skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Classes vs. prototypes is just static vs. dynamic inheritance. You'll generally have the same arguments as those between static and dynamic typing. They're both "powerful" in their own right: static code tends to be faster to run, dynamic code tends to be faster to write. Depends on which you value more in a given circumstance.
Storing the password in the cookie? What possible reason could you have to do this? Storing the MD5 isn't much better than storing the plain text. And anyone that doesnt use a salted hash when keeping passwords in a database should not be allowed to program. Then again rampant security problems is a big reason why I don't use PHP apps.
Eh, business cards have a lot more value than you give them credit for; calling them 'paraphernalia' makes me question how much biz dev experience you have. Also, I recommend you visit the book store and flip through a few design books with focus on identity systems...

It's also rather naive to assume someone is going to remember your name, phone number, company name, and email address because "you're special" and have the next billion dollar IP.

Lastly, how else are you suppose to get free lunch?! cmon, join teh party!
Reminds me of that scene from Fight Club where he's in the condo with the little IKEA names and prices floating next to the furniture and accessories in the room.
Could you go without your computer for a day?
I use Scala a bit - and it is OO/functional hybrid - it really steers you in the functional direction. I personally find it hard to reconcile OO with functional though (as in side effect free functional). I guess my personal (probably incorrect) experience with OO is all about mutability and state machines, whereas that is totally at odds with the rest of scala. So I end up not knowing what to do with the OO bit. I do like OO though, but I just can't seem to get it to fit together in my mind.
Can you make a really big poster with that phrase for next year's startup school?
I think this would be very difficult/painful - my computer is where I keep all my work, where I watch TV, follow news, read books, listen to music - too many different things to just turn off. Though my fingers might thank me - laptop keyboards can't be good for them.
Apple: 200,000 iPhone developers so far
I'm a big fan of lisp but I have to say that a solid understanding of Python has been a lot more beneficial to me than Lisp. While I like the mind expanding concepts of Lisp I find that I use Python for almost everything on a daiky basis. Lisp has been fun to learn but I've rarely used it since so if I had to pick I would learn Python before Lisp.
Edit: your questions surrounding "biz dev" are certainly well founded. Strangely enough, though, I've never had trouble writing down an email address or keeping in touch with someone I've met.
"With ES4 (due out later this year I think) the language should really come into its own."

In general, I kinda feel like ES4 is a step in the wrong direction. It takes a very concise, but powerful, language, and makes it far more complex without really adding any additional functionality.

But I agree with you about where and why JavaScript is weak. The browser is a pretty horrible environment from a language power standpoint (it's a sandbox that historically had zero access to the world except through the DOM, which is pretty awful). If JavaScript was commonly used on the desktop in standalone form, like Perl/Python/Ruby/Lua, it would hold up just fine to comparison. Prototypal inheritance is cool. It's got closures. Syntax is mostly very simple and clean (and the only real terrors are the Java-isms that a few idiots rudely shoved into the language). It has first class functions. I can't think of anything that I really feel is lacking in the language--it's occasionally more verbose than I'd like, due mainly to the DOM and the way the DOM is used, but the good libraries out there (jQuery, ExtJS, Dojo, etc.) are pretty much all the evidence I need that the language is really extensible and really powerful, and they make almost all of the uncomfortable verbosity disappear.
Now I've seen Vista I wonder how a company of that size can get something so wrong

I have a theory about this: it's the inevitable outcome of Microsoft's technical culture. Their culture - across many products and many years [1] - has been one of making complicated things more complicated. What happened with Vista was that, responding to criticism about security flaws, they set about addressing the problem in their same old way... and the runaway complexity finally blew up. They've used all the tricks in the book (and then some) making machines to make machines to create fingers to plug the millions of holes in the dyke. Now they've run out of fingers, and even slathering on the glitz can't hide the Rube Goldberg nature of their monstrosity. It's becoming plain even to end users who've never known anything but Windows.

If this is correct, then the Vista fiasco isn't really about Vista; if it weren't that it would have been something else. It's about what eventually happens when you make complicated things more complicated. It's a Sorcerer's Apprentice story. What's amazing is that they were able to hold it up for so long.

I really don't know if that's correct, but if it is, then I'm glad it's happening. I don't like complicated designs or code and I spend a lot of time trying to make mine simple. Someone (Spolsky?) said that for years at Microsoft, "computer-sciencey" was a term of derision used to diss people like me - people who care about finding the simpler, more powerful idea, or the beautiful, most essential design. Watching this implosion (if that's what it is) is satisfying, and not only because of Schadenfreude. For one thing, it confirms several fundamental beliefs (such as that runaway complexity is unsustainable). For another, MS had a huge influence on the software development world, one which has been pernicious in this respect. They didn't just legitimize the idea of making complicated things more complicated, they standardized it. (Look at MSDN Magazine: a new flavor every month and yet they're all the same.) The Vista fiasco is going to have a number of long-term effects; perhaps one will be to lessen this influence, and increase that of technical cultures in which design is valued.

[1] When .NET came out, I was struck by how much simpler it was than the MS stack that preceded it, which was a hideous mess. I wondered whether they had taken a new turn; subsequently it became clear that they hadn't. The better-designed parts of .NET (C#, the core libraries, and the CLR) were an anomaly. Even the auxiliary parts of .NET were done the same old way, as has most subsequent stuff I've seen. I think what happened was that MS brought in some new, more competent people in the late 90s (the most prominent of whom was Hejlsberg). The stuff they built and/or influenced was better. But they didn't change the culture, nor could they have. And the culture always wins in the end.
1) How can you "call" "Web 2.0" a "next version"? Did you just seriously refer to Web 2.0 as a legitimate object/trend?

2) What direction?

3) I code for a living and it's news to me that Yahoo et al. use microformats in some capacity. The point is that the marketing isn't there.
Um, don't any of you ever go on vacation? (Please don't say you bring your work with you)
Wow this is so brutal, but so true. In far too many software houses, scheduling and planning is completely disconnected from real development-based estimates.
Viral marketing, activation, and retention metrics - Startup Metrics 101
Are there any web frameworks out there with really solid access controls baked in?

As an unprivileged user on a UNIX box, if I maliciously or inadvertently screw something up, about the worst thing I can do is blow away my home directory or maybe soak up enough machine resources to make everyone else's processes slow down.

As an unprivileged user on a poorly-secured web app, I can potentially blow away pretty much anything that the web server and/or database user has access to.

Granted, creating a new database user or shell account every time someone signs up for something like, say, Twitter probably wouldn't scale. But a carefully-written web app environment that could scale to millions of users (each with privileges to see/alter only their own data) sure would be nice.

I suspect the place to do this would be at the data store level, where (for instance), given a login cookie the app could obtain a set of capabilities on only the data that the user has access to. It would change the default allow that seems to be the current practice into more of a default deny.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. I'll stop.
If you had a machine that could recognise addresses with reasonable accuracy and zero false positives, you wouldn't NEED microformats or the semantic web. That's the whole point, smart humans spending their time compensating for the stupidity of machines. It's a boil the ocean strategy that only makes any kind of economic sense of consider your users peons whose time has no value. Spending time making machines smarter is an investment in the future, the semantic web is an admission of defeat.

Also, Google doesn't parse addresses at all, it uses its index data the same way it does spell checking.
[meta] Does Twitter really feed our "intellectual curiosity"?
I feel bad for posting a meta discussion, but I count 11 Twitter headlines in the top 150 headlines on News.YC right now (12 counting this one, unfortunately).

Does Twitter really represent ~7% of the interesting topics that can be discussed on this board?

"The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." (http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)

If I'm the only one who feels this way, I apologize for posting something that doesn't add any value, but at least I'll know.
This reminds me of Metroid Prime.
June could not come any sooner.
on Mac, a reasonably nice email client comes with the OS.
Christiaan Postma: Word Clock
WOT Makes Great Use of Crowdsourcing To Protect People From Internet Threats
Cramer's analysis of how kids view macs these days is amazing:

http://www.thestreet.com/video/10413205/index.html?puc=jjcho...

"[PCs] are not computers. Those are things that parents use. They are not computers. They are these devices that parents got because maybe they got talked into it or because they didn't understand what was cool, but they are not computers. A computer is a mac. Like an iPod is your music device, a mac is your computer, and these other things are just things that are from another day. They might as well be typewriters to these kids. [...] It only takes one session of watching your kids. The other companies that make these devices are no longer relevant."
"Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”
Because you don't see the immediate value of Twitter doesn't negate it's usefulness to others. Personally, I found who could very well be my future business partner through Twitter and Twitter maps. Sure, "going to the gym" might not be so exciting, but I found it incredibly helpful to quickly logon, type "I'm behind Coffee Underground" and a friend was able to find me so we could talk about business.

Furthermore, it's just a good way to keep track of what you need to know from people. Not everyone tells you useful information, but not every author who has a book published is worth reading either. It's a different experience from everyone and that's the beauty of the Internet. There are no archetypes for how you use it
Mother's diet can help determine sex of child
Startup School Summary
I would like to hear from some of the people that were there. Is this a good summary of take-aways?
(http://onstartups.com/)

I'm confused. Dharmesh described PG's message as:
"Build something people want + Don't worry too much about money = Non-profit"

Based of his essays, I understood PG's general point was that if you are building something people want, you will figure out how to make it profitable once you know more.

Also, I heard someone else complain about Jeff Bezo's sales pitch.
I picked mine up from the printers yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y
Geekiest pants ever?
Bill Gates on Pharmaceuticals: The System Isn't Working
Sun may shut off high-end MySQL features
Video: Stephen Hawking on the Big Bang and why we should colonize space
well we dont know that. Google and FB fended off acquistion offers earlier, so they believed they have big potential in store.
Coupling and the power of accidental relationships
New iPhone beta
YPN?
Hey, it goes both ways. Mark section headers with <h%d> tags instead of <font size="foo"> or <div style="foo">, but don't use <h%d> tags where all you want is formatting. In the same way, use <em> instead of <i> only when the italics are actually for emphasis, as in this sentence. In other cases, such as denoting internal thoughts in a story or something like that, don't use <em>.
Facebook Platform Faces Rough Road Ahead, Despite Successes
Hmm. It's also worth considering the possibility that the sex of the child could affect the appetite of the mother.
Accounting aside, just wanted to mention that most of these barriers are whether you have a US-residence credit card, or bank account, not so much about where you or the company actually live.

Not sure it's worth incorporating a company (which may involve foreign ownership accounting hassles) to handle it.

You might want to try to get a bank account or CC in the states, and fund it personally, and just not get the business deduction for it. I did that with Amazon's services, before they accepted credit cards.

Hope that helps and good luck with it.
Ask YC: Where is YC News hosted? 
Any hosting suggestions, feedbacks would be very much appreciated.
Their culture - across many products and many years - has been one of making complicated things more complicated.

That's just the side effect of the backwards compatibility which proved so successful throughout the 90s, not as a design or marketing goal I assure you.

There's a limit to how backward compatible you can be without stepping on the feet of the applications that came before while still pushing innovative new ideas.
How do you shut off high end features? If there are enough hooks in the product to build them, then someone will add them into the core eventually.
You left out:

>He is a contributing editor to FP.

That should make clear both the quality and the nature of this publication.
200,000 download != 200,000 developers
I'm pretty sure that Alan Turing is dead...
The short answer is "yes". Twitter is, in fact, very interesting.

The slightly longer answer is: Unfortunately, both statistics and the effects of feedback guarantee that the Twitter posts on news.yc won't be spread uniformly over time. Sometimes ten of them are going to hit the leader board at once. Then there will be weeks where Twitter is invisible. I recommend that you treasure those weeks.
It's true... most of these systems are accomplishing the same things in different ways. What annoys me is that everyone expects me to jump on the same boat they're on.
i'd like to be an iphone developer, if apple would let me. they have given out only a handful of dev certificates, needed to install apps on real iphones, and the process reportedly degrades the phone such that it can't be used normally anymore. what the heck.

i'm as big an apple fanboy as anybody, but this is making me suspicious. i'm in wait-and-see mode.
That's a much better hypothesis, in my opinion.
Ask YC: news that requires registration to read?
So what do you think? do you like visiting sites that won't allow you to read the article without creating an account? commenting is one thing... reading is another.
Someone should do something similar in the U.S. for people to learn Mandarin.
I don't think it's fair for him to compare the development models for open-source software and pharmaceuticals; it's like he's comparing oranges and apple.
I can't stand it - I refuse to read NYTimes articles for that very reason. I don't see any reason to require accounts to read articles.
Post images and set up a poll here?
5 Appliances You Can Buy That Might Be Smarter Than You Are
You know, I've ordered from them 3 times and never had this happen. But then, I generally give fake phone numbers, so that may have been it. No email problems though.

I'll definitely check out overnightprints next time though.
Handling Large Datasets at Google [video]
Nice, but what I really want to know is: when will Apple start accepting more applications (mine, specifically) for the actual developer program?
Versions of JavaScript
This works out to be around 3.5% of world wide pc unit shipments for '08.
Exactly. Correlation does not imply causation.

Whenever I hear about various things that supposedly make children smarter, like listening to Mozart as a baby, playing a musical instrument, or having a fish as a pet, I can't help but think in almost every case it has much more to do with the type of environment the child is raised in.

There was a good "Bullshit!" episode (Penn and Teller) about exactly that.
You might want to read http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_an... as an explanation for the style taken in the book.
It's a shame that the Comcasts and Time Warners monopolize this space. I feel wrong about paying my bill to TW - but I still do, every month.
This looks like a great movie, downloading it at this very moment.
Two more theories consistent with the data are:

(1) neither affects either;
(2) eating more calories creates more girls

No. 2 might seem weird but consider the fact that using the brake pedal creates fewer car accidents despite the strong positive correlation of braking with accidents.

Without testing between competing explanations, there is no science, only depleted research funds :-(
Mistaking Cons for Pros
Alternatively, you could just be sure to get their business card and then you can reply to them. Asking their email and typing it into your phone works well too. If you need someone to remember you, you should be the one to tAke the initiative and contact them later anyway.

That's not to say that business cards are bad, just that they're non essential.
How tech firms can save the earth
I guess walled gardens work okay when everyone's knocking on the gate.
Earth to Sun: Java 10X performance advantage over interpreted scripting languages
Guys, I think he's joking. You are, aren't you?
From the last thread on this, overnightprints.com has great prices and business cards with rounded corners, which is deliciously web 2.0.
Cognitive dissonance
Also see the press release for this posted at thingene: includes link to the scientific paper.

http://www.thinkgene.com/you-are-what-your-mother-eats-first...
This study refers only to the moment of conception.
umm, yes please. amazon actually sent us (justin.tv) an email showing how many dollars we'll save this month based on last month's usage.
Programmers as Rock Stars, and the Tabloids
Am I the only one who thinks "The App Store" is the exact same thing as Brew? Brew is pretty stagnant now, and I've always thought that Qualcomm's iron grip on the platform accelerated its death. I wonder how long Apple can keep a vibrant community interested in iPhone application development.
Arrington took Techcrunch to a place so mean that I doubt even Valleywag would go there.

If you're going to single out one of only ten staff at least make it the CEO. Arrington played the man, not the ball, and did himself a great disservice in doing so.

Vale TechCrunch.
The 30 something model is called reality, and is better for everyone, including 20 somethings. The 20 something model (Google, Facebook et al.) is called a lottery and though a precious few people do win, the vast vast majority don't amount to squat and just end up wasting their 20's looking for the next big thing that isn't going to happen. Like the lottery, it's great for people who are really bad at math and don't pay attention to the odds. If you're going to play the lottery and try to build the next big thing, play it after you succeed at the 30 something model and can afford to waste your time.
Too bad this article itself has such visually noisy and distracting typography.
Mastering Ajax, Part 1: Introduction to Ajax
"Now I've seen Vista I wonder how a company of that size can get something so wrong"

Perhaps because it's a company of that size.
Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Making asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
Facebook Now Running 10,000 Web Servers
Dear Sabat, if you don't like them, stop reading their blog. There's nothing wrong with them giving advice on their own blog.
a general business card images thread would be nice.
Yoshi's Island in JavaScript
For the most part, I enjoy their blog. I like seeing apropos business or programming wisdom from Jason Fried and DHH, but I do find it obnoxious that Sarah, their customer service rep, is getting into the act now. How exactly is this person credible to tell people under the 37signals brand name to quit their jobs and start a startup? Everyone's a pundit these days.
Interesting but I now officially remain skeptical of all studies where they don't introduce the studied mechanism in a random fashion (ie take people and make them eat a lot of calories or not) and they haven't identified a mechanism. At best this kind of research simply gives some impetus for further inquiry.
"Read Tu Fu in the original to make America Stronger!!!"

(Doesn't work.)
Where are they now? Underwater-robot-building MIT-defeating high schoolers grow up
Interview with Jason Kottke
Interview with Khoi Vinh, NYTimes Design Director
in most Linux distributions, a reasonably nice [insert arbitrary commonly used application] comes with the OS
well... not to violate the nda, but the simulator is getting really nice. wink wink, nudge nudge.
I hope apple is not making the same mistake with the iPhone that AT&T made with its personal computer in the early 1980s. I personally think that the most profitable route for Apple would be to just publish the internal hooks for the iPhone OS and let people develop as they like. The extra apps from this move would make the iPhone an even more attractive device.
you should also try to contact m&a consultant - they may help u find the buyer .... one of them is http://www.burleyonline.com/index.htm
Kai-Fu Lee on Cloud Computing