skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is simply personal preference; I have no problem reading Ruby code. Perhaps this is because I spent a very, very long time with Perl, but other Ruby hackers seem to feel the same way. On the contrary, I don't much care for looking at Python code, because half of it seems to consist of the word 'self'.

So, 'readability' in this case isn't a very valid argument, because anyone who codes in language X is going to find X to be highly readable.
interesting point - when you have it majority of components ready-made for you, are you really as disciplined a programmer? im going to say "yes," on the assumption that you had the self-control to go to the hardware store and buy a hammer instead of making a set of tools to make a hammer, as the metaphor goes.
The Safest Seat To Sit On A Plane Is...
Who’s About To Get Fired From Google?
Ah, now we've come to the point of it.

"The fundamental disagreement between libertarians and progressives is that libertarians do not find the values of a mob/majority justify violence upon a minority."

The power of the state rests upon the willful consent of the governed. The constitutional structure protects minorities from the tyranny of the majority, and as such, when it is in the good of society, that force can be used, including to collect taxes.

"The problem with asserting positive rights, versus freedom from oppression, is that they come at a cost to someone else. For example, asserting a right to health care is asserting the right to take from a health care provider."

Here's the fallacy. Its not a zero sum game, and the market isn't an omnipotent distributer of goods. For example, asserting a right to health care provides more output for the society, as it takes away from the costs of untreated illnesses. Some things are common to all, and ensuring that everyone has access enhances total welfare. Surely you must see that defense spending is justified?

"They make more, and a flat percentage would proportionally cover their wealth, but you insist on a _higher_ percentage."

This is a form of social insurance. Just as defense spending insures us against risk of attack, social programs insure us against the risk of bad luck. Imagine yourself behind the veil of ignorance, before you were born, before you knew that you would occupy that top %1. Now design a tax system.

You have to take into account the decreasing marginal utility of income. $100 additional dollars to a person making several million a year has far less utility to them than $100 additional dollars to a person making twenty thousand a year.

Not to mention the political folks tell me that inequality is the chief cause of revolution. If we look at this from a practical perspective, we see that times of extremely low taxation and large amounts of inequality caused a breakdown in the market system. Those who accumulate most of the wealth become a law unto themselves and ensure oligopolistic control over industry. Too much of this and in Russia the farmers get their pitchforks and the mob takes to the streets. Here you get the New Deal. Some socialism is necessary to stave off communism.
pick the worst name you can think of, it will make it easier to change it. after a few changes you will know when you have the right one. mediocre names tend to stick around too long.
We've gone through several company and product names. Old product names can just become code names, etc. Your official company name doesn't need to have anything to do with your public-facing product name.

They key thing is you pretty much need the .com domain name for whatever name you choose for your product. And it should be easy to spell and remember.

Personally, I don't like the current "Web 2.0" trend of making up gibberish names, or putting two semi-random English words together, but there certainly are exceptions that work well.
There are lots of other jobs that involve minimal physical activity -- I think a major factor is that some IT workers have pretty poor diets and don't get much physical activity outside of work. Obviously that's a stereotype to some degree, but I think there's at least some truth to it.
Not to hijack, but my blacklist script does this too, if you want a blacklist and a searchyc box as well.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
Maybe they should shift to a different position. Several times a day, even.
So I can't really comment about Django. I have some Python experience and very extensive Ruby and Rails experience. My advice: choose based on language not on framework.

It's fair to say that Python is a more "general purpose" language in that it has more extensive libraries and is faster.

It's also fair to say that for people who are language nerds, those who enjoy the power and elegance of particular languages, the kind of people who dick around in Scheme, Haskell, Factor, etc., Ruby is the better language. It has more interesting ideas (expressional syntax, open classes, the best case statement of any language ever) and significantly more powerful metaprogramming and DSL capabilities.

Both languages have blemishes, let's call that a wash.

There are certain features, that really come down to personal preference. Ruby has mutable strings, python doesn't. Ruby has a complex grammar, and there are usually several (readable) ways to express the same thing: for exmaple:

unless smelly?
eat!
end

and also,

eat! unless smelly?

Python is very minimalist grammatically. Python has significant whitespace, Ruby doesn't. The grammatical maximalism/minimalism is the most contentious issue. I used to be a minimalist and I feel like I have seen the light, but I respect those who disagree.

Now when it comes down to web frameworks, I don't think it matters so much... What is Rails? It's an ORM, a powerful Routing layer, a bunch of helper libraries for doing views, and a mostly useless controller layer. As a very advanced Rails user, I use very few of the view helpers anymore. I kinda like the way Django does forms better than Rails, though I've never really used it. Rails does REST really well. To be honest, the best framework out there right now is Merb.
I wasn't even going that far. I can see how people consider it hyperbole to call taxes "slavery" when someone is taking 40% of your earnings from you. You still have more than half of what you earned to do with as you will. But 95%? You're basically working solely for the good of whoever is stealing from you. It's true that they're not forcing you to work, but you either give over almost all your earnings or go without any benefit from your labor at all.

I'm not the first to make the comparison, you know. I believe Frederick Douglas compared income taxes to slavery in his autobiography. Unfortunately, I listened to it on CD so I can't pull up the exact passage at the moment.
"Maybe a partial explanation is that having a simple shared mental model makes network effects much more powerful. When we think about social software as a user, we don’t just think about the software, we also think about the network of other users, and it’s important to be confident that we have a shared understanding with those other users. If we’re not confident of that shared understanding, we won’t connect, and the value of the software will diminish."

I really agree with this, and I think it's also true from a design perspective. A few of the people who've tried my social microblogging site (mostly people who'd come over from Tumblr, which I find to be pretty anti-social), testing it in isolation without adding any friends, have complained about the lack of control over the design -- you can change the color scheme, but not your style sheet or layout. Meanwhile, users taking advantage of the social features have noted how nice it feels to know that the friends with which you're interacting are all immersed in the same basic interface: through the awareness of shared experience, network effects end up multiplying the value of the design, and the interaction becomes that much more satisfying. So far, I've found it to be well worth the sacrifice in customizability.
The foundation for this post is the superstitious belief that all things balance out: i.e. that dramatically increased focus must mean dramatically decreased creativity. Quote: "It makes perfect sense that such a cognitive trade-off would exist." As Errol Morris said, nothing is so obvious that it's obvious.

On the other hand, there are mounds of anecdotal evidence (and possibly some data) indicating that dopaminergic drugs like Ritalin, meth and cocaine have negative effects on original thinking; and likewise that drugs like LSD or psilocybin seem to have positive effects on the same.

(Note that I say original thinking, which doesn't necessarily mean creatively worthwhile thinking.)

My own pet theory on dopaminergics is that the constant stimulation of the pleasure response reduces our ability to evaluate ideas and distinguish between a good one and a bad one, or a fun activity and a boring one. This would help explain punding behavior (i.e. "tweaking") and "cocaine ideas", as well as the utility in getting school children to pay attention. It would also suggest that modafinil, which lacks this stimulation, wouldn't have negative effects on original thinking.
> But 95%? You're basically working solely for the good of whoever is stealing from you.

I don't disagree, and I'm a person of libertarian leanings. Although I grant I'm not as fully given over to it as you seem to be.

I really was just trying to elucidate the sense in which I see many libertarians compare taxes to slavery.
Rails does have a lot more mindshare than Django right now, but notice Rails had a 2.0 release in December, while Django still hasn't even reached 1.0. I'm not sure about the relative histories of the projects, but it looks like Django is still in the pre-buzz phase. (Meaning, projects tend to start publishing books, holding conferences, etc. after the big 1.0 release, not in the incubation/unstable-API phase.)
Chatterous works better than Twitter on mobile
Guys, I have a better idea. Let's make a patch for the hacker news source to give both options and submit it to PG.

If you know arc (or want to learn) and are interested in doing this, email me at jared@scribd.
Poll: Coworking in the South Bay Area
Poll Question: How much would you pay for a good workspace that's always open?

We're looking into starting a new kind of affordable cowork space in the Cupertino/San Jose/Sunnyvale/Mountain View area for students and pre-startups.

We're tired of getting kicked out of cafes at closing time, and wonder if anyone else feels the same way. Here are the things we would want in a good workspace:

1. Big tables
2. Wifi, power outlets
3. Place to meet and talk
4. Open long hours
5. Whiteboards, printers, lockers, etc.

What else do you look for?
$0-$50 per month
$50-$100 per month
$100-$200 per month
$200-$300 per month
$300+ per month
Daily rate under $10
Daily rate $10-$20
Daily rate over $20
The Way We Live Now:  The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity
Duff's Device: loop unrolling for interpreted languages
like twitter, chatterous could use some accelerating growth. You need accelerating growth for social platforms
Microsoft To Offer Cash Back To Search Engine Users
$500 a month if you get some showers...
Wow, that's a good idea. Go Ballmer.
NASA Calls on APL to Send a Probe to the Sun
This was frequently useful when a friend and I made a VST instrument. It's now freely available at http://sohasound.com
You know what happens in may? Prom. That means tons of pictures. That means tons of traffic.
"And Chatterous will get me laid."

Yes, because if there's one thing skinny, young blondes need help with, it's that.
Sure, there are some libraries for Ruby or Python, but there's not the obsessive "i have to write a library omg" mentality like Perl's CPAN.

Like I said, Perl is far from a perfect programming language, but the community and CPAN make it all worthwhile.
Thanks for all the great feedback all. It seems like the design and user interface are the big winners, as is the simplicity of the site. We wanted to introduce the power of aggregation to the mainstream, and so far the ability to customize by clicking on logos has been a big hit.

Understand that voting aspect will be difficult to differentiate from regular Digg-style popularity votes (we're looking for quality votes). We're working on figuring out how best to approach that.

And yes, the beta will be public. We'll be opening the site in a couple weeks to try and build the user base.
Honestly? Yes, it is. That being said, were I planning to run for President, I probably wouldn't pick a job like professional assassin because if the public found out they likely wouldn't vote for me. I consider ethics only when my perception as ethical/unethical factors into my probability for success at a given task. In this case, Ferriss' success didn't hing on his ability to be ethical and/or not be an ass so it's irrelevant.

Take Google for instance; their Do No Evil mantra. Maybe they really are super ethical people and truly want to improve the world we live in. Or maybe its just really important to appear and be ethical when dealing with tons of information from the public in order to gain the trust necessary for them to use Google services. Either way, it's an important factor for their success.

I don't go out of my way to break social constructs or be a jerk, but my business partner can attest that I don't go out of my way not to, either. Its why he does most of the talking ;)
http://djangogigs.com/ currently lists 90 jobs in the US and 34 in the UK.
Heh. It's not exactly hard to beat Twitter on technical merit. Arguably Pownce is better there (certainly in features) and Jaiku seemed to have more stable tech.

Twitter keeps winning because it has a lot of people and has got a lot of nice desktop clients. Inertia and off-browser integration mean a lot to a service like twitter.
Perhaps you could rephrase "Did I succeed at X by cheating/being unethical?" as "Did I succeed at X without having to fear bad long term consequences and/or retribution based on a heuristic called 'ethics'?"

(I agree that the purpose of some ethical/moral norms seems to be self-replication like a meme. On the other hand Game theory has some things to say about norms and values as equilibria selection in games with multiple equilibria.)
On the other hand, my use of Ruby on Windows/Linux at work have given me a quite different opinion. Especially if you are using Linux, I think Python/Django support is better than Ruby/Rails support. Of course, if you are using Windows, the support for both is quite frankly abyssmal, and you'd probably be better off going with a java-based (ick!) stack.
One other thing. A lot of comments here seem to be trying to say that Ruby's syntax is hard to read. I don't know, but every time I see a real world app written in Ruby, I find it to be succinct and beautiful, and most importantly, easy to read/understand.
It doesn't seem to be working right now. When I try to register a name using the email robot, I get: "Sorry, you are not authorized to register domains by email."
If you're like me, this is not the APL you expected to read about.
One issue I see is what if you want to find new friends. What if you want to find interesting people in chatrooms.

Seems fine if you have a group of friends and want to chat together.
we're working on that ;)
fuck man, you advocate violence, then tell the victims they consented and should thank the government for its constitutional protections that prevent anyone from being a victim.
Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Search Quality
Not if they are left in the fridge. An air-tight fridge to be sure.
Or you can just cheat by leveraging off existing networks ;)
First of all, force isn't violence. Nobody beats you for failing to pay your taxes.

Second of all, you do consent. You have freedom of speech to express your displeasure, and a vote to rid yourself of unjust leaders.

Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. They build our roads and pay our soldiers, and I'm sick and tired of some people acting like they're a form of theft.
Haha, I still love watching that video, it is very entertaining but it doesn't make me want to join the company.

I agree that coding assignment are important. I interview for my company time to time, and you would be suprised on how many people strugle with very simple stuff.
Some people are good talkers in interview, and they know the "right phrases", but the only way to know if they can actually code is by giving them a real problem.

There is two way to do it:

1. Make them come on site, and let one hour aside for an assignment on a workstation. The drawback of this, is that the interviewee is probably in a uncomfortable setting for him, using whatever tools are on the workstation, that he might not be used to... etc.

2. Even better, prescreen them. Tell them to set aside an hour of time, at home, or at place where they are comfortable, and just email them the problem, and they should come back with a solution, withing a given time.
You can then discuss the solution together as fruther pre-screen, and when the person comes in site, at least you know he is pretty good at coding.

Of course, the problem has to be unique so they can't just google the solution.
You can give them a ACM contest style problem, or just a more practical problem.

A while back, I noticed first hand that one of my previous employers hiring quality declined a lot, when they stopped giving out programming assignment to potential new hires.
Awesome, just awesome, thanks for the resource
Their product is so bad they have to bribe users to use it ;)
It is a solid way for a second tier player to gain ground in any web market and here Balmer is trying to do it for the biggest market. At the very least, this is a good way of forcing the market to take less money from consumers.
Is it just me, or is http://www.chatterous.com/ broken in FF3?
The comments about Google changing the name of the service and just letting the old domain go are dumb. No one would do that, especially not Google.

I wonder if Google's domains are consolidated? If not, that would be a rather large job keeping them all in order.
...and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=146695 :)
Incense is psychoactive: It's good for your brain
Ask YC: Whitelabel social news aggregate?
Does a utility exist that allows anyone to easily have their own news aggregator on their webpage?
If you want your own wiki there are several sources like mediawiki, what about for social news?

Custom reddits exist now but I think some people would prefer to foster their own community rather than leech off reddit's. I know I would use such a utility if it existed.
Microsoft Research has some brilliant developers that make some real-nifty stuff (despite what you may think about the rest of the company). For instance, a while back they had a tool that could be used to connect a single wi-fi card to multiple wi-fi networks simultaneously, reviewed here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/multiple-wireless-networks-wit...
Missing matter found - a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe
I will make your decision very easy. I come from a long Java background and just start using RoR a few months ago. And guess what? I am hooked. Every feature and functionality that I want to put in there is already a plugin for it. If not, I can write one quite easily. The documentation could be better but there are plenty of books out there. I am not saying Rails is the ideal web framework but it comes darn close. If you want to get to market soon. I would say RoR is the way to go. Finally, if you are a stickler about writing test cases as us then the good news is that RoR comes with rich testing support.

As for hosting, Heroku is a good start.
Works perfectly for me.
The real problem with this scenario is that those people who are being taxed 90% might feel less of an obligation to contribute back through charity (even if they are paying far less than 90%).
Oh man... who wants to bet that Microsoft will be alive in 200 years? Seriously, how many companies have they gone head to head with in the past 30 years or so... Apple, Lotus, Oracle, Netscape, Nintendo/Sony, Tivo, Google...

Regardless of your opinions about Microsoft, you have to admit that this is one hell of a resilient company. Even if they fail in some markets they just keep going and going.

I don't know if this new advertising model will work or not, but I think in 20 years when the NBT comes out from some new startup, MS will be there to fight against it in the marketplace.
This will be awkward to implement but not for the obvious reason of avoiding automated fraud.

In some jurisdictions, it is illegal to offer kickbacks for certain products and services, if not all. For example, in the UK, I believe that it is illegal to offer consumers cash to accept a line of credit. I believe it is for this reason that UK credit card affiliate programmes specifically prohibit affiliates from sharing revenue with consumers.

If you offer a cashback programme to end users, you'll have to forego some lucrative advertising and/or explain to end users that some offers in some jurisdictions don't provide any cashback and/or explain fraudulent clawbacks to a large number of end users. In addition, the exceptions will be awkward to implement, maintain and administrate.
I think co-working is really neat, so kudos on starting something up in the south bay. Adding to your list: Conference rooms and smaller break-out rooms are an important (and often overlooked) feature, communal fax & coffee machines are good additions, and the biggest place I see co-working spaces fail is in underestimating the bandwidth they need: a few people pushing around big files can saturate a line pretty quick.
"This is simply personal preference"

Well, yeah. That's why I said it was my experience.

I think the point is, I code in Ruby and in Perl, and my opinion is that neither language is particularly readable or maintainable. Meanwhile, I have less experience with Python than either Perl or Ruby, yet I find it to be a consistently readable language.

Those are all opinions, but they're informed opinions (and I'm not simply advocating for the language with which I am most familiar).
Hey shafqat, what service do you use for general news aggregation, basically what newswires service do you get your stories from, not how you store it, or apply proprietary algorithms? I've looked at a bunch of them and there didn't seem to be a clear choice that provides all the sources that you provide here. I had a similar but very different concept some time back and am still looking for ways to get the aggregation easily without infringing on copyrights, etc. Your response would be much appreciated.
This is called being "promoted away" to do no harm, when firing is not an option for some reason. This time he had blind luck; the project could have been scrapped, as most actually end up. Everybody and their dog was implementing a browser in those days but never saw daylight (ISP sw depts 4 sure).
unfortunately, some of us don't have a choice to choose a manager to work for. We might choose the company, but in any decent size company, the manager is choosen for us by other people.