skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Steve may not be a medical doctor, but he is a programming language expert, so I really don't get your ad hominem refutation of what he said about Perl. Perhaps you can comment on what he actually said, not who he is?

Also, I think you missed the entire point of my post, including the example. I'm also not sure of how else to word it to help you get it. My point was that Perl requires you to deal with a host of issues that have nothing to do with solving your actual computing problem. One simple example of these many thousand idiosyncracies, which the article itself indirectly brings up, is Perl file handles. Even if you know the "modern" way of using them, you still had to go through the learning process to differentiate between the old and new styles, and you still have to commit a bunch of useless facts to memory. Worse, you may still encounter and have to deal with the old way in the wild!

I love the description of the perl5i CPAN module at http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/perl5i-v2.2.2/lib/perl5i.pm:

"perl5i - Fix as much of Perl 5 as possible in one pragma"

Why not use a language that lets you get stuff done faster, instead of a language that's been feature-patched to death to fix the terrible design flaws it began with?
Thanks, I hadn't heard of Acquia before. Unfortunately I personally need the ability to build out apps in different frameworks because I'll almost certainly be extending their functionality beyond CRUD operations and I'm not personally fond of Drupal.

However, I'll definitely be checking it out for simple throwaway stuff.
One component of GDP is "personal consumption". In Russia, if a large number of people are consuming black market goods, then the "actual" GDP is going to be much higher than the government-reported GDP.
I get the feeling from your post (and username) that you may be Emirati, and I certainly understand your wish to defend your home, but I think there's a certain amount of whitewashing going on here.

> "There are shallow people who abuse human rights in Dubai"

Based on what I understand, this is an extreme and gross understatement. The entirety of the construction industry was based on borderline, if not outright slavery of foreign nationals. This is not the case of "yeah, there were a few bad apples in the bunch", this was widespread and almost universal. (Again, if you'd like to contest this perception, please feel free). The Dubai skyline as we see it today was impossible to create at that cost, in that timeline, without labor abuses that would make most developing nations look like Eden.

I find it hard to believe that a hacker-friendly and creative-friendly space can exist amidst so much moral corruption and especially in such a closed society.

I am unsure if you've had the opportunity to visit some of the more tech-centric and creative-centric cities of the world - but you will notice that creative types (hackers included) tend to be a weird bunch. Around me right now are people with strange haircuts, strange sexual preferences, strange (and to some, offensive) clothes, strange habits... etc. Hell, even in a socially liberal place like the US many of these people are decidedly non-mainstream and are merely tolerated, not celebrated. Nonetheless, here they are protected and free. They also thrive on liberal, bohemian substance - not the glitzy, luxurious sophistique that Dubai is shooting for.

Dubai does not sound at all like a place where hackers and artists would want to call home. In fact, half the creative types I know would be at risk of imprisonment in that country. IMHO it is impossible to nurture a creative space in a closed, socially hyper-conservative country. Social conservatism is historically the antithesis of artistry - and this includes the middle east. The most scientifically and artistically prolific eras of the middle east all came during reigns of particularly secular (or at least, non-fundamentalist) governments.
That's really a shame. I have a couple really good friends with whom sharing experiences is one of the most important parts of our relationship. It took some practice at first, but focusing completely on the person telling the story[1], and actually telling meaningful stories[2] turns out to not be that hard once you get the hang of it.

[1] This means not only listening and popping in with comments and questions here and there, but actually trying to imagine the feelings you would have experienced had you been there; or even more interestingly, understanding how the storyteller felt in the context of his or her own life (this requires knowing the person rather well).

[2] The intent is really the main thing here. Some people approach storytelling about their adventures as a way to brag. The "right way" to do it is to tell the story in a way that the listeners can imagine themselves there. This changes the context from "I'm cooler than you," to "I had a great experience that I'd like to share with you."
Steve Jobs' mark on ABC's Lost
The part where he's talking out of his ass is where he claims that Oracle can support Red Hat better than Red Hat.

I'll grant that Oracle can support Oracle running on Red Hat better, but that's a different story.
While I'm glad they actually managed to include NZ, they could make it a little more convenient to view...
That is exciting to hear. I do not want to build the next Microsoft, I want to build something better! and more useful for people than a word editor ;) (full disclosure, I like and use MS products very much).
Well, one encouraging thing in Headius' post is the indications that Google has been preparing for this for a while (and we know they have deep pockets).
I did consider the timing for a moment before posting, and I don't mean to belittle the work they did; but we're talking late 90s, and a hugely popular and well-funded business, not a dot-com startup in early '95. You'd expect the relatively few active usability specialists at the time to be within their reach, had it not been for the cultural obstacles.
Mold can and does actually, scientifically speaking, make people sick. Associating that with unmitigated bullshit like the WiFi idiots is just degrading.
"just a little more..."
yeah, it was a bit choppy at first, but it has been smooth sailing for the last several months. Overall, it's pretty solid in production
You can leave anytime though. Slaves can't.
I don't know how WoW phrases it, but the promise "buy a subscription and get one month free" is not the same in the mind of the customer as the promise "free one-month trial". The first gives a more accurate description of what will happen to your credit card.
There's a reason it's "wage-slave" and not just "slave"; the point is that it's not the same as 'regular old fashioned slavery,' just using the imagery to make a point.

Maybe 'wage-indentured-servitude' would be more to your liking, since indentured servants made a (more clear-cut) choice to enter into the life they have?

This comparison goes the whole way back to Aristotle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
That's the idea, they don't want Kellogg's paying them 50k a month because then if Kellogg's tells them they need feature X they are going to end up doing it to keep that business. This way worst case scenario they lose a couple hundred bucks a month. 37signals covers this in Getting Real I believe, but I can't find the section now.
Russia isn't the only country that has a large underground economy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_economy#Comparison_...

(The figures are a bit dated, but still interesting.)
I think lots of my friends would be happy to have me stay with them for a week or so, and on CouchSurfing you can find lots of strangers who have that same preference.

My experience hanging out with backpackers is that they seem to get laid (by other backpackers) rather frequently. Of course, the ones who are traveling with committed partners have a lot more sex (with each other, mostly) than the ones who are just hoping to meet random promiscuous MOTAS. But there's a lot of scope for people to travel together for a few days, weeks, or months before becoming committed partners.

And sometimes travelers will stay in a city for weeks or months and meet more people.

I think it depends largely on how easily you make friends.
Signal is easy to game, simply be direct and to the point.

PS: Think of all the words I could have used to say the same thing.
Is this your editor? http://vian.sourceforge.net/

I saw you have experience with Haskell, have you seen Yi? http://yi-editor.blogspot.com/ It has an Emacs and Vim frontend, but is far from being finished.
I'd love your help on sibilant; I started it with exactly the same motivation.
I am always surprised by people's lack of critical thinking capabilities. I saw Michael Shermer (founder of Skeptic Magazine) speak at a conference recently. It was a little frightening how much data he has on the irrationality of our fellow man.

The thing that frightens me the most is the areas I personally exhibit irrationality in that I don't know about. I'm actually OK being irrational if I know I am (I can make decisions taking that into account), but I have little doubt there are places that I don't know, where I make stupid decisions.

In the meantime, we should all turn off all our electric devices, wrap our houses in faraday cages, filter all of our water, and wear respirators. Wouldn't want to be unsafe, now would we?
I disagree. Love him or hate him, Larry Ellison interviews are consistently very blunt and informative. He often gives a very clear definition of what Oracle's strategy is/will be. For instance he called the enterprise sw consolidation and then executed on it.
Going in to a start-up with founders that have different risk profiles is a great way to get in to very bad situations.
...in the US. In a bunch of other countries it's illegal for businesses to display prices without all applicable taxes.
I definitely get the concept, but there's a large range between 500 and 50k; just wanting to make sure I'm not missing something.
You can leave your job, sure. And then default on your mortgage. Or be unable to pay your rent. And not be able to buy food. (or, if you mean "leave America," then you can move somewhere else... and you _still_ have to either work for yourself, or for someone else.)

There's an illusion of choice, but choosing to work between McDonalds and Burger King isn't really a choice.
It could be. But what if he cooks, cleans, fixes household appliances, teaches them to juggle, removes viruses from their computers, and gives them spectacular prints of photographs he took?
Last time I checked people were still paying money for Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Maybe some of these "quacks" should get funded.
1000Memories Confronts Death by Celebrating Lives
If you make your startup a matter of hours, either one or two founders lose to publicly traded megacorp with 400 kilo hours per week. Do not compete on this basis.
> Thanks for making the Web a more horrible place (step by tiny step)...

Oh, insanity, how beautiful you are.
Yes, but how many people reading HN are truly exploited. Only if you let them...

Exploited to me smacks of child labor and indentured servitude. I highly doubt there are child laborers and true slaves reading HN. But they do exist, and in larger numbers than you probably thought possible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Current_situation

That's more than the population of many countries.
I agree, it's much cleaner to use the built-in features of Wordpress.

That said, this post is more of a gloss than an in-depth examination - this combination of plugin, template code, etc. can be used for considerably more complex purposes.
I should have covered this. Choosing the for-profit road would, indeed, meaning converting to a C-corp. Luckily, that's not too hard to do without adding much marginal cost on top of the legal costs of closing a round.
Selling to an enterprise at enterprise rates involves a particular kind of sales force and development plan that adds additional costs, decreasing net profit more than you'd expect.

It would detract focus from the core mission of the software — simple communication for small teams. They'd lose their story, which is what sells the product.
These days, it seems the most common way to win a million dollars playing poker is to play with some else's money.
I would challenge you to ask yourself this: Look at one of the competitors, say Rentalic.com. What would you do different than them, product-wise, and marketing-wise ?
Short Roman Numeral Kata
Short Roman Numeral Kata using TDD (C#)
As the author of sibilant: A) it was/is fun B) I don't want to be dependent on another language — sibilant is entirely self-hosting, like coffeescript. Additionally, I don't want to be constrained to pure lisp. I'd like for sibilant to evolve into a language that incorporates the best elements of lisp and javascript. Since sibilant is written in sibilant, there's no dependence on pure lisp and the language can evolve in its own direction.

There's something satisfyingly elegant about using an interpreted language to interpret another language - macros can actually modify the compiler at compile-time, from within the language. I hope to make more use of this possibility in the future, as it's currently only used for macros.
The fact that I start a business by bootstrapping it does not mean I am after a small niche (not that there is anything wrong with that). My aspirations are much greater than that, bootstrapping is just what I believe works for me, as a start, my next step is to get some angel investment to be able to go to the next phase and applying to YC seems like a good route to take. Thanks for your comments.
[video] - "PROJECT" Tales Of Mere Existence
Sometimes reading Hacker News is like...
I'm confused. What's the advantage to wifi in schools? Is it just saving money on wiring the school with ethernet? Are students being permitted to take laptops into school now?

I suppose the saving money argument is actually a pretty good one, but any new school will probably be wired anyway, so that should only apply to older construction.
Is this for you, your team, or your customers? Is your goal to have the most manageable and easy-to-organize lists, or to most easily gather the resources necessary to the performance of the tasks?

I'm having some difficulty visualizing what you want to do with the version control - backup your mind-state regularly, or automatically link to specific/latest versions of source code on the software projects that are 'getting to done'.

Thanks in any case for gathering several useful tools in one place. I've been looking for a lightweight project management tool and some of these look like useful candidates.
Do you spend time link building your business website quizbiz? You haven't shared your story, opinion or ideas on link building.
Thanks for the feedback. We haven't built the billing piece yet, but we're planning a freemium model based on number of requests per week.
I accidentally downvoted this on my phone, meaning to upvote. Sorry about that, the quote is really appropriate.
That'd be pretty cool.

Actually, when it's done a "publish to Heroku" button would be great instead of just downloading a zip file. Having Themes for rails would be nice. This would allow you to literally design and put up a scaffolded app in minutes rather than hours.
What the hell is Eric Schmidt wearing in front of his shirt? Is that a bullet-proof vest?
Comprehension tends to increase as WPM increases up to 500 or so WMP. Above 500WPM the trend is less clear and probably depends on the individual and how redundant the text.

As I understand it the faster you read the more stuff you can keep in short term memory so the easier it is to make connections though different sections of text.

At the extreme consider how hard it would be to read one page of a book over the course of a year.
What does "Heroku" mean?
I'm trying to find a name for my new project and I'm wondering if anyone knows the significance of that name.
I have a similar, but slightly different issue. I also have an undergraduate degree, and I did take courses in operating systems, compilers, and algorithm design. The trouble is that I don't remember anything. I remember taking the courses, but there was a huge amount of information that got shoved into my head and remained there just long enough to pass the exams and now it's gone.

This is an enormous pity, because it's only now, years later when I have a full-time job and not much time, do I realize what I missed.

If I won the lottery or somehow came into enough money ('fuck-you' money, I guess), I'd probably repeat my undergraduate schooling. However, there are a couple of options that you and I might have.

The first thing to remember is that no matter whether or not you take a formal course, you'll probably be reading some good books in the subjects that we're interested in. There are lots of lists of good, solid introductions to the subjects that we are interested in.

The second thing is that we'll have to make time for the subjects that we're interested in. As working people, we don't have the luxury of spending all our free time on a given subject, but unlike undergraduates, our attention is not necessarily divided over several subjects. In my last year of undergrad, I was taking plenty of courses and it's perhaps not surprising that I forgot so much. Now we can choose one subject (like compiler design), and focus our free time (however little) on it.

A third option is a sort of middle-ground. Is there a local university to you? Most universities allow you to take undergraduate courses as a continuing student. We have our degrees, we're more interested in the knowledge that the course can give us than the credential that the course grants us. The course would grant us the structure and discussion we'd benefit from as undergraduates, while not completely monopolizing our time.
Agreed. I blogged on that: http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/04/07/you-didnt-make-it-to...

Getting into YC brings you money, notoriety and advice. They are great. And they can also be found elsewhere.
"Some parents in the Barrie, Ont., area say their children are showing a host of symptoms ranging from headaches and dizziness to nausea and even racing heart rates."

Maybe they're going through caffeine/sugar withdrawal away from home? I'd be interested to know what the rates of obesity are among these children and how much physical activity they get at school and at home. I don't think they should discount stress either -- from other kids, parents, etc.
Related: Jaron Lanier's point (as reported by Nick Carr) that if Facebook had existed in the old days maybe Robert Zimmerman could never have become Bob Dylan. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/05/facebooks_ident.ph...
Could you provide a way to contact you directly?
Why OPEC Doesn't Mind Low Oil Prices
Sorry, Canadian isn't my first language.
From what I've read about Ellison, I don't doubt he believes Oracle can support Red Hat better than Red Hat can support Red Hat. You and I believe otherwise, but that has nothing to do with what Larry Ellison believes.
Nice use of photography to make a point.
Slick. I can see myself using this frequently.

I have a couple questions/comments:

- It's not exactly "secure", right? AirDropper has access to my file while it's "in transit" so AirDropper's really only "secure" if I trust AirDropper. You could, for example, be keeping a copy of everyone's files. So who are you, and why should I trust you?

- When I linked my Dropbox account I just gave you full access to my whole Dropbox. Ugh. Is there a way you can just get access to the directory in question?

These seem like obvious new user questions so you might want to add an FAQ, perhaps.
There's too much cool stuff in the world to be able to do all of it. You need to pick something that extends what you know and helps you to accomplish something you can't yet do.

Yes, it's possible to design a language, implement a compiler, write a kick-ass AI, but it's all a long way from where you are (I assume) and while rewarding in the long run, will take ages to get there.

Instead, scratch an itch. Do you have a web site? Do you have an idea for a facility you can provide people? Can you write CGIs without a framework?

I can't tell you what to do - no one can really - but you need to think about what you might like to do.

Then do it.
Is there a site where I can crowdsource my documentation within some privacy agreement? Let's say I have tons of undocumented code written by a previous employee and I'd like to pay someone X dollars to document each method/class/etc.

I tried searching for "crowdsourced documentation" and "paid code documentation service" but I couldn't really find anything. This might be a lucrative idea?
I'm sorry, Dan. I'm afraid I can't do that.

But seriously, I think he's just imagining something like a butler, who anticipates your information needs, or at least your context and where you're coming from. It's a kind of AI, as he says, moving toward do what I mean.

Unfortunately, these Frankensteinian quests have always ended up closer to Office Assistant Clippy, in practice. Historically, mental amplification has been a more fruitful approach, where the user remains in control.
> You might not like Ellison, but making money by offering support services is perfectly legitimate with open source software.

Agreed, but with Oracle it's more like bundling free code with very expensive not free code and then supporting the whole package. Case in point about what he mentioned regarding Apache.
I'm a teacher.

Couple of good things:

* We use laptops a lot in lessons, plus the kids can use their laptops/iPods/phones or whatever on the network as well.

* We can move round the room much more easily than when using the ethernet cables, useful when using dataloggers in Science.

* Useful for older parts of the school that aren't wired.

* Useful outside