'm still completely undecided whether this is the future or an amusing but futile diversion from the ivory tower. I've never been this undecided about a language for so long. The awesome is so awesome, then I stumble into some unbelievably poky briar patch that I could have at least hacked around in any other language.... it's very odd.)
Do you guys find it useful? We got a lot of "AHA" effects while doing demos. What do you think?

Thanks!
This sounds like Core Wars and Network Tierra combined, both from 15-25 years ago.

I would definitely play an MMO which let me script and didn't require my realtime involvement. EVE Online is like that for some of the gameplay already, but something where everything is through "agents" would be even better.
I have my Facebook profile closed down as tightly as Zuckerberg will allow, so this doesn't return anything for me.
Kind of sad that the blogger has no idea (not even some vapor ware hints) if there any interesting Windows 7 tablets on the horizon. Looks like Apple is getting almost a 2 year head start in this market (through no virtue of their own).
> I usually reserve mine for people who use ruby.

Downvote away! I have karma to burn. ;-)
Seeing foursquare specifically, but all of the LBS companies, crawl toward offering something of value to both businesses and consumers was the inspiration for GroupTabs, which we're launching in a couple of weeks.

We looked at the popularity of group deals (ie Groupon and its hundred or so clones) and decided to wed checking in with group buying. So, if X number of people check in, everybody gets a group deal that they can redeem right that moment. I was planning on waiting until we launched to do a Show HN and ask for feedback, but after reading this post, I couldn't resist asking for feedback. I'd really love to hear it - you can find more info about what we're about to do @ http://press.grouptabs.com

Again, not trying to plug us, and was planning on waiting until we are live, but this discussion is just too relevant.
This is, of course, a universal problem in game design. The answer is to iterate on the rules. I don't play WoW, for much the same reason that I've never tried heroin, but I have heard the term to nerf; it was obviously invented by people whose killer strategies were neutralized by a new iteration of the rules.

With luck you eventually discover chess or Go: a game with no obvious degenerate case in the rules. But that takes lots of design work.

My suspicion is that writing AIs is so much work, and the player base is so rarefied, that there's not quite enough energy to support a game that evolves quickly enough to be constantly escaping from the degenerate case of the week, wandering through game-design space in search of the next chess. But I suppose that could change. There didn't used to be a core audience for a card game whose rules and cards changed constantly, but now there apparently is.
This is a great reminder why I moved to Heroku ;-)

(the points re. backup and monitoring do still apply, but at least it's only for your app and not the whole server)
Maybe someone from inDinero could join the conversation?
Yes, apparently. I don't know much about our licensing myself.
Zed Shaw was praising Fossil recently (http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1276624594.html) which was also written by SQLite author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp).

Some additional links:

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433387

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=809493
"Though this does not necessarily mean that Apple's software is the most insecure in practice—the report takes no consideration of the severity of the flaws"

Then what's the point?
Their report only analyzes the criticality of Windows-based exploits, and leaves Oracle and Apple bugs' severity undefined.

I can't find anywhere on Secunia's website that they make a big deal out of this though, so I'm going to chock it up to Arstechnica being sensationalist.
I've seen WeeWar before but didn't know they had an API. Looks interesting.

I also wondered if Microsoft had anything in this realm. The thought of company sponsoring the server would be interesting as well. We might be able to get their attention if the central server was written C# and deployed Azure. I have experience with both technologies :)
One possibility that would solve both of those problems is periodically changing the rules. Minor adjustments as needed to make sure nobody finds a way to totally exploit the system, and maybe a major monthly rule-change.