skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He's seems frustrated with available libraries that work both in user space and server side, and while I understand what he's getting at, I don't necessarily agree. There are efforts to bring the two together, such as Common.js, which definitely has a ways to go, but for right now, the server/client distinction still exists so there will be a natural distinction between code that runs in the client and code that runs on the server.

I'm currently building a CouchApp which is a self contained CouchDB application written purely in javascript (html/css) from the ground up. All of the database views are in javascript, the frontend uses evently which is a utility library on top of jquery to facilitate working with events and having a clean interface for having events trigger your typical web stack events, database request, data processing, view generation from mustache templates all the while happening client side in the user's browser. So I can use jQuery utility functions to process the data returned from CouchDB, or I can do a console.log from my database query directly into the browser. There is still the natural divide between client/server, yes, jQuery is much more tightly integrated with the entire stack, but I'm still using standalone javascript at the database layer. There are some talks on the CouchDB mailing list to get Common.js into the view layer of CouchDB which is further bridging the gap between client/server code.

I still feel there is a natural separation between the two, and while common libraries will make it much simpler to code across the stack, there will still be code that logically fits on one side or the other. That said, there are a lot of new javascript frameworks and tools that are really blurring the lines, like sammy.js, express.js for node.js, CouchApps, Soca (alternative CouchApps framework) and even YUI is usable to some extent in node.js. Personally I am very excited about the future of javascript in the application stack, and I for one am really liking being able to use javascript up and down the stack. The only thing really missing for me is a solid javascript UI, I'm keeping an eye on jquery's new toolkit.
Given that 4G isn't available in most areas, any app that you write would have to be able to gracefully fall back to 3G. And if it has to work on 3G, doesn't that defeat the purpose of writing a 4G app?
The comments here are very UI-centric, but what I found interesting was first the reminder to invest in fad-resistant skills (and don't forget, he drew a distinction between UI and hardcore design skills!).

And second the stuff about parsers in the section about making usable infrastructure software. Every time I peek at the mongrel2 source, there's one or two more Ragel files in there, some of them generating token streams to be consumed by a Lemon parser. I figured there was a good reason for that (although I shot a quizzical glance at the one that just parses "--a --b b" CLI args into key/value pairs). What I didn't realize was how much that's an integral tenet of his software design philosophy.
I assumed it was a parser eating the code point for a dental fricative, added in some misguided attempt to re-introduce ligatures at the data level. Pronoun neologisms never occurred to me.

It seems there's real harm in knowing about useless things.
It's "Lisp in C's Clothing" (http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.html)

JS has first-class functions with closures. This is simple concept that enables lots of interesting constructs — callbacks, methods, currying.

It makes event handlers/callbacks very easy (so easy that node.js can rely on them for everything).

It allows very flexible "fluid interface" like in jQuery.

Mixed with JS dynamism and prototypes allows you to invent your own OOP variants (and JS's standard prototype-based OOP isn't bad either).
The Man Who Destroyed the Boring Interface and Lived
For Rails: Devise 1.1.2 + MiniFB (both on Rails3) works very well.
As someone who did go to college, every class in which we had to write papers stressed strongly the concept of academic integrity, and that plagiarism was unacceptable. I've seen people fail classes because they didn't properly cite their sources, etc.

Nothing to do with morals, so relax. It's just the fact that you cannot make it through college without hearing at least once that you cannot copy other people's work.
I don't recall anyone ever claiming Google was ever "doing it for the programmers" - it's well understood that the perks and environment are there to attract talent and increase their profitability. Also, free gourmet food is increasingly a (relatively inexpensive) standard perk in the valley, so it no longer really sets Google apart as much as it used to.

And note, I never said Ron Conway wasn't there for the money, I just that it wasn't the objective. The objective is to help great entrepreneurs succeed. The money is a (not unexpected) side-effect of succeeding at that objective.

At this stage in the game, and with his network, I'm sure Ron Conway could take much higher ROI approaches if that were really his primary goal. He just isn't wired that way.
>they seem to find it rather uncontroversial to assert that anyone who thinks that death is ultimately good, and not bad, is 'pretending to be wise'.

Eliezer talked about this at at the Singularity Summit...I can't find the slides, but his subsequent update of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (yes, really) pretty much said the same thing. The relevant part starts around halfway down this chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...

I think this is a pretty common position among the futurist/transhumanist/singularitarian community. The standard inductive argument is basically "I want to be alive tomorrow, and tomorrow I will feel the same way. Therefore, I will never want to die."

Edit: Oh, the other point that is often made is that if you grew up on a planet where everyone randomly got hit over the head with a baseball bat every few minutes, there would probably be people who talk about how this is a good thing, because it helps you greater appreciate the bat-free minutes and helps you stay on your toes, etc. But, other things being equal, as an Earthling you probably wouldn't want to go and live on that world. Likewise, if you came form a society where people didn't die, and someone offered you the opportunity to completely cease to exist one day, you probably wouldn't take it.
There is after all a strategic benefit to this; getting your talent for cheaper. Consequently a deal like this b/t direct competitors is harder to get off the ground. Also as an optimization problem, there are many different constraints that come into play at different parts of the curve. When you saturate the employment market with this behavior the market would likely seize up.
It's a good read but this contour-signalling only works when you have two or three levels at play. The question is whether his/her grouping of people into two or three tiers is realistic, useful, or arbitrary. Upper-middle-lower-upper-middle-middle class etc.
When using publickey auth method, you don't have to provide anything (except for, obviously, username and hostname), you have to temporarily trust thimbl.net's key. I.e:, the process is:

1. thimbl.net provides its public key.

2. You add it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (or whatever your SSH server uses).

3. ...

4. That's it (remove key if you don't trust thimbl anymore or thimbl may even remove it by itself, at the end of setup process).
There's a bit of a conceptual problem with trying to measure entropy. That's because entropy is based on probabilities, and probabilities are subjective. What are "the" odds that my brother will pass his SAT exam? My brother can make the most confident prediction (lowest entropy[1]). But the reader of this comment can do no better [2] than take the generic SAT success rate (higher entropy). And some peasant in Tuvalu might as well say 1/2 (maximum entropy).

So entropy is subjective. It's a measure of how much new information you expect to get from a message. The more you know already, the lower the entropy.

EDIT: An awesome quote from Jaynes.

"Probability assignments are not assertions of any physical property; they are a description of a state of knowledge. It is therefore illogical to speak of "verifying" the probabilities by performing experiments on the physical world. That would be like trying to verify a boy's love for his dog by performing experiments on the dog"

[1] Not necessarily true, see Wiki or David MacKay's wonderful book for details. http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/

[2] Also not strictly true! You might argue that his passing the SAT should correlate with my passing it, and estimate what my odds would be/were from my comment history.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but stories are fun.

Last Christmas, I was on a multi-hop flight back to SF from the east coast. We were going to be landing in Vegas, and I was talking to a flight attendant. She mentions that conditions in Vegas were a little crazy, as the runway doesn't drain properly and crosswinds are common.

As we're preparing to land, the captain gives the usual speech. It's going to be a little rocky on the landing; there's a sleet storm, etc.

We're making our approach, and the flight attendant gets on the PA. "Someone's cell phone is on. Turn it OFF NOW." A minute later: "Someone's cell phone is still on. I need EVERYONE to doublecheck their phones, and get that phone switched off!"

We ended up diverting to Phoenix, because the pilot did not feel comfortable making an instruments-only landing. His announcement was the only time I've ever heard a pilot sound audibly rattled on the PA.
To cut the FAA/FCC a bit of slack, its not as easy as one test - one result. There are so many existing permutations of airplane electronics and changing cellphone technologies that its almost impossible and really not economical to test them all. So it is actually much easier to just say no.
I know we've been told to "double your price. then double it again." but does the same apply in hugely saturated market spaces like hosting? Lots of hosts will bill you $8/month, oversell their servers, but still give you big numbers AND install WordPress for you. I'm curious what kind of reasoning went behind the pricing model.
Why not to use haxies in Mac apps
"Thanks to a wide variety of mature commodity hardware choices, plus infinitely and perpetually updated open source router firmware, I'm happy to report that now everyone can have a great router."

No, not really. When's the last time his mother or mother-in-law flashed their router to Tomato or even just updated the stock firmware? I've been running Tomato on a WRT54G for years now, and DD-WRT before then, and I love it, but you can't expect a normal person to have any interest in that. They buy whatever is shiny and/or the Best Buy guy tells them is good.
We want to be at transparent as possible and really keep our customers informed. We took a lot of heat for not telling people what was going on and everyone is a lot happier now that they understand more about the process.
1,000 car crashes is not news at all. 1 plane crash or terrorist attack or school shooting is national news and bad PR. Society isn't rational about this. If it was it would disregard school shootings and build more light rail.
I don't think she was being devious, I think she thought she had done the right thing.
Using an <iframe> this way is like securing your house by nailing your door shut. Caja is more like just adding a lock to the door.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1731183
I have done this and it worked excellently. I notice there are lots of references to your ppa around but few thank-you notes, so thank you!
So unfortunately I left my engineering team on their own about a year ago to start my own tech services company. My team these days are mostly virtual so the system would break down a bit.

I'd be willing to experiment though I've always been pretty open to trying new techniques.
you can host a thimbl.net clone our your own server. There is no site yet, the system is not yet released. The login will certainly be ssl protected.
Independence from capital-driven data-mining freedom-subverting services is relevant, but hosting the manifesto of sorts on google is a bit ironic.
Here is the reason straight from the FAA:

"There are still unknowns about the radio signals that portable electronic devices (PEDs) and cell phones give off. These signals, especially in large quantities and emitted over a long time, may unintentionally affect aircraft communications, navigation, flight control and electronic equipment."

http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsid=62...

ie. We don't know, but we are playing it safe. While it is an inconvenience, I take comfort in knowing that the regulators are erring on the side of caution when it comes to air safety.

If they are so cautious with the slightest possibility of radio interference from a 3v device, then I can be assured that the remainder of the plane (ie. the thing that is flying at 800km/h at 30k feet with 200+ people inside it) has been checked over and is safe.
Ask HN: What tools & technologies you learnt recently are worth it?
I'm particularly interested in upcoming, not yet widespread stuff, but feel free to submit anything you think is cool and others should know about. Please provide a simple description along with the name.
I would love to have a formal language theory class (e.g. "Languages and Lambdas: The Mathemagic of Programming" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524856) in Clojure.

Hell, I would pay for it too.
That would be like al-Qaeda operatives trying to cause road accidents by not recalling their Toyotas. [Theoretically] increased risk != an effective weapon.
Edward Tufte has a gallery in Manhattan. He gives tours on Saturdays
I couldn't agree more with this article (though I sadly can't say 'no' to Facebook development). I recently did a tiny amount of Facebook integration into a site and it was horrific.

All I wanted to do was add a `Like` button that would broadcast to the clicker's friends timeline. What could be simpler? Just copy and paste their code onto your page and you're done. Right?

The second sentence on their documentation page says "when the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user's friends' News Feed with a link back to your website."

But it turns out that's not true. It turns out you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get that behavior. The documentation for their simplest and most used integration feature couldn't go one paragraph without falsehood.
That would give us access to the users account at any time. It seems requiring their password be sent with every request is more secure (over https, of course)
I'm doing some early research into starting a brewery or brewpub in a small town in Michigan. I'm hoping to bootstrap as much as possible, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be taking on at least some kind of loan. Licenses in this area aren't bad. Visit your local City Hall and give your state's Liquor Control Commission (or equivalent) a call.
Thanks for pointing that out. I don't want to come off as arrogant. Going forward I will be more constructive as far as explaining what I can do for the company and what problems I could solve, rather than just saying "I feel I'm a perfect fit" like I have been saying. I really appreciate the help.
Max - I think you'd avoid this a bit if you changed your initial anecdote (your interaction with Jason) to be more engineering and product focused, I think thats where the micro-management concerns are stemming from.
Reminder: Today is the deadline to tell USPTO to end software patents
See the request from the Free Software Foundation:

http://www.fsf.org/news/uspto-bilski-guidance

Here are comments from a recent thread on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1723904
Get Set And Go For Dissertation Project
Practice for your dissertation project was begun from the time of kindergarten. Writing a dissertation is only more complex than that of the sentences written in kindergarten. The act is the same. The same rules of writing apply in a more complex sense.
He was killed by the very thing that was trying to kill him.
it's (vaguely, remotely) possible that some new phone released yesterday is dangerous,

That's no greater a possibility than for my netbook, or my wristwatch, for that matter. Why pick on phones over other electronics?

(I suppose the answer is to see your previous paragraph regarding rationality)
that's pretty much the tldr of the post. I've no idea why it's on the frontpage. I thought it was going to be some philosophical objection to the walled-garden approach, or some experience with facebook being anti-open web, or the way fb apps teach users bad habits or at least something of substance. but really it was just a rambling rant.
Geoengineering: “The Horrifying Idea Whose Time Has Come”?
Excatly! There are many ways to set up secure ssh access. Which is why a solid, know protocol like ssh is the right one to use for remote login, because it provides many options and all sysops can configure access for their own users as they see fit, yet all users, on all systems can still follow each other.
Free, online: papers from this week's ICFP 2010 in Baltimore
I don't disagree with what you said, but the real abstraction is the ability to shoot and not be shot at.

Even with "beyond the horizon" battles, two ships at sea are hitting each other. The difference between dying from a shell fired 20 miles away or one fired 1/2 mile away is nonexistent.
That isn't true. There most certainly can be new knowledge at the undergraduate level, and increasingly many schools are encouraging or requiring real research projects for both BAs and BS degrees. My wife was published for her biology thesis on petroleum consuming microbes and I was for my research & exhibit on the commercialization (via ephemera) of Thomas Jefferson since his death. That said, my actual thesis, on the impact of popular music on public opinion during WWI, was completely regurgitated hash. However, my university has an enormous collection of period sheet music so it was a lot of fun to research and I don't regret it at all. Hopefully my thesis advisor didn't, either. :)
You don't need too, since if you like you can run the front end on your own servers as well. (but you don't have too, if you don't want)
Interesting post showing 2 approaches both leading to good composition.

The Scala version is particularly noteworthy, as it is quite a good example of OOP which gets rid of inheritence as a pattern of code extension and uses mixin and function composition instead. This is going into the right direction.
Health data could be a powerful next data layer, perhaps as location has become. There are some devices and apps in the space, but I haven't seen anything yet that focuses on _publishing_ the data, as Foursquare focuses on publishing location and tips and I think Adams has it right... it's got to be easy (and fun) or people will just give up.
A $50MM Failure Goes Viral And Becomes An Overnight Success
I would stick with your day job. I was an independent contractor for a year (while trying to work on my startup). Contracting is much more tiring than working a 9-5, which makes it difficult to work on your own projects after you are finished.

I also ran into the problem of people not paying me on time and or not paying me at all, which adds more stress to the situation and can take you away from your main goal.
Minimum Viable Product or Minimum Valuable Product?
Doug Lea: Upcoming java.util.concurrent resyncs
I hope the rest of the world won't import that US madness.
How hard could it be to get 500 phones, put them in a plane and dial them all ?
Looking forward to following behind the scenes on this. Saw the initial tweets about WPEngine and mighty interested in the 'lessons learned' re: using social for first block of customers.

From the comments: SmartBear's measuring initial success as $360k ebitda ($30k a month). While arbitrary, seems a smart goal. Makes for a sustainable and salable business (with room for a bit of R&D and bonus structure).

Oh, and Austin FTW.
With docs, correct is better than done.
Topsy deploys v2 platform to index 100 billion status updates
Yes, blame the people who have other tastes than you.
We could always write a Thimbl only server to handle it, here's a start: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Python/SSH-with-Twisted/
Ideally restaurants would upload the nutrition facts of their foods to an online database. (Maybe this should be legally required.)

Such a database would make this app more feasible, as the smart phone could use GPS to figure out what restaurant it is in. Maybe even better would be a numerical code next to each food item on the menu that could be input into a smart phone to provide full nutrition facts. That seems like more of an inevitability than a general picture scanner, offering superior ease of use and, let's face it, technical feasibility.
Freaking charities? I know we're entrepreneurs here, but I think helping others is about the best thing a person can do.
Yes, it could be better, but in the grand scheme of things it's a major improvement over what came before. Less than a century ago, in WWII, bombers often missed their target by miles. Miles. We are orders of magnitude more accurate, leading to smaller amounts of explosive used, and fewer people being killed by accident.

No, it's never good when an unintended person is killed, but let's keep things in perspective.
> Then there are the two privilege escalation issues I can’t discuss yet because of responsible disclosure issues;

Known privelege escalations, used in the wild to attack nuclear power stations and you can't disclose them? That's irresponsible non-disclosure in my book.
He misses the point. You still need to operate in two different environments, but it's possible to share a large set of code, business logic and helper functionality.
I think you're taking that a little too personally. It's supposed to be a generalization, not a steadfast rule that applies to absolutely everyone. I also don't think falsifiability is really a problem here. I've met people who do this - one person in particular comes to mind, someone who very obviously tries to hold difficult-to-understand opinions in order to signal his intelligence (a philosophy major at a state university, he informed me that I "don't understand philosophy" when I called him out on wordy bullshit). Most cases aren't nearly so obvious, but if you think about it you'll probably realize you know someone who does this as well; perhaps you'll even think of instances when you've done it.

Readers of Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong, or at least some of them, participate not to feel superior to those who don't read OB or LW but to, well, overcome their own biases and self-improve. Given that you seem to feel attacked by the article, I think you're taking it the wrong way.
Ask YC: How many apps for the winter funding cycle have you received?
In the application guidelines, it says there's a significant advantage to applying early. Just curious as to how many teams have taken advantage of that and already applied.
I know people who drink 5-6 cups a day and are able to be quite productive with strangely little sleep, but it's never worked for me, so either I'm missing something or it doesn't work the same way on me. For me, a single cup of coffee, or occasionally two, can help me feel a bit more awake and energetic. But once it gets to 3+, I get jittery and can't concentrate--- have to get up and go for a walk outside or something.
It cost $368 Million when the FAA forced operators to replace Mylar insulation (cause of at least two accidents):

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_10_19/ai_n129...

According to this very interesting IEEE article, it costs anywhere from $1-5M per airplane, which doesn't include lost business cost:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/down-to-the-wire...