skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
American news this morning is non-stop about all the help from the USA, as if it's the only way we can relate to it. I wish I could still get CNN International it was a much better quality perspective about nearly everything.

What's interesting to me about all this, that I learned from the endless news, is that people in Chile have their own second class citizens - Bulgarians. I guess every country has a different nationality or ethnicity to pick on which is sad.
Offline support is up to the developer -- there are many applications where the notion doesn't make sense: imagine an offline Google or and offline Twitter. But having nice logical models certainly helps organize an offline application.

The first thing you would do is override Backbone.sync to save your models to Local Storage instead of the server:

http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#Sync
We have a customer who decided to renegotiate our support contract for this reason. They cut a chunk out of our support hours and took away money from the contract when they realized the call volumes were tiny compared with their previous service provider.

We had better visibility into their 200+ client sites, automated processes, stability, gave their employees nothing much to do, and, unfortunately (in hindsight), provided good tracking of support incidents. These were the things we were asked to do in the contract, and we did it well, and we paid the price for that. If it was a little more faulty, involved more 'busyness' from the people on their side, and had poor visibility into the overall system we would not have lost that chunk of money. We did not have to be this good, just reasonably better than the old system.

Cannot really complain though - from their perspective, this cut was one way to save money. Just business. Funny business.
Yes, there is. We're working on one actively.
Set of 750 wonderful icons for web designers(PSD Included)
Professional Website designers Ever needs beautiful icons for his projects but on internet most of the blogs collects some icons sets. which is enough for designers who designs his own website but not too much enough for Professional designers who finds icons for his Projects.So keeping in mind this Problem of Professional designers today I compiled 750 icons in one set.If you are looking for that perfect icons set then this post is for you Use these icons in your next webdesign projects, blogs, web app or application because it is free for Commercial and personal use.I think this is the best Icons set on internet for designers and developers ever.So what are you waiting for Use these icons and share it to your freinds also.
Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat
I suspect this is becoming a bit fruitless because it seems like your tack is - "I can't imagine anything other than the way I want to use the web"

But let me just mention one other view:

The browser, despite the inconsistencies between different brands, is very accessible. Anyone with the ability to peck away at a keyboard and read some basic instructions can make a web page - and with only a little more effort add some quite rich functionality even if only by cutting and pasting some javascript.

Now imagine if instead you needed a compiler and an SDK (see footnote), if you couldn't just shove a bit of code in the page but instead it needed to be compiled and included separately.

Would the web be what it is today?

Look at Java and Flash - why aren't they the dominant forces on the web because they are taking very much the approach you advocate.

footnote: and who would make these? Would you have one for every browser, for every language. Who would maintain them? In fact the more thought I give to it the more impressed I am that there is anything like one single common language available in all browsers
Foursquare Q&A: Monetization, Facebook competition
Colorizing and autopaging svn diffs and other commands
I'm not that guy. But I wouldn't be surprised if he is on here... he could be anyone.
>This bit could describe the local transit system

You don't happen to live in Toronto, do you?
They're not mutually exclusive. Coffeescript[1], for example, compiles to javascript, but isn't javascript itself.

I'd bet most browsers have a JVM installed as well, so there's that...

[1]http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/
If you click the print icon the upper right, all the pictures will be displayed on a single page vertically.
The Snowball Effect of Mobile Application Analytics
I really hope OSX won't be the first release of OS X that only starts applications signed by Apple and bought in the Apple Desktop App Store (or whatever it's going to be called).
Sounds fantastic. Why don't you say that in the ad? The specific toolchain is the least important part of what you just described. I could care less if I'm doing those tasks in Ruby, Javascript or Java, if you want to sell it to engineers I think the actual problems are far more interesting - certainly that's what I'd want to know. While you're right that it's important your candidates understand the non-tech aspects of the role, I think you sell the tech part short.
Apple awarded several key multi-touch patents
Court permits release of unredacted report on AVC Advantage
MovieReshape - Reshaping humans in videos
So, instead of fixing the language, you fix yourself. Linus was right when he basically said that whenever you are dealing with a broken language, you have to develop broken habits too.
Official project page:

http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/MovieReshape/
shipping binary code to browsers

He's not talking about binary code. He's talking about bytecode with the same security restrictions Javascript has, with the only difference being that a bytecode language is optimized for being a target of compilers, otherwise you have to be Google to make a functional compiler targeting Javascript.

Flash is bad enough

He's not talking about Java Applets or Flash either, he's talking about shipping a bytecode interpreter/compiler instead of a Javascript interpreter/compiler.

if you want to be a good programmer then you need to learn other
languages

I'm increasingly frustrated by having to learn programming languages, not for productivity, not because I'm learning useful new things, but because a certain platform requires it.

Eric Raymonds famous article actually recommends you should try and
learn a new language every year

I would take Eric's advice with a grain of salt: far more useful is to learn new algorithms, data structures, some design skills or do some math learning / exercises every year. Or how about sharping those marketing skills by reading some books / travelling / investing in some offshore relationships?

Learning a language that's similar to what you already know is a waist of time. And if you properly learn C++, Haskell and Lisp you're pretty much done with everything there is to know about programming languages.

Javascript is actually a real cool language masquerading as a very dull
mainstream one

IMHO, programming languages cannot be separated from their mainstream implementation, as many people seem to suggest. No matter how cool Javascript is, you're going to feel the pain related to browser issues.

If all you have is a hammer then every thing looks like a nail

Except that most programming languages are hammers of various sizes with a steeper learning curve than a library that could give you the same productivity.

Case in point for Java programmers: http://www.playframework.org/
The AppStore restrictions are top-down decisions for commercial reasons.

Whereas the web ecosystem has evolved this way.

You can write code that compiles to bytecode to run on a browser -- applets, Flash, Silverlight -- but for various evolutionary reasons, none of them have become dominant over JS.

It's like being cross about how few air-breathing fish there are, and writing to HN to complain.
I doubt the kernel can use anything that is defined in the glibc...
Yes. And they also did some science in the east.
Just out of curiosity, how does it compare to Apache OFBiz, aside from being written in Python rather than Java?
Vigorous product development is concise
Single page: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/10/the-mak...
Maybe exclusively on the web, as in not in the printed version of Vanity Fair.
I was amused to see Microsoft selectively quoting users regarding Office's adherence to standards and its compatibility.

They do make some valid points re support, however my personal experience in the enterprise is that the average desktop user almost never calls for support from the vendor. It's usually IT support who gets the call or the person in the next cubicle (often myself). Which means that support is more dependent on the level of familiarity within the customer organization rather than vendor support. So yeah, Microsoft will usually win there, because more people know Office. As more people use Open Office, it's going to be less of an issue.
Actually, there used to be a choice.

When I got into web dev, I got several gigs doing IE-specific sites in VBScript.

Think how much worse it could have been if JS hadn't won.
Booking.com are a heavy user and investor in Perl5:

* http://www.booking.com/general.ja.html?tmpl=docs/pressreleas...

* http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/12/bookingcom_makes_a_ma...

* http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/02/grant_proposal_fixing...

NB. Last two links look a bit naff at moment! I think they're in process of some CSS amendments.

So Booking.com want perl5 developers and not anything related to perl6. However if you are interested in perl6 then you can find the latest version of Rakudo (perl6 on Parrot) here: http://rakudo.org/announce/rakudo-star/2010.09
Desktop touch functionality wouldn't necessarily be added to the primary display. Apple has filed patents for using touch screens for keyboards and trackpads. Even if it was for the primary display, apple has a patent for a movable display that is oriented horizontally when used as a touch screen.

It's not clear how or whether would add desktop touch features, but they've clearly considered it.
> 1) Using JavaScript is insecure: Without doubt JS had security holes in the past, and they continue to show up.

Those are browser vulnerabilities, not JavaScript vulnerabilities, you should have seen the same happen with PDF, these are browser bugs, they get patched. Example: if your break malfunctions in your car, you'd get it fixed instead of replacing your car with a bike.

> 2) JavaScript is a privacy threat: This has a lot to do...

Native applications can also do that. Here you could easily write a browser extension to disable mouse tracking or whatever you wish, you don't get this so easy anywhere else.

> 3) JavaScript saves bandwidth: I think that not so much because of the initial load of a webpage. JS enables a webpage to costantly query back to the server. An example is gmail, and the notification for a new email, while you are logged into gmail.

If you do this correctly you could mostly get away with few bytes per request. You can't do this without JS.
I'm afraid all this seems like pedantic nit-picking to me - attacking the letter of what I said rather than what I was trying to say.

However I did want to comment on my favourite line in this: " if you properly learn C++, Haskell and Lisp "

Yes. If you properly learn them I would fully agree.

I have in my time made my living as both a C++ programmer and a Lisp programmer and was pretty good at both - but not even close to having properly learned either.

Learning them properly would be a life times experience and I suspect you would be a pretty decent programmer at the end of it.
This is frame busting. I'm looking for anti frame busting. There's one way which involves calling a page which returns a "nothing" header code when the iframe tries to bust out. Though some sites like stackoverflow even take this into account. I wonder if SO works with optimizely (I'm on iOS, can't test it ATM).

Since optimizely has access to the document, there might be a way to wrap the window.location object and prevent it from changing, before any experiment-site js is loaded.
Sharing code doesn't prevent someone else from reimplementing an idea and indeed they should if they rely on results from another publication. If everyone open sources code they wrote during their research then it ought to be easy to tell if someone reimplemented an idea correctly (if their results differ). If they copied the original implementation this should be evident too.
The API is more confusing if they always have to lug around the extra * and type out struct if they can never dereference it. I am strongly in favor of typedefing pointer types that are strictly private.
I think this is an important question to ask. I don't think the OP is asking it for quite the right reasons, but I still think it's important.

As web developers, we're all about 'openness', 'choice' and other warm fuzzy concepts. So why is it OK that JavaScript is the only client side option?

the script element has 'language' and 'type' attributes, clearly indicating the possibility of other types of script (indeed, microsoft used to support VBScript in web pages, don't know if they still do).

To address some of your points:

1) Implementation isn't important. Sure, don't ship binaries to browsers. That's just a detail, the main point is why can't we ship anything other than JS?

3) JS is a cool language. So what? JPG is a cool format, doesn't mean there's no room for PNG too.

4) If all you have is JavaScript then everything looks like a JS problem.
Yawn. Wake me up when these photographs are re-released in 3D.
Javascript _is_ the bytecode system.

Many people have laughed after Joel Spolski for Wasabi. Well, Joel had the right idea: just use whatever in-house language you want, just be careful to translate it in a language/platform your customers are more likely to have installed already,
With lawyer fees and immigration fees, the application itself would come to about 5K. Your salary would need to be equal to or greater than what the Department Of Labor says is the average for your job title in your workplace location.

The bigger issue for a startup will be showing proof of revenue via tax returns, etc, and answering questions about viable US candidates. I am not sure if seed funding will be acceptable as proof of revenue - those type of questions are best answered by an immigration lawyer.
John Sculley: The Secrets of Steve Jobs’ Success
Cool. Opera already supports Greasemonkey-style user scripts [1], as does Google Chrome [2].

They're handy for writing simple browser hacks e.g. injecting additional links into certain pages.

[1]: http://www.opera.com/docs/userjs/examples/#greasemonkey

[2]: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/user-scr...
As @bdclimber noted, there's a lot of work required to hire someone on an H1B. Startups are generally short on time and are already busy enough - why go through the extra hassle? Many startups prefer to work with freelancers or corporations abroad rather than trying to go through the H1B lottery.
Why do all of these companies create cookie cutter names like 'Optimizely' is 'ly' the next .com?

To me ly says 'We have no track record, use with caution' I would feel more comfortable using something with a name that isn't following some online fashion.
Nemo Documents loves Google
Damn I forgot how roguishly good looking Harrison Ford was back in the day.
Ssssh George will hear you, haven't we had our childhood raped enough as it is?!
I disagree that it offers no value at all.

If it did, nobody would pay the $1. Though that's a rubbish answer, and probably accidentally passive-aggressive. So here's a longer one:

People in the tech world love joining clubs that give no real reward. People started joining Facebook because it was cool to be in the Facebook Club, same with Twitter, the iPhone, new communities etc. I'm over-simplifying it, but that's because The Club I built is exactly that; a crude over-simplification of an already existing and replicated system.

The value comes from the psychology. Paying to be in something early and fun, even though there is no intrinsic reason, is nice. It's similar to how trophies and rewards work on other sites and in games. There's no reason why you want it, but it feels nice.

But I agree that it's also certainly not an impressive feat of technology, that's for sure :)
Just imagine having Linus as your teacher in a "Programming C" class...
That's because you've got innacurate claims, especially regarding to binaries / Flash.

To some extent, people can have this right now. Here's what you can do with Silverlight + the Gestalt script (yay, Python): http://ironpython.net/browser/gettingstarted.html

And lets be clear: we are talking about IronPython working and manipulating the browser's DOM here, not the in-a-box model of Flash.

Unfortunately, problems with Silverlight: proprietary, not cross-platform enough, not popular enough, Gestalt is loading slowly because it has to download stuff, the IronPython interpreter not fast enough.

Some of these are solvable, but if it isn't a standard implemented by everybody, then it's useless.
Helping Student Athletes Pass College
Seconded re: talika. It's only a five second install, and having large icons and not huge amounts of text makes it easier to find and switch to apps using the mouse.
I don't get it. What is it that you do exactly? All I see is a bunch of marketing text that anyone could have put together. "Show your friends what you're doing!" I'm already doing that - in email, on Facebook, on Twitter, etc. What do you do that makes that experience better?

Your landing page is pure fluff - there isn't an ounce of actual value on it. Anyone can have an idea - and your landing page just seems like "Hey - I had this cool idea of, 'What if you could maybe like do this cool stuff with all this other cool stuff? Like, that would be cool, right?"

Too abstract and not enough concrete. Or, to put it another way, why are you showing us now? Why not wait until you at least have a screenshot?
> Recent imperialist ventures - Iraq comes to mind - where the US and its allies overthrew the local dictator - have led to a worse mess.

Too soon to tell. If you told people that Japan would be the second largest economy in the world thirty-five years after WWII, people would've thought you were crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if Baghdad is a top international city in, say, 2045.

> Let's not forget the long-term effects of British rule in places as far-flung as Ireland, Cyprus and - of course - Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. A policy of divide-and-rule led to pretty awful consequences.

Well, Iraq and the Middle East is actually a good example in the other direction - it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire fairly decently for quite a while (it did get corrupt and ugly at the end). Anyways, I don't say it's a perfect governance or all roses all the time, just that it's outperformed most other models on most key metrics.
they're already working on it
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/29/star-wars-release-...
Can't believe I forgot to include my platform in a bug report. What an ass.

Firefox 3.6.10 on OSX 10.6.4
C++ Creator Stroustrop Reflects on 25 Years
I think it'd be amazing if you could work smething out with the ppl at mouseflow or thier ilk. They could track the clicks and mouse movements for you. Maybe offer it as an add on for a test.
Unfortunately...it is coming whether we like it or not. :-(
Agreed. Sharing these big, mature, foundation frameworks is essential for the reproducibility of published research. The additional convenience scripts that accompany a paper are often described or provided in the methods and supplement. As a reviewer, I block papers that lack unambiguous information allowing their reproduction, but I don't penalize the lack of explicit convenience scripts, since these can be reproduced or provided from the authors upon request.
Sir Isaac Newton, the alchemist
For enlightenment, read Crockford's Javascript: The Good Parts.
I didn't like either job advert.

I didn't like the first because they couldn't give me even the slightest inkling about what they do, and that is important to me.

The second was bad because it attempted to describe pretty basic things in a way that made them seem more exciting than they really are. It also gave me the impression they were trying to actively mislead me; I don't like that.

Having said that, I think the OP made it seem like the second was completely impossible to understand and it wasn't: it was just obviously created to sway and mislead.
Yeah, I work that way as well. I have a nice pair of noise canceling headphones, and my co-workers (non-programmers) will have to tap on my shoulder or speak loudly for me to hear them.

They're often perplexed if I'm late to a meeting or aren't up to date on the latest email. I generally keep Outlook closed which manages my calendar and email.
I don't use Mercurial, but didn't they replace the last of the Python code quite recently?
Why would you not buy searchstream.com for this? Is it not worth it? I just went to it and it is just a parked page.
He looks a lot like a young David Duchovny.
The video is pretty cringeworthy, but everything in it is true from my experience. Open Office as it is just isn't viable in a corporate environment. Staff members will despise it, poorly formatted documents from others won't display properly, training costs go up, it's a mess.

Sure, most of it may be Microsofts fault for their .doc format or whatever, but fact remains, Microsoft Office is king in the corporate world. Not sure that this video was really necessary, but I guess it could be good for I.T. guys to show to their boss when he decides they should swap to Open Office.
> And how do you propose one goes about establishing these decentralized imperial republics?

Decentralize governance, establish an intelligent government with some democratic elements if there isn't currently one, and expand internationally by taking control of areas that are grossly misgoverned. China could put Burma under better governance, for instance. Or anyone could put North Korea under better governance.

> Superpowers pitying undeveloped countries and nominating themselves as Imperial rulers as the only solution to their plight sounds rather self-serving, don't you think?

Well, it would have to serve a successful country for them to put lots of resources into the project. I think the more important question is, could it work? I think the answer to that is yes. People point to some wrongs done by Britain or Rome, not mentioning that many of the places that wrongs were done were much worse before going under British rule. Again, I'm not claiming it's a perfect model - just that it outperforms a lot of other models of government.
I've come across the same problem. I was working on some ancient code purportedly released under a BSD license. However, it contained code from Numerical Recipes!

Here's a good page encouraging everyone to boycott them: http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/software/boycottnr.html
TRIM.

Even if that's the only new feature in 10.7, I'll be ponying my money up for it. I completely love the SSD in my MBP, but the occasional stuttering does get annoying at times.
You can alleviate a little of that with an email on day 25~27.
Groupon Said to Talk to PayPal About Increasing Payment Options
But people are people and when there's an easy way...
I almost completely disagree with rodh257. A large percentage of corporate workers don't create complex content and rarely interact with complex files created by their colleagues. It is completely reasonable for a CIO to engage his staff on a research study to determine how feasible it would be to migrate a significant swath from MS Office to OpenOffice.org (or LibreOffice). I have personal experience with this.
I was trying to be sarcastic.
The Rise of The Tower Graphic
The Internet kills Gap's new logo