skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If someone swapped out your CPU for a slower one, would you notice?
Faster Webpages with Cookieless Domains (With Keynote Testing)
This seems to be what Flask is to Django and what Sinatra is to Rails (From a very brief amount observation). There's a huge trend to move into more "lightweight", "self-hosted" types of development.

After building a moderate sized application (currently around 5-6k LOC) in .NET MVC2, some of Jacksonh's decisions start to make a little sense. However, there are a lot of situations when a paradigm seems neat but in reality it might not be _that_ useful.

For instance you can respond to queries using Lambdas/Anonymous delegates like Get("/foo", ctx => ctx.response.write ("foo")); YAY! I made a HTTP Response in just one line.

But looking at about 17 different endpoints I have in my application, not one will benefit from this feature. In the current model, I may spend a minute or two defining an action and specifying the route, but will spend atleast half an hour implementing it. For some reason, everyone seems to be focussed on cutting down the two minutes to one minute.

Also, this means that the routes aren't in one place. MVC2 has named routes and I can quickly change things from a single function. I used to like Flask's technique of making routing easier by simply specifying the route as a function attribute/decorator - but this made maintaining it quite hard.

Also, this tries to do everything. For instance, it allows you to serve static files as well like -Route ("/Content/", new StaticContentModule ()); When I have something like nginx which is known to serve files in a very efficient manner, there isn't any reason why I'd choose to let this server do it.

This seems fantastic for a quick hack and a tiny mashup, but for anything bigger, I'd definitely give it a second look.
Key players in the social games industry are reimagining the digital horizon.
> "...and now you're a discriminatory hirer."

Damn right. I hire based on who will be good at the job.

> "What is not fun is the mental masturbation of keeping up-to-date on all the latest-and-greatest languages and frameworks. What is not fun is building something with no tangible benefit. What is not fun is being insulted and dismissed by people who expect everyone to have the same interests and motivations as themselves."

Couldn't agree more.

> " Your attitude about what constitutes a balanced life and a good hacker is very shortsighted and frankly offensive."

Sorry, but you're kinda proving my point. The fact you don't want to spend more time on hacking rather than spending time with friends, means you'd make a bad employee for a startup.

> "Why do we expect hackers to work for free in their leisure time?"

I didn't say that at all. And FWIW, I play in a band as well. But I also spend an hour or so a day just playing for fun - because I enjoy it.
It makes you wonder how many servers Amazon adds per week..
Great idea with much potential.

Have you solved the problem how to sandbox/protect against apps that have gone wild?

Are you allowing or planning to clone using git protocol instead of http?

Do you support or have planned custom domains?
As a .NET/PHP on Linux developer, I 100% agree. I just wanted to provide a counterexample. ;)
Correct.

Larry also owns a beach house in the mansions area of Newport, Rhode Island, aka sailing capital of the world (the main street connecting to the dwarfs is called America's Cup Avenue).
Translation: "I don't like the data."
Enterprise Software Doesn't Have to Suck
Just cost.

There were some issues with a high number of writes, but it has got better.

The unscheduled downtime also killed us.

But really, it was just the sheer amount of traffic. Real-time multi-player games that people have with them all the time can just create a ton of requests.
Ask HN: Advice for Hackathon?
I am planning on attending the TechCruch Disrupt Hackathon this weekend. It looks like it will be a lot of fun and hopefully I will meet some cool people.

I have never done a hackathon like this before. Do you have any advice for doing well at one of these events? If you participated in the Disrupt hacakthon in NY, what was your experience like? What kinds of hacks were made and which ones did well?

Right now I don't have a team, I'm just doing it on my own. Should I look to join a team or convince some of my friends to do it with me, or is it viable to do this alone?

One idea I had is to make a HTML5 gel electrophoresis simulator. You input a selection of basepairs (ideally the user will be able to use a genebank), select your restriction enzymes, and then the simulator will output what your expected gel will look like. This would be useful for students and researchers because often your gel comes out really smudged and ugly so it would be nice to know what it was supposed to look like. I also have another idea that is much cooler, but would re-use some old code of mine, so I'm not sure if it qualifies.
Are you commenting on my taste in typography (trust me, mine is worse than the web site for my software security company, which I didn't do[1]), or the post?

(You've got me dead to rights on Avant Garde, but I don't think your case is as solid with Clarendon; isn't Pitchfork using it ironically? Clearly Ruby Tuesday is.)

My criticism is about the post. You clearly could write an excellent post like this, and you should. This author didn't. There's no context to any of its selections. There's no information about any of its selections. Some of them (Univers/Avenir/Frutiger, Helvetica/Akzidenz) seem suspect because they're too similar. "Here I've made a collection of every face I've seen used on Underconsideration.com, added 1 sentence to each, and started soaking up the link juice".

You can beat up on me --- an avowed non-designer --- all you want, but I'm not the one getting articles like this flung to the top of Google's search results for cash.

[1] I wouldn't beat up on our designers too much, since we (a) gave them a wordmark set in Avenir to work with and (b) very haphazardly converted their output to Haml/Sass. Believe me when I say that the people who pay us don't care that much.
Learning to program well is a complicated bootstrapping process. You can't start out writing full-fledged, high quality apps (because you won't have the skills), nor can you start out by reading production code (because most of it'll just go over your head).
It looks like right now it doesn't require a location (such as a city).

Something like that would be useful so I could search by stuff happening in my area.

I would hate to show up to a "will be at Pete's on 15th" meetup only to find out they are talking about NYC and I am thinking of the Petes in Dallas.
Not to downplay the importance of what they've done, but that video shows a plane gliding, accelerated by a car.

Wouldn't they need to show lift via the flapping of wings to show that it isn't a glider with wings that flap, but rather the flapping of wings is actually creating lift?
I've always wanted a device to strap to my handlebars that takes a short video loop. It also has a rear camera, so i get "all around" view. If I press a button, it saves the video. This can be coupled with a bluetooth or usb connection to phone/laptop/whatever, and automatically uploads the video, along with gps coords, to a website. This site can be community based, where sharing the videos is encouraged. Since the license plates of the cars involved are also then visible, perhaps a lookup of name and other info can be automated, and a complaint filed to the appropriate authorities.

Other embarrassment could be arranged too -- but the line to harrassment here is narrow...
Solar Trees Sprouting Up In Cambodia
Cool service.

You might want to be careful with the word "guarantee" however -- I entered an example book (0312185480) and your price was $3 while the going used price on Amazon is $7.75 (plus a s&h allowance). I checked the faq for the guarantee details and didn't see anything.

I personally would switch to focusing on ease instead of price since selling books one at a time via Amazon is quite painful.
It's interesting that a pay cut and a down-grade in title isn't what did it but that their marginalization of his input and control is what pushed him over the edge.
Some ideas:

- Bill on a per-use basis

- Hours of usage are prepaid like calling cards

- Ads

- Selling data collected to others (and it doesn't even have to be personally identifying customer info. I worked for a company that did speed tests and at one point a company in another country that knew of our speed tests wanted to buy our speed test result data. We never sold it, but sometimes offers come to you!)

- Donations (via paypal, etc.)

Can it generate enough money from Ads? Not as well as it used to be able to, but yes it is possible. Is it likely without much effort? Depends on amount and kind of site traffic and content of the Ads.

You need to have confidence in what product or service you are selling, though, and have a potential/real customer feedback loop setup from the beginning. You shouldn't rely on Ads alone. If no one is coming to your site, they won't click on the Ads.
So you're just impersonating Alex Krupp?
I've used latex2rtf for such things, followed by some light manual fixups and saving as .doc. It's annoying and I tend to consider if I really want to apply to such a company or not, but sometimes it is worth the extra hassle.
It's interesting marketing, also I like the mockery of future proofing and his "Ship it!" type attitude (despite his lack of shipping)

Inappropriate?
Writer for iPad
Very interesting. I am in the area soon and will set up a side trip to come and visit the road that leads to the dwarfs.
Can't edit the post, but there's a significant factor I also forgot: don't forget Google's bonuses, they're significant (I keep hearing 30%, but can't confirm it) and haven't been rescinded during the recession. So now, you're talking >$140k; that's a great deal given the other factors (name recognition, benefits).
I don't know much about Blogger, but as it's a SAAS, how customisable is it? Can you host your own PHP pages, can you do really what you want with the theme?

I think there are differences to consider between hosted blogs and blog scripts you can actually install on your own server and customise the way you want.

Am I right?
It's no more or less relevant than any of the other Flash-on-the-iPhone/Flash-on-Android posts here. Especially considering Apple just opened the App Store to Adobe Flash developers.
I'll second this. A very common bike accident scenario involves a bike on a sidewalk on a busy street. The driver turning left is only looking at the two lanes of traffic. A biker crossing on a sidewalk moves so fast that the car will often not account for him. Be on the road and be visible.
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Samuari, and how it applies to rubyists
I can kind of see this for GE, because it isn't a software company.

Every large company is a software company, whether they know it or not. Failure to provide a career path for software engineering professionals on the technical side of the fence is a poor strategy, period.
Thanks for the reply. Do you think another hosting environment (factoring in the administration costs and all) would have been cheaper?
Good point, but after THAT... horrors.
It seems kind of obvious that most successful startups don't succeed via the business model they started with. And that great founders can change business models more easily than great business models can change founders. These things are so obvious that they're cliches, in fact, but that doesn't mean that they're common practice.
If you want to actually make this happen, read the book, "Parent Effectiveness Training" by Thomas Gordon. Get over the title and understand this is about active participation in a conversation with two people. You listen. You let the other person talk. You don't try to solve their problem, at least until or unless they want it. Let them express, and sometimes that alone is enough. It works whether in business, personal relationships, or even parental relationships.

Brilliant Rands blog entry.
So each player generates a request every 10 seconds? Sorry, but that's way off. Every time they click, at least, generates a request. And then there's the famous Zynga tracking. There's no way it averages to less than a request a second.
How People From 1900 Imagined the Future
For my defence, I also lead you to the get_search_form() function that does NOT return the search form as a variable, but that really writes it as HTML

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_search_for...

So what, don't have I the right to bitch around WP naming for functions?
You could say the same thing about music, architecture, wood-working, painting, cooking, writing, etc. In general, people who have a heart-felt passion for the art are likelier to be better at it than others.

If all of the software in the world that was created out of passion and love for the craft suddenly disappeared overnight the world would be a much worse place.
Might as well add an accelerometer to automatically save if it exceeds a threshold.
You may be interested in taking the Mansion's Tour. Stop by the Visitor Center. It costs $20 but you get to ride a energy-efficient Charlie Car. If you get the right tour guide, he will point out to you Larry's house on the tour.

For good food at reasonable prices, try The Barking Crab.
It took far too long to load, poor ux.
Fits.me raises €1.3 million, lets you try on clothes before you buy – on the Web
As of writing this post, in WordPress's directory there are 11,351 plugins and 1,239 themes.

Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/

I'd call the API a success: it has thousands of authors releasing thousands of plugins and themes and this is only the code that's been released open-source.
An 'impossible' card puzzle
That is an interesting way to look at it. Didn't Zed Shaw say something very similar in a post a few months back?
IMHO it tries to do too much, and doesn't have enough resources.

A platform that resembles Java / .NET would also make porting of existing libraries easier.
I agree. The author comes across more as a midshipman in the US Navy talking with a fellow enlistee rather than as a professional. As an entrepreneur, I would not want to have as an investor someone who thinks in the terms that his writing reflects. Life is too short. Others have similar or better qualifications and are more pleasant to deal with. I would prefer someone who comes across as being more "bien eleve."
you're correct. the differences between wordpress and blogger are vast. you've mentioned the big ones already.

blogger is...

- easy to setup

- hard to customize

- limited in terms of features / plugins (if any)

- hosted as a service
Yes.

I'd also add that in many cases, riding on the sidewalk is illegal. It doesn't bother me when I see little kids doing it, but if you're a grownup you should be riding on the street, with traffic, in accordance with traffic law.

When I still lived in a small rural "micropolitan" area before moving to Akron a few years back, I was a road rider and belonged to a local bike club. There is no way they would have tolerated members riding on the sidewalk, and they stressed heavily that bikes are legally regarded as vehicles and have to obey the same rules.

I've since given it up, since I live in a high traffic suburb of Akron and being deaf, can't hear oncoming traffic. This wasn't a big deal on rural back roads, but now that there's a lot more traffic around me, it makes me nervous.
Cabin has wheels under it. I think in an ideal environment, for example a runway, he could have created lift by just flapping the wings with enough speed over a certain period of time.
Thanks! That's a great feedback. That's one of the things I left out and will address with the next push.

I didn't want to make the event creation very complex, so I was thinking of pushing the location/map specification as a step after the base event is created.
In DC it's only illegal to ride on the sidewalks in a very specific, downtown business district that's marked by a lot of pedestrian traffic.

I wouldn't say it's all that safe on the street in DC. I've very nearly been run over by cars (especially cabs) that want to turn right out of a circle (which even has a bike lane).
Solar Antennas from MIT
concentrate solar energy 100x more than a normal photovoltaic cell
I've thought a lot about this exact problem. My ideas involved webcams and some scaling/modeling algorithms. This seems more...baroque, but probably more accurate than my ideas. Fascinating stuff.
> When I have something like nginx which is known to serve files in a very efficient manner, there isn't any reason why I'd choose to let this server do it.

For localhost development.
They crashed in the morning, starting around 6:35am.
So where does a guy like Gosling go now? Google seems to be serving the role that Bell Labs once did in giving all the top technical dogs a big playground but other than that it's hard to guess where he might fit in.
my experience is that non-profits are just as niggardly as ordinary businesses are, if not more so, but there's no incentive for the organization or its employees to do any better... nothing ever has an upside.
> Sorry, but you're kinda proving my point. The fact you don't want to spend more time on hacking rather than spending time with friends, means you'd make a bad employee for a startup.

When did we start talking about startups?
When I ride on the sidewalk, any time I approach any sort of driveway where a car might be turning, I make sure there's none approaching that could potentially turn into it.

Also, I live in Dallas - we don't really have sidewalk traffic. Every time I ride my bike, I can count on one hand the number of people I see pedesting.
Job security, 401k, health care benefits, etc. Same reasons anyone signs up as a permanent employee anywhere.
> If all of the software in the world that was created out of passion and love for the craft suddenly disappeared overnight the world would be a much worse place.

That is a problem in my opinion. If someone is creating that much value, that person should be getting appropriately compensated.
NSF Graduate Fellowships–An Overview
you can rewrite a lot of the WP functionality by writing a plugin. if your plugin is popular, it's modifications may be absorbed into the core software that is distributed at wordpress.org. you're calling open source development dirty workarounds.
Maybe I'm missing something about what this 'product' does, so please correct me if I'm wrong but...

doesn't it take longer to purchase and 'install' this product than it would take me to expand my canvas, do a screengrab of my browser, and paste it into a layer?

why would I spend the extra time (and of course money) to be able to do this?
I live in Dallas - it's not a bike friendly area. Cars already ignore bicycles. I'm interested in protecting myself RIGHT NOW when I'm riding, not at some point in the future after I've educated everyone on the road.

And I'm familiar with the hazards of being on the sidewalk. Dallas isn't a place where people walk - I can count on one hand the number of pedestrians I see. When I approach some sort of intersection-like area where a car could be, I make sure a car isn't approaching, etc., etc.

I literally bike like everyone is out to kill me.
Yeah, I bet Franklin W. Dixon could write better copy ;-)

(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1705714)
Yes, you should ride as if you are a target, but at the same time you should also somewhat ride as if you own the road, because that increases your visibility. The challenge is the proper mixing of the two.
"The more code I write, the more code I get wrong."
Apparently this are 1,000 ec2 instances not real servers. This changes a lot of things.

Btw how is it possible that 10 or 20 years ago using megaflops or MIPS (or other sane measures of computer power) was normal and now we are here talking about "servers"? :)

Edit: I'm searching around the internet if there is some new general measure of computer power that is able to reflect the real-world performance in non scientific applications. No luck so far.
currently have the 5" dell streak, amazing phone / tablet, barely turned on my pc at home since I got it.

5" makes more sense to get people using them. 7 will just be too much for most people to carry all the time and get use out of.
As long as its in addition to the button, instead of in place of it. Lots of aggressive driver actions don't result in crazy acceleration on my part.
I find it hard to believe that a grown adult can write like that. The whole thing was formatted and written like a MySpace bulletin from a high school kid circa 2004. Obviously the man is good at what he does but there is something to be said for tactfully dealing with problems like this.
It's 5.5 MB worth of small images. The author has used PNGs while he should have used JPGs, compressed them badly and coded it so that they all loaded at once. Poor user experience is often result of poor engineering practices.

edit: also, the CV page won't load in my browser because of the broken markup. Not the best way to attract employers, if you asked me.
And here is the blog post explaining why they did it: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-place-to-find-eve...
I'm not really commenting on your taste or the article, but the manner in which you criticized the article. I agree that the article lacked substance and isn't deserving of so many upvotes. However, your comments about specific fonts were made in a matter-of-fact way that suggested you were a designer or typography expert. It gets a bunch of upvotes, and the programmers on here come away from the comments thinking that Clarendon and Avant Garde are irrelevant, etc., when the truth might be the opposite. My comment regarding your website was only to make the point that, suspect as the OP might be, your comments should be taken with a grain of salt as well.
Because people voted it up! Pretty cool site if you ask me.
Developing facebook social games..what should i know?
I am thinking of developing a social game on facebook. I wonder where to find developer type material for these type of games. It will be similar in vain to farmville. I know farmville is flash based, is it possible to develop such a game without flash? Are there any established methodologies for these types of games. I am hoping to keep the game simple and get it out ASAP.
There's this -

http://www.vagabondish.com/looxcie-wearable-bluetooth-camera...

And also the GoPro

http://www.goprocamera.com/

Neither of which quite match your requirements, though.
Top reasons why OEM deals are not the guaranteed road to success
OK, take a look at the samples on this page ... http://bit.ly/9NPVtg

And then honestly tell me you can live without Intellisense.

Don't you just love the ... private @Inject @PojoExecutorProxy IServiceExecutorProxy serviceExecutor ?
Canvas, Flash and SVG Mobile Comparison
I only know about hackers and startups. I have absolutely no idea how drone programmers behave/get motivation/work.

So yes, my original comment is talking about hackers. Not "Systems Analysis Architect"s or whatever.
I wouldn't say it's marketing, it's just a fun placeholder with some wit.
TechCrunch's excerpt of CrunchGear's summary of Engadget's summary of

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870386010457550...
If it worked like that, WordPress would already be OOPed and MVCed isn't it?
I have found the best remedy for unfriendly drivers is to bike more aggressively. This is non-intuitive, but works. If drivers are not politely giving you room or consideration, drive in the middle of the lane. Go slow and wave politely when they scream, honk or whatever at you. They may be dumb, but know they can't get away with "I didn't see him" when you are causing a scene.

The nuances of how to do this well depend on rules of the road for your state, but it generally works very well.

No matter what you feel, the data shows that you're estimates and approach to safety in this case are just plain wrong.