skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> can't work with the metals

There was an article in Make Magazine about the RepRap and it works with metals which have a low melting point, such as Field's metal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field's_metal ). This allows the RepRap to include wiring. Additionally, the machine can pause to allow electronic components to be inserted.
i agree, what could possibly be the technical reason for only supporting python?
I can't say, although I agree with some people who say 'don't learn perl'. I would say Learn it, and then don't use it unless you have to. I'm just starting a class on it. I only intend to use it to fix existing code, or read it to re-implement it.
one thing I know is that Google loves python, so its a natural choice to start with. No doubt they'll be adding support for other languages as time allows.
Why do you care so much? In the long run, if there's a problem that threatens US world dominance then it will be corrected.
I wonder if this -- coupled with Django going 1.0 soon -- will create even more buzz for Django?
YC Health Care
In the land of the free, what prohibits YC or similar organizations from providing health care?

Is it not cost-effective? Legal issues?
it was c++ until 2002-2003. 2003-2004 marked the beginning of java.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science
No, it's lack of consistent lexical scoping.

Either ruby blocks create a new scope or they do not. Which is it?
This Guy is Very Impressive: 10 min Interview (Ricardo Semler)
Merb Tips II
Huge news for python ! Cool. Of course, who in their right mind would trust their business lifeblood to something proprietary to google only? (or maybe its not, we will see).
An important question at least for me is what sort of libraries will be usable from these python instances? Like, I would like to have NumPy and SciPy libraries available for a lot of the heavy computations I do. (in particular, linear algebraic representations of graphs for heuristic solutions to various planning and image processing problems)
They create new scopes, and close over the their enclosing environment. In other words, it supports both block-local variables and closures.
An extremely minor offense, considering the range of things that have been done in the name of holy diversity.
It'll be interesting to see if BigTable is required. Sounds like they've integrated a full stack and require python, so it wouldn't surprise me if the only DB available is BigTable. If so, which python framework is most easily decoupled from traditional DBs?
"Another serious limitation is the requirement that applications be written in Python, a popular scripting language for building modern web apps"

Sounds like a feature to me.
I don't understand. You mean there's a good reason for it to overwrite variables in outer scopes if they exist?

Is there any way to specify if I want block-local or not?

The way python deals with scopes is to provide read access to outer scopes if there are no writes to a variable.
"... although I am surprised that it is not designed to support anything other than Python ..."

Why? The Google "big 3 language" choices are Cpp, Java & python ~ http://panela.blog-city.com/python_at_google_greg_stein__sdf...
You may see perl or other languages but the "big 3" are the officially supported ones.

"... python ... but it will be a non-starter for many developers. ..."

I find that an interesting statement. Why say that? Python is a pretty easy language to learn & use.
This will probably end up being like heroku, but for django... hopefully.
I would assume that google built a sandbox (probably like appjet), for python. It's not trivial to build a sandbox for a language, and it's certainly not trivial to build multiple all at once - which is why they are only launching with one (python).
It would be awesome if they ported the Google Web Toolkit from Java to Python.
Of course there is: if you couldn't access variables in the enclosing scopes, blocks would be drastically less useful. Ruby uses anonymous functions where Python would use a loop construct.
The whole bloody system here SUX!
This is really exciting.
It'll be easier than ever to create scalable web apps. Choosing python seems sensible, I don't see what the fuss is about.
is everybody else continuously refreshing http://code.google.com/appengine to be amongst the first 10k to sign up?
It's actually 9pm PST, according to techcrunch. Sign up here: http://code.google.com/appengine/
Before picking Pylons I looked at Cherry.py very closely and I actually liked it the most. The reason why we decided to go with Pylons was that it seemed as Cherry.py is being abandoned by everybody in favor of Paste.

But as a lightweight way of exposing Python code to the web I found it very elegant.
By targeting the right market....with the right strategy in place.
Reason 1: Because they make code easier to read. Purely subjective. I strongly disagree; Ruby is more concise, and ivar access is clearly seperate from method calls.

Reason 2: Because Python will allow you to "cast" self to a superclass to grant explicit access to its variables. Ruby doesn't have this problem.

Reason 3: Because Python would rather overload the keyword "self" than allocate a sigil (@).
It is supposed to work this way for some good reasons. But! Enough people have had the same problem as you that new versions of Ruby behave the way you expect.
word on the street is it is going live at 9pm PST, but I have also seen 10pm, so we'll see.
You are really not stuck with Rails if you're using Ruby. This isn't a fair critique.
Hey, AOLserver is open source. At the time it was the only web server with a built-in glue language (Tcl) and pooled database connections. It got me excited about web programming. Plus, the sheer amount of code already written was fantastic.

I never understood why people were put off by his favoritism to those tools. ACS was all about page flow and user experience, and in that department, got it right more often than not.
Anyone buying put options on Amazon? Don't think it'll affect them short-term, but long-term is a whole another story (after Google's beta period and after other languages are supported). Free usually wins.
"You can buy a good book" is not a valid response to "Ruby's documentation sucks". I have all those books, and I don't feel compensated for Ruby's crappy documentation.
What makes it really interesting is the last point from Google:

- Easily integrate with other Google services. It’s unnecessary and inefficient for developers to write components like authentication and e-mail from scratch for each new application. Developers using Google App Engine can make use of built-in components and Google’s broader library of APIs that provide plug-and-play functionality for simple but important features.
well one fuss i see is that there will be no red5 on google web services it seems...

not a big deal to most people... but from what ive read this seems more like a competitor to heroku/appjet than ec2/s3 as others have mentioned

but as a django user, i am pleased
It is perfectly sensible if you are starting a project from scratch or have already built something purely in Python. For everyone else looking to host something already written in another language, it is a problem.

I'm sure Amazon doesn't mind though, they'll just continue to get all of this business.
[We took this conversation offline. it seems this is a known gotcha (e.g. http://www.osix.net/modules/article/?id=401), and may be changed in ruby 2.0 (http://groups.google.com/group/sbonrails/browse_thread/threa...). Thanks tptacek.]
cost and overhead entanglement for short-term incubation, i'd guess.
Ask HN: what software do you use for analyzing apache logs?
What software do you use for analyzing apache logs? I would prefer open source ones that will work on Linux, although this is not a deal breaker.
The other key concept is that after some clients upload to a specific sub path area that is authorized for uploads, the clients can use a query string option on a GET request to list out files in that area. I suppose the website owner could have one or more administrative javascript sessions running that will periodically poll this area as just described, to process the data and upload a more compact listing for clients to retrieve.
Ruby people should be more candid about the performance situation, which is a catastraphuck. It is worth it, it will probably get better, and raw performance isn't that important for I/O bound apps, but Ruby is noticeably slower than pretty much all its competitors.
Good point. For existing codebases it means porting code, which could be a pain.

I did just read that Python is just the first step, other languages will be supported soon. :)
They still do, but current American immigration policy makes it more difficult for them to do so.

In addition, students from some countries are bound by their gov't to return since the gov't paid for their full ride, they have to go back and work for a couple of years. So sometimes, they don't end up staying here in the US.
this is one important subject that doesn't get much air time on yc
In Ruby you've also got a bunch of Web frameworks/libraries (Rails, Merb, Camping, Rack, Ramaze, Sinatra, and Nitro, to name a few).
Its a great language and easy to learn and use, but it might greatly limit their business relative to AWS.

I polled HN about a month ago to see what percentages of HN readers used what languages for web development, and while Python was the most common, its still only used by 22% of those polled. Take this data with a grain of salt, but still an interesting statistic:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pxT7jIffmj3lGdXFcn9hK...
Liquidation preferences are always important, regardless of size; if your prospective employer has taken 5 and is only doing 1-2 in revenue, prefs will still keep you from making more than a token amount. They also often have multipliers attached.
Are there any interesting examples of websites out there that use infinite zoom as a layout for lots of different content like Blaise Aguera y Arca demonstrates around 1:52? Zooming into a picture cloud, zooming into a timeline then blog entries, zooming into a cv then individual project page, etc.
I use analog.
This article advises employees to exercise their shares as soon as they are vested as long as they're bullish on the company. I know several people who've been fucked over doing this. The thing you need to remember is, your private-company common shares grant basically no enforceable rights.
One thing I haven't seen anyone mention: How this affects one's ability to be acquired by anyone other than Google in the future! I think it safely rules out being acquired by Microsoft, Yahoo, and the like. But what about other customers who want to integrate your apps with theirs? I think that then rules out MySpace, Facebook, and plenty of others. That brings us to companies that don't really care about stuff like that. The list gets small pretty quickly. With the exception of Google -- and they don't have to acquire you because they already have you locked-in! :-)

This isn't an issue with EC2 because EC2 apps can run anywhere the proper distro is located (assuming you don't rely too much on other AWS services).
may I make a diffrent suggestion. instead of S3 why not use something better. I don't know much about s3 but there is a much better standard of webdav. we among some other implementors have developed the server side. for client side there are many options too and if you want to do it in php this would be good class http://freshmeat.net/projects/class_webdav_client/
update: this URL is now LIVE: http://appengine.google.com/

update2: yeah, waitlisted as well... http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html (where code samples are)

update3: API: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/gettingstarted/

update4: everyone who signed up recently should have received an invite by now!

Lots of limitations:

- Python-only for now but the complete architecture is language neutral and they will add other language support (will rely on feedback on which language support to add next). Before they add a language, they need to 'harden' it (i.e. remove some features from it).

- Django is the only API that's currently supported, can upload other framework(s) but you're on your own (which will be an issue since there will be some issues with other frameworks due to other limitations)

- you cannot write to the filesystem - due to distributed nature of the system, you have no idea where the file will end up.

- you cannot open sockets! you can only use the limited API that they provide (URL & mail sending API). Forget about Twisted :(

- no threads (Google says they provide scalability in other ways)

- limits on how long an app request can run – forget about uploading large files for now.

- admin console contains version source deployment client (svn or git?) which means Google will have easy access to your source code. If you're competing with Google, beware... Google potentially has access to your source code (and data of course) so you will have to trust them and their legal agreement! Definitely some conflict of interest is possible.

Update: Here's the relevant info from the TOS: http://code.google.com/appengine/terms.html

By submitting, posting or displaying the Content on or through the Service you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such Content for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its privacy policy.

Seems to me that there's a lot of magic happening behind the scenes but you get simplicity for that.

They demoed few interesting applications:

- Huddle chat - like 37sig's Campfire - client queries the server every few seconds to pick up deltas.

- Jaiku - twitter clone that Google bought was partially converted to Appengine

- some social app that allows you to pick a place to go out with friends (clubs etc).
hmmm. i didn't know law was a graduate topic O.o
AWS only generates about 2% of Amazon's total revenue so I wouldn't be buying puts any time soon
How much should I give to F&F?
Any clues about the share of the company to give and a good way to explain dilution for newbies?
AP Comp Sci isnt an introductory class.

I had two courses of introduction which were pre-reqs to take that my senior year. These courses were in BASIC. While not the best, they got the job done.
Er, wouldn't that be PDT? Not to be a tweaker or anything. ;-)
It's not even the choice of python that's a limiting factor, its that you don't have a full server, just a language sandbox. Still it might be a great place to start a web application.
I am wondering the same. I have a lot of SciPy and NetworkX based simulation code I have been meaning to plug into web interfaces. This could be extremely useful for academic research.
I went to high school in the Silicon Valley. AP Computer Science was a course offered to upperclassmen. It was discontinued the year I had intended to take it.

Instead, one of the new classes offered that fall was a dance class.
This may be the move for Python to overtake Ruby in web app industry..This seems even more revolutionary than what RoR did before 3 years ago..

pyRuby anyone :p ??
i keep waiting for these personal fabrication things to get popular and cheap so i can design my own coffee warmer
This is all just wild speculation but I wonder if some hosting company will come out with a "compatible" api for when you want to leave Google.
http://www.dhmo.org/
Use Awk or Perl. They are available on every Linux system already so it's highly portable and very powerful.
Any tips on how long the 10k places will last? I'll go 30 mins
"In less than a year's time" is not in conflict with "isn't ready".

Also, Python already has jython and IronPython, and there are numerous other projects in the works, notably including PyPy and Pyrex/Cython.
Some aspects of SciPy are a bear to build (I maintained the binary distributions for a couple of years), with a huge dependency chain. I wouldn't bet on being able to install it without a lot of trouble. NumPy isn't so bad.
3 mins is more like it. 12:02am here and it still offline :\
You can recycle Al with electricity.
A large portion of the Al in circulation is recycled.
:/

I was refreshing the wrong link, http://code.google.com/appengine/

Edit: got an invite!
Really hot computers are a thing of the past. The new Intel chips run cool and low watt. Check out the Air for example. No more burned testicles!
I signed-in and am waitlisted!? That was fast, unless everyone is on a waitlist and e-mailed in order (I hope).
But what if it wasn't short-term. What if YC alumni decided to band together for health care?

A group of independent contractors is maybe simpler to think about than YC and the companies it produces.

It may be that health care being tied to employment is the real problem. The customer of the insurance companies are corporations, not people. That leaves two options: become a corporation or create an alternative means to get health care.

For the startup crowd, becoming a corporation is the obvious path. Founders may go without health care during the early days, but the ones really out of luck are independent contractors.
There's no one to sell it to us. All the cos selling health insurance assume their customers are companies buying it for their employees.
I doubt this service will be free once it comes out of beta. Google will definitely charge for it. They're using the free aspect to gain some traction.
It seems to me that the Python fans in this argument are conflating two separate concerns here:

1) Requiring self for access to member variables and methods is a great idea, and is why Hungarian notation like m_foo for a member called foo is popular in languages that don't require it. Ruby does this with @, which is also nice because it's short; I know people who use m_foo in C++ because it's shorter than this.foo, and while I don't agree with them, I can kind of see how a shorter prefix would be nice. But Ruby does lose points in my book for not requiring self/@ for access to object-local methods.

2) Requiring self as an explicit parameter in method definitions confuses the living crap out of newbies. I've seen this several times in the real world. Try explaining it to someone who doesn't yet understand OOP sometime, it's a disaster. On the other hand, making self a magic keyword that gets you the present object, the way Java and C++ handle this, is less confusing, less typing, and has a perfectly nice symmetry between the scope of the definition (method foo is declared on objects of class Bar) and the namespace visible in the call (bar.foo() calls a method foo on the bar object). In contrast, self looks like an explicit parameter in the definition, but doesn't look that way in the call. If you want def foo(self), I think the consistent thing is to do like CLOS and call it like foo(bar) rather than bar.foo(). If you want bar.foo(), something like def self.foo() would be less confusing.
It has to be that.. I got waitlisted at 12:02 (EST). No way 10,000 developers can signup that fast, or is there?

update at 12:55 (EST):

Thanks for signing up to try Google App Engine! Your account has been activated, so you can begin building applications!
Did anybody here get into beta?

edit: just did.
They don't control for the college you go to?
Another gigantic win for the US educational system. US system is so far ahead of other countries' systems that they can afford to drop few useless courses.

/sarcasm
yeah I was on 9:02 and got waitlisted. I am stoked to bust out some python code again, I don't view it as a limitation at all! The only reason I don't use python more often is I cant be bothered with the added hosting issues it brings (as opposed to uber-cheap/readily available php/apache space I have all over the place).
"Google potentially has access to your source code so you will have to trust them and their legal agreement!"

I would be far more skeptical of what they do with your data, which would live in bigtable.
I see some SDK and download links here:
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/

Looks like the SDK has been live there for 2 days. Wish Google would have an RSS feed for new things on code.google.com (if they do, let me know)
I use a combination of analog and some custom scripts. analog is written by a profession statistician and is a steadfast tool. The custom scripts look for interesting searches. Classics include "What does the fur on a rat do?" and "How do I connect an airbrush to a scubadiving tank?"
I'm willing to bet there will be a level of service available for free, just like they do on Google Apps for your Domain. You can host your mail and a handful of accounts for free, but at a certain service point, it becomes 50 bucks a user.
My site's been hacked - now what?
the sdk is now up/available for download. http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html
Hmm, there are a bunch of sample apps available now:
http://appgallery.appspot.com/
I'm speed-reading my way through the docs right now, and I just had a realization... I'm betting that a huge driving force for them to release something like this is to lower the cost of acquisitions. They are opening up a lot of the tech that (AFAIK) is being used on some of their apps internally.

It would be vastly easier for them to get at the creamy nougat filling of acquired startups if said startups were already using the google pixie dust.
well, as long as they have NumPy, I can deal with rolling my own ontop the rest. OTOH, what would be amazing would be to have some of these hosting services have a setup where you can execute matlab code and extensions on top! I suppose that that would require a pretty complicated licensing setup though...
When funds are limited, you have to justify the cost of something with its reward. This isn't an issue of "Not enough people are taking these courses, so let's cull them." It's an issue of "We're spending a lot of money on very few students. We can probably use that money to help more students."

I'm a CS PhD student. I think it's terrible that they have to cut some CS AP classes. But I also understand that they have a limited budget, and a mandate to help as many students as possible with that budget. It's easy to criticize them for cutting classes we think are valuable, but we aren't faced with the problem of trying to use a finite budget to cover classes in the sciences, math, history, literature, languages and the arts.
Advanced RAID Deployment Collaboration: Intel & LSI
Stone Steps Webalizer: http://www.stonesteps.ca/projects/webalizer/

along with cronolog and a bunch of custom Python scripts to autogenerate webalizer configs.
Metal rapid prototyping has been around for a while now: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/05/metal-3d-printing....
Computer System Consistently Makes Most Accurate NCAA Picks
You may not have much luck... from the FAQ:
For security reasons, most C-based modules are disabled
CrunchyCMS launches (invites at jump)
the install and hello world was easier than arc.... just saying. No seriously my only problem with arc was getting some mzscheme/cygwin stuff set up in windows but thats my fault for not wanting to dual boot my laptop.
Pigs: run software in Google's cloud
How do you figure? What web app isn't required to port to new infrastructure when they're acquired. Sure MSFT is at odds with Google, but they were at odds with Unix when they purchased Hotmail (ran on Unix infrastructure for awhile after acquisition even). Then they ported. Assuming the port goes well, it probably makes a nice press release also.
IT Job Security Plummets Five Times Faster Than Nationwide Average
AWStats with GeoIPFree is pretty good, but a major hassle to configure.
You're thinking of the BC test - the AB test doesn't cover data structures - just basic OOP (Java flavor) and the general gist of Big-O notation.
I did! :D

I just got an invite via email... now I can be the evil genius I always dreamed of! bwahaha!

Oh, whats that you say?.. "Don't be evil".. nevermind. :P
Free at Last (How/Why to empower your business with free sw)