skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That diagnosis about the second group fits me to a T. 100% correct you are, Sir.

I have been a programmer longer, mostly cracking games and writing x86 asm and DOS stuff with Turbo C; but I became a developer on Microsoft's platform and under their auspices.

After Microsoft, I went through a few years of insane productivity and deep, god-level hacking. I have chronicled those stories else on HN. Here is one:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=972423

After I found "success" elsewhere as a programmer. When I finally saw a product of mine being used, shipped, bought, deployed. When I started seeing bug-reports, requests for bulk prices, discounts, and yes, piracy. That's when I made peace with Microsoft and went back to using Windows. I am typing this on XP.

They're an OK company with an OK platform, just not when you're young and impressionable. Beware of the bastards and use portable, 3rd party libraries.

I am done with this thread ..
Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?
I'm noticing lately many quality articles don't get any votes in the new links. What happened? Is HN grown so much that people submit many articles? Did you noticed the same problem?
Mulve - A new downloading nightmare for the Music Industry?
> I should think his skill would let him be selective with his clients if he chose.

I would assume he gets multiple job offers every month and he may even honor one or two, so he is already selective, otherwise he'd be employed at a large figure instead of pushing forward on his own agenda.

His major asset at this point in time is his reputation, which he has been very careful to build up, if he wanted to take the 'easy money' route out I'm sure he'd be clever enough to do so.

The fact that he doesn't and that he's a smart fellow to me says that there will be lots more to come, but on Patricks time-table and nobody else's.

Incidentally, I did a poll earlier today about the possible downsides of openness I never saw a post like this one coming, all this is possible because Patrick chose to be frank with the world instead of miserly with the information about his business. No good deed goes unpunished.
Retinal cone cells transplanted into blind mice
i'd point out the fact that you don't have to follow the "standard tech startup" checklist if you have a good idea.

get a real job to help pay down your bills, save up, and work on your company in your free time. or work on your startup most of the time and do consulting/freelance work to make ends meet.
Is this open source?

I could find the github for Apollo but what about StratifiedJS

Adding some concurrency in javascript is an interesting idea, I wonder how this would blend with coffeescript...
Business continuity applies only if we're talking about Java vs Ruby/Python/etc.

If the choice is between Ruby and Python and Clojure and any of the "esoteric" languages as far as enterprises are concerned, that's a red herring.
Just came from San Francisco to NY. If you think it's bad here...walk around downtown SF sometime ;-)
Study: Traffic lights should respond to cars, not the other way around
Locksmith Calabasas
Even if it does it's a pretty remote possibility that it'll be exploitable if you limit the input to say 100 bytes. Pretty hard to get a Perl or Ruby level program of that size to exploit some memory corruption at the C level.
I find it absurd that the author has written an entire life and career analysis for Patrick based on this single sentence:

“I have not enjoyed getting teachers who make $60k
explain to me why I need to subsidize them (haven’t hit
$60k in my entire life).”

That's unfair to Partick, and frankly, kind of a rude thing to do so publicly. Good job though, you got a comment out of me!
The "computationally interesting" stuff shouldn't be handled by your web framework. That's not its job. What Rails does well is let you get a baseline-nice web application with many common features up and running without much fuss.
Think of everything that went before as a training exercise.

> I think Patrick is a Woz and he needs to find his Jobs.

I would rather see it the opposite way, Patricks business skills and insights far outpace his technical capacity to implement at this point in time, I would not dream of presuming who he should work with but if that person had him do a/b testing or coding that would be an utter waste of talent.
Things about the Mac that annoy new users from PC-land
Apple's also not worth $267B. Based on the current rate that people are selling Apple stock, the demand for Apple stock makes for an equilibrium price such that Apple's market cap is $267B. But if every share of stock were up for sale, they'd have to lower the price to sell it all because there aren't an infinite number of people willing to buy Apple stock at a $267B valuation.

Facebook is probably more overvalued by this because so little Facebook stock is up for sale, but it's not really fair to make this argument about Facebook without mentioning that the same issue exists for all publicly traded companies as well (save a company where all of its stock is changing hands every day).
C# is evolving, it's not just randomly, breaking-ly changing. It is a good thing.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Business Tier?

Why ROR? Speedy development, fun programming language, easy to build, test, iterate, repeat etc. Easy to migrate DB's, lots of scaffolding to reduce amount of code you need to write. Tons of great plugins written for the stack, very active community, some incredibly talented developers work on the stack.

ROR is perfectly suited for building out a great web app, quickly. And yes, it does scale ;)
Rails MVC blurs the distinction between a "pure" business tier and a db access layer.

The intention behind the design of ActiveRecord is that the db access logic is done automagically and you can make AR models your domain model.

The recent trend of adding various finders, etc. to AR models blurs the conceptual clarity a bit. Some plugins also blur this clarity.

Generally you should be able to use AR models as business objects, just be aware that there might be a few other behaviors added on that aren't strictly part of the business rules. This might irritate some people.

You are certainly free to write your business logic as separate classes as you see fit. Rails doesn't tell you not to. It just offers a convention that is often very reasonable for most peoples' needs.
It's the magic. The fact that rails extends data types and adds implied functions to your models without you having to tell it to. The fact that lines like:

cookies[:remember_token] = { :value => user.id,
:expires => 20.years.from_now.utc }

Do exactly what you think they will, without having to define everything. That's the "magic" behind rails. It let's you focus on the application rather than the framework.
Get email notifications of HN replies with Notifo (YC W10)
I love amusing the "submit a better translation" feature.
The author of Greasemonkey works on the Chrome team now (he's also an HN user, I believe). So pretty much all Greasemonkey scripts work in Chrome by default (they're extensions).

Also, have you tried the Chrome Developer Tools? They rival Firebug. You might like them even more.
Foursquare creates "real-world" badges with RunKeeper
And any grey suit that deals with the web knows about YellowPages.com which is a Rails site, as is newyorkjets.com.

Google is a compelling argument, no doubt, but if the biz dudes are open to switching from a "traditional" language/framework such as Java/J2EE or .Net, there are other "established" players that use Ruby.

Please don't take this as defending Ruby, the best tool for the job should win out. If the team proposing Python is well-versed in Python, that's what they should go with. But saying that Python is a better bet than Ruby, because Google embraces it is a bit of a strawman.
Well, it's not a contest; it's a "challenge" -- a tool for motivating yourself to do something. I'm sure the organizers won't mind if you define your own challenge for yourself.
That's why I voted the submission up. Reading that post made me think of my own skills that need developed and promoted. I am a smart guy with some unique abilities; I'm confident that with some focused effort, I could be capable of providing great value and getting appropriately compensated for it.

I'm sure that the blog post was intended not only to encourage and promote patio11, but to give all of us a wakeup call that we, too, are capable of providing that same level of value with a little bit of work and dedication.
The reason is that the software was always very difficult (and expensive)

People that had, and could drive, Solidworks weren't interested in making one-off bits of jewelry and the artists that were couldn't drive the CAD system.
China Withholds Valuable Materials Needed for Electric Cars From Japan
More Fitness Fun (RunKeeper and Foursquare partnership)
She had the summer off before starting a master(in library science no less ;p). She also participated in a few 24 hour reading marathons. She has a blog about stuff she reads: http://talesandtreats.blogspot.com/
That's true for Office and software packages like Webmail.

But if you build a system using Microsoft's tools and you ask for support, they'll tell you that the problem is with your code, not their tools. They'll support issues with your web server, database server, and even your IDE, but when it comes to the code itself, there's no level of support they can truly offer.

This is from 10 years of personal experience working in an MS centric organization. I get as much support on my Ruby code from MS as I get for the ASP code I wrote. None.

But people up the chain don't get this - they think "if we use the MS stack, we can blame them when something goes wrong."

I'll gladly take $200,000 a year from a company so they can feel like they can blame me when their apps don't work. I'll just charge them so many points per issue, have them run some diagnostics tool I send them, and say "you have a problem with your code. Can't help you."
Exactly. People are complicated, not two dimensional card-board cut-outs of wannabe rich guys. Whatever motivates Patrick is up to him and him alone.

This to me seems like helping a person to the other side of the street with the best intentions by frog marching them there only to find out they didn't want to be there in the first place.
Hi HN. We are testing out a new feature on Notifo: email notifications. We've setup a special landing page for you to play with it.

Once you enable the email notifications, you'll be emailed anytime someone replies to one of your comments on an HN thread, so you won't have to sit on HN all day frantically refreshing the page :)

Also, if you want updates for your HN Karma points, I am using another site called Femtoo - http://femtoo.com/ - (which also supports Notifo) that will check my karma every so often and notify me when it changes.

Let us know if you have any questions/comments/feedback! Also feel free to use this thread as a reply playground to test out the new emails.

Hopefully these email notifications will also help Android and BB users that have push email, while we are still working away at native clients; but of course this feature works for anyone that has an email account :)
So (just out of curiosity) how does the school actually use this stock to do anything? Do they sell it off to interested individuals? Does the SEC allow that?

Can they use the stock as a collateral to a loan? What happens when they pull a $50 million loan to build schools and the stock is suddenly worth $25 million?
I'm certain I'm not the only one who paged down looking for his comment.
Love has many meanings, yes. If love is a stretch for you (or does not come naturally) at least try your best to respect their mother, treat her kindly, speak well of her, support her the best you can, and encourage her. These simple steps will do more for a child than you might realize - I don't care what the media says, parenting is really a team effort.
Power users love things that sync. Synchronization means you can work from any computer and expect the same basic environment.

I've gotten hosed by Sync before. I switched OSes not realizing I was also switching to an older version of Chrome. In the process of syncing I lost a few months of bookmarks (it looked like all the bookmarks I had saved with the newer Chrome were gone).

So I'm using Xmarks now.
Love the concept. I think you'll do great.

One major latency issue (I don't know if you can resolve it or not): every single Facebook like button has to load separately; it takes a long time. If you can solve that, I think you have a winner.
I just got an email from NCR telling me not to worry about Blockbuster Express, that it is wholly owned by NCR, and will continue serving videos for a while. So if NCR owned the express kiosks, wtf did blockbuster own that was still valuable?
I think you could turn "The Genius and Tragedy of..." into a recurring series of articles. I believe there are several people here on Hacker News who are getting drastically underpaid (relative to their talent). Anyone brazen enough to nominate others?
Outsourcing Jobs...that Can't be Outsourced
MVC and the N-Tier systems some similarities, but differ in their implementation. I came from a 3-Tier background where everything was simply divided, DB, Business, Output. Most of the time, the 3-Tier acts like MVC because you're accessing DB From the Business Layer then Showing it on the View.

Where they differ, and this is from my experience (feel free to correct me) is that in MVC, the Views have an attachment to the Controllers. Basically a view can only have one controller. Views can have multiple partial views, but ultimately belong to one controller. In the n-tier system, the view can be abstracted to the point where it does not care what is going to be shown.

Once you wrap your head around MVC, it is hard to go back, especially for Web products.

ROR also takes care of a lot of your db schema and logic, so you can focus on programming, not writing CRUD statements.
>No good deed goes unpunished.

It's true, yet this ends up pointing to the old trope about there being no such thing as bad press. Uncomfortable or no, you can't ask for better visibility than a story like this.
Guidelines for efficient R programming
松本武 - At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit.

Agreed.

松本武 - To how many times like the wind, a pole, and the dragon?

I don't know... 5, maybe 7?

松本武 - Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows

Was that a Windows install?

松本武 - goat-time see like the wind, pole, and dragon?

Goat-time... is that like happy hour?

松本武 - This insult to father's stones?

Ow... don't bring my father's stones into this.

松本武 - JSP error handler with wind, pole, dragon with intercourse to goat-time?

I knew Oracle was taking Java downhill, but whoa... a dragon? No way.

松本武 - Or chance lack of skill with a goat-time?

Would you care to participate in a game of skill?

松本武 - Please apologize for your stupidity.

I'm sorry.

松本武 - There are a many thank you

You are welcome!
Also - for services that have many events, we recently added event settings to the site (previously was just in the iPhone app). That means you can fine tune how, when and where notifications are delivered (including email).

The HN service only has one event (Replies) but other services like Push.ly have many (@ replies, DMs, favorites, and so on). If you use push.ly for example, you can access event settings here: http://notifo.com/user/settings_events/11

Happy Thursday,
Stammy
Ask HN: how to get "real" contracting gigs
I'm currently working as a contractor software developer, however all my jobs are for other IT companies who deliver work for the end clients.

I'd like to be in the position of delivering solutions directly to clients for two reasons - first, more lucrative, second the freedom to choose the technical solution rather than what the contracting company decides I should choose.

Could any contractors out there tell me how they got their first "real" clients ? Was it just knowing the right people, or are there steps you can take to market yourself outside the IT world ?
Not only that, but he'll have inroads into law, accounting, and other professional markets that pay big. There's almost no limit to how big he can get, and he has the skills to do it, if he chooses.
Blog spam. Link to original article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r... As usual, Friedman is inadvertently amusing. For example, he writes "China also has regular rotations of power at the top ..."

As far as I am aware, the most recent change in government (at least in the Western sense) was in 1949.
Reading this article would be worth your time.
I think it all started with Joel's "Language Wars" article http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html for which DHH responded with "Fear, Uncertain, and Doubt by Joel Spolsky" http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000596.html. They have been at loggerheads since then.
Ask HN: What have you built? (not software related)
I guess hackers like to just build stuff. What have you built other than sotware? Maybe a crib for your new born child, maybe a house, maybe a bike etc...
So true, but I think he meant "hack stuff together with the intention it will be thrown away in 2 years"
> Does anyone else find this kind of "analysis" of a fellow HN member creepy?

Yep. If it were me I'd feel highly uncomfortable.

It seems to come with the territory though, the more visible you are the more stuff like this you can expect.

> I don't know if this is a cultural thing, (not a US citizen, the majority of HN's readership seems to be) but I found the whole blog post weird and highly distasteful. The author comes across as a borderline stalker. Slimy.

I think the post is actually with the best of intentions but completely fails in two important aspects:

(1) I don't get the impression Patrick was asked if this was ok with him

(2) It is a huge post based on a single line in a comment
which talks about Patricks achievements to date, and
talks about him as though that's going to be his lot
in life.
I'm curious: What do people making games like this do about graphics? You couldn't possibly afford to pay someone, and I can't imagine that everyone with a game idea is also skilled at drawing and/or modeling.
Apple Passes PetroChina to Become World's Second Largest Stock
I had to go and check out the author's "about" page and skimmed over a few "just-got-a-bath-and-haircut" posts. Idle nonsense. The "about" page is that of a bored, spoiled psychopath.
As already pointed out, if he was really thinking about Patrick he'd have emailed him the advice rather making a huge blog post about it.
That's a good point. I was simply speaking from a usage standpoint, not for development. Also, I suspect you're talking about javascript speed -- I was mainly addressing non-javascript rendering. Chrome feels basically instant, while Firefox's rendering takes an extra 300-500ms.. just enough to feel really sluggish.
You know you've made it when people you don't know start publicly criticizing you. Props, Patrick ;-)
O-o-o-o-h! who can forgot this one. The technical brilliance of scattering profiler calls across Solaris sources (which endeavor took enormous engineering and marketing budgets at the time when Solaris was eaten alive by Linux) is, no doubt, a sound platform to "mediocrate" a company whose products in a highly competitive marketplace are among the leaders, technically and commercially (people actually pay to use them, whereis Sun had trouble convincing people to use its products, in particular Solaris, even for free)

Apples to apples - Oracle DB has excellent profiler capabilities and even useful tools around it. Of course, in this day and age, excellent profiler capabilities and tools is just a normal must-have, a technical mediocracy and nowhere a sign of technical brilliance.

Great, the more of "we (for there are many of us) realized that we could go solve much more interesting problems elsewhere", the less chances for the Oracle server to suffer the fate of Solaris.
The stock market is well regulated but the bond markets a lot less so, hence that's where Wall Street makes big profits (when times are good.) They make serious profits as 'market makers' (standing between buyers and sellers) with bonds.
I'm curious what the convention is for determining the gender of participles for foreign words. My suggestion is to use "Das" or "Der" instead of "Die", especially when the context is not completely clear. The URL domain saves you this time, still, why wouldn't you use the German word for community? When I first saw this headline I thought you were quoting someone who threatened the entire internet with death.
My Self-Esteem
Vimium: http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnh...

I find this to be the perfect browser experience. It enables a lot of the VIM key bindings without altering the browser's regular settings. Meaning, I can still use the mouse just fine.

/ works for find. j,k for moving up down.
If it were me I could have done without it.
Where Will Tomorrow's Billionaires Come From?
I've only been on one project where HR was so far divorced from the team executing on a project to hire candidates without us vetting them, and it was (unsurprisingly) a complete disaster.

Also, if you're hiring programmers who can't pick up a new language to work on your project, you're doing it wrong. Most of the capable folks I've worked with loved learning new tech; the problem is usually keeping them from jumping onto a new platform for every project.
And unlike most of these jokers, you actually have the bet on.
I was having fun with it when translating from one non English to another non English language. The fun part it that it translates Lang1->English->Lang2 and when it does not know how to translate word X from Lang1 to English it just sometimes chooses similar English word and then translates it to Lang2. Often result is hilarious.
Unfortunately, you cannot convince the masses in the midst of a bubble that they are in one. The cows stampede in the direction of the stampede.
These are all valid points, but they are logically equivalent to saying "I don't understand why anyone pays $12 for a Ke$ha album".

You may not agree on the worth of the album or of the shares, and nobody is forcing you to buy either one. That some people do consider it a good price is enough to result in a market price for both, on the basis of which many decisions are made.
"yet he spent 6 years promoting a product (which I might add only took him a few days to create) that is only now just breaking the $1000 or $2000/month mark"

Absolutely, and Amazon spent about the same amount of time bleeding hundreds of millions of debt _every quarter_. Notch (of minecraft fame) spent several years making little java applet games with barely any fanfare and barely eking out an earning if at all (he had a few day jobs prior to breaking free and founding Mojang Specifications).

There's no time limit in creating or running your own business, and there is no marker of success except those defined by the founder's goals. Is it always a good idea to enter a market you don't care about just because it's big? Not really, or else everyone would be making operating systems and office suites.