skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What hand-wavy nonsense. Yeah, programmers are just commodity and we will just offshore everything. This guy just states this flippantly without even acknowledging the several problems associated with that in Yet Another Case Of UX Worship. The idea that you don't need "backend guys" because you are just going to make "AJAX Calls" makes this guy just look silly.

I mean, yeah, Google wasted money on all those engineers. Why did they build on that infrastructure? All they needed was a few AJAX calls, duh! Finally, Google figured it out and through away all that massive indexing set of algorithms so they could just make AJAX calls.

I don't see what this guy's fascination is with AJAX and "making calls from Javascript" or how this means we don't need programmers anymore. Apparently, we can just appeal to some vague "throw it in the cloud and it will scale" mentality.

What makes it worse for me is that apparently this Usability guru was involved in this website:

http://www.pickanexcuse.com/

Really ... a usability guru?
MVCC you mean multi-version concurrency? As in writers-don't-block-readers?
Because most relational databases have that.
While it is nice to see good people run for office, I'm not he will ultimately be able to fulfill his promises.

I hate to sound cynical but without the support of Council, the mayor won't be able to do anything. And Councillors, in general, are only focused on what it good for their own wards, and not the good of the city as a whole.

(One solution might be to have a group of like minded people run as a team. Party politics at the municipal level?)
I've literally just now been looking for a freelancer to do this for me... precisely because I'm a developer who knows some things about systems, rather than an actual sysadmin. So yeah, I muddle through, but it takes 3x as long and is probably only 75% as good as someone who does it all the time.
New Minecraft.net, Part 3: So... about that..
Yes but back then they had someone who understood disruption much better (Andry Grove was friend with the author of Innovator's Dilemma) and they never had to change the x86 platform. They only had to create simpler chips on the same platform (Celeron, Atom, the initial laptop chips - forgot their name).

This time however, they need to change the whole platform, because the whole platform brings much bigger inefficiencies than ARM, and they won't be able to improve down that much, while ARM will improve fast at a steady pace.

The only solution is to buy a big ARM maker. To have a chance to dominate, they'd need to buy Qualcomm for Snapdragon, but they've just wasted 7 billion on an anti-virus...

But even if they do that, I'm unsure of their potential domination, as I believe in 2011 Nvidia will dominate the mobile market with its Tegra chips. That's because in 2011 the battle will be over who has the best GPU not CPU. The GPU is increasingly more important (accelerating the UI, the browser, Flash, supporting higher resolutions, gaming, etc)
My reaction is twofold.

First, and foremost, I feel with you. I (never stepped out of a "normal" job so far) admire all you guys that have the balls to try that, to risk your savings for something you consider a chance to move something big.
There are quite some stories about failures here, but usually they are presented as "lessons". Your post, emotionally, seems to be more like a resignation.[1]
That's why I want to wish you all the best.

The second reaction is kind of twisted/evil: I wonder if "I'm a solo founder, didn't go to Stanford, in my mid 30s" is enough to basically identify you to the right people - i.e. YC. I'm not even sure if that would be something you want (Trying to advertise for your idea once more) or not (Missing that fact while venting)..

1: English isn't my native tongue either, and text sucks for emotional conversations anyway. I might be wrong.
Also, http://bit.ly/aD0TiH
He seems to assume a lot in this post, for instance his 200 vs 4 node comparison assumes that you have 200 nodes because the poor performance of your DBMS requires that many nodes. If that's the case, great, use voltdb. If not, it's perfectly reasonable to think that 200 nodes would have more network partitions than 4 nodes which is why one would pick an AP system in the first place.
Sharding puts you in the same risk category as any other distributed database. Just ask the engineers and ops people at twitter, foursquare, and any number of other web companies that have dealt with sharded databases at scale. Also: sharding is eventually consistent, except you don't get any distributed counter primitives to help figure out which replica is telling the truth.
And it functions as more or less everything you need to know about this stuff. I was able to read it as it was posted but if I was just starting the now the ebook for $20 is well worth it over clicking "previous" a whole bunch of times in the blog layout.
Let me reiterate what others have said: don't compromise on your current principles.

I'm a customer of yours because I know what I need, and with prgmr I pay for what I need and nothing more. It's great.
Extension support is nice, but I'm disappointed by lack of CSS Flexible Box Model[1] support in this release. It is available in WebKit and Gecko for over a year. Only if Opera supports it…

[1]: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/04/the-css-3-flexible-box-mode...
the idea that conflicts are detected at write time, so that applications will have conflict resolution capabilities.

eg if you get the Etag wrong CouchDB rejects the save.

(edited to add) the difference is that CouchDB makes the MVCC semantics visible to the client.
Here are some things that can lead to a sub-optimal user experience:

1) User forgets or does not know the administrator password to install into /Applications

2) Loses license key to activate paid application

3) Installs application into ~/Applications instead of /Applications and thus when another user logs in, is unable to launch it

4) Fails to unmount and delete disk image when installation is complete and thus has ~/Downloads (the default download directory) full of them
"Great execution" means business execution, not programming execution.

You don't need TechCrunch's permission to launch a successful company, which is basically just as difficult if you get it.
This reminds me of an anecdote where Jobs was arguing with an engineer about the look of the original Mac's internals:

"I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it."
How to Explain Twitter to People Who Just Don't Get It
Everything has degrees of originality. Google didn't invent the search engine but they came up with a great way to monetise it (oh and some algorithm too).
Currently Apple relies on Intel for a major component in a key product. Strategically, Apple doesn't like to have to rely on a single source or supplier for key products. Apple will do whatever is possible to remove this reliance.

Hence a prediction: within less than 5 years a Mac will be running on an Apple designed ARM processor.

How? By slowly, step by step, providing a way towards this.

Step 1. Migrate your OS to the new architecture (e.g. iOS already, OS X not far behind) - done

Step 2. Migrate your developer base onto developer tools which you control and can easily change the architecture it targets (e.g. Xcode and LLVM) - done

Step 3. Provide a space where problematic applications which use other VMs or rely directly on getting too close to the hardware are not welcome (e.g. a Mac App Store) - announced

Step 4. Change the marketplace behaviour so that you control how the majority of applications are distributed and can quickly provide updates without user intervention. Such as an App store.

Step 5. Release a new Macbook with an ARM processor, absolutely killing on form factor, price and battery performance that Intel cannot compete with. Encourage your Mac App Store developers to flick a switch in Xcode, to recompile and upload their new Universal (x86 & ARM) versions of their Apps to the Mac App Store.

Result: you now control the processor direction and application distribution mechanism for a key product and no longer rely upon the whims of Intel.

Apple is all about controlling an integrated experience for their customers. Currently Intel is getting in the way of this for the Mac product.
PyBrain: modular Machine Learning Library for Python
PagerDuty (YC S10) wakes the right person up for your tech emergencies
Wow, gone to Google. I wonder if his involvement with Java now and Python will get him back involved with his original Python project: Jython ?
Now you've got me intrigued; is your first product still up and running? I'd love to see it if possible

As for TechCrunch, that seems brutal that they can hold you hostage like that
Hey, great job on your second product launch. I will put money on your turning a profit within 18 more product launches.
Check out Gabriel Weinburg's:
My history of (mostly failed) side projects and startups
http://bit.ly/arW8lE
I have a product that I hope to launch before Jan 1 that will address these issues.
The fact that it's not an everyday "job language" should really entice your inner "programming pervert"; hard to explain, but there is something erotic about seeing fringe languages in industrial applications. I would happily setup a SAP cluster if it had, say, a Forth repl hidden in one About box. I wasted countless hours in Excel, which I abhor, after it was mentioned in some numeric computing paper. And is there a better opportunity, on a boring weekend, than an oopsing Unix box with nothing critical on it :-)

Don't hesitate to delight yourself, no one will do it for you.
I went to Northeastern and my undergrad degree was in "Information Science" program which is a mix of HCI/Usability/Com Sci, though it's an unfortunate name for the major as most people have no idea what it means. There was very little focus on web technologies and more of a focus on interaction principles as you said. I don't know that I wanted to take an HTML/CSS/JS class, but I always wished that my major involved some more design type classes to hone people into that type of career more. I love doing front end work, but I think at this point I lack the design skills to do be an effective employee in that sense.
Except that the Atoms at same (and even a bit higher) clock don't even offer marginally better performance.

Depends if we are talking Arm Cortex-A8 or Cortex-A9. Atom is much more powerful at same clock speed that Cortex-A8. Cortex-A9 is getting closer competitive, but doesn't have much of a power advantage over it. (Lies, damn lies and benchmarks, but A8 gets ~2000 MIPS, A9 ~2500 MIPS and singlecore 1st gen Atom gets ~3300 MIPS)

Also, multicore-Atom has been in the market for a while. Multicore ARM is just coming online now.

It's worth noting that Intel can speed up Atom whenever they want. There are plenty of easy wins in there (eg, better execution core, faster memory controller) that they can put in if they need to keep their lead.
People are still gonna need PCs for a while and as Windows does not run on ARM it seems a bit early for an x86 death.
LtU discussion:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4095
I get slowdowns caused by text rendering in terminal when rsyncing large numbers of files. It's easily worked around though, just minimize the terminal window
UGG Bailey Button
As I wrote in a similar thread I think Intel and x86 is already dead - the writing is on the wall - Intel just doesn't know it yet. Below is how I believe a key customer has already planned to leave the x86 architecture as nothing but a footnote in their history (alongside the remnants of PowerPC).

---

Currently Apple relies on Intel for a major component in a key product. Strategically, Apple doesn't like to have to rely on a single source or supplier for key products. Apple will do whatever is possible to remove this reliance.

Hence a prediction: within less than 5 years a Mac will be running on an Apple designed ARM processor.

How? By slowly, step by step, providing a way towards this.

Step 1. Migrate your OS to the new architecture (e.g. iOS already, OS X not far behind) - done

Step 2. Migrate your developer base onto developer tools which you control and can easily change the architecture it targets (e.g. Xcode and LLVM) - done

Step 3. Provide a space where problematic applications which use other VMs or rely directly on getting too close to the hardware are not welcome (e.g. a Mac App Store) - announced

Step 4. Change the marketplace behaviour so that you control how the majority of applications are distributed and can quickly provide updates without user intervention. Such as an App store.

Step 5. Release a new Macbook with an ARM processor, absolutely killing on form factor, price and battery performance that Intel cannot compete with. Encourage your Mac App Store developers to flick a switch in Xcode, to recompile and upload their new Universal (x86 & ARM) versions of their Apps to the Mac App Store.

Result: you now control the processor direction and application distribution mechanism for a key product and no longer rely upon the whims of Intel.

Apple is all about controlling an integrated experience for their customers. Currently Intel is getting in the way of this for the Mac product.
"Who needs a backend engineer when you can do most of the work using REST and AJAX calls?"

Yep, it's just that easy. Everyone knows that AJAX calls are outsourced to Chinese and Indian people on the back end. One per request.
The program manager for IronRuby left Microsoft just a couple months ago citing lack of support and commitment for that project:

http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/08/start-spreading-news...
I would suggest that you take more of a look at yourself rather than at your business per se to try to figure out why this isn't clicking. You have to be the seed out of which the business grows. All that stuff "out there" needs to be the air and water and so forth where it can take root and grow, but it grows out of you. So maybe you are what you need to understand better.

Good luck.
WiseDame: Now *that’s* what I call disruptive
Totally agree w/the name dropping your school being a bad thing. However, just being a member of the club of people from those schools just keeps paying dividends as your career moves on.

My friend quoted above went to Penn (Ivy League), I went to Auburn University (State School in Alabama). Both of us moved from the US to Argentina. I'm 36, he's about the same age.

Penn alumni in Buenos Aires? DOZENS, NEY HUNDREDS. They're CEO's of major startups here, Argentines who had good grades, wealthy families, and went the US for school and came back.

Auburn Alumni in Buenos Aires? i'm sure there are a few. Most will be with me at the sports bar on saturday watching Auburn-LSU. None are Argentines who went to school in the states and came back to run startups... He has a huge networking advantage here I don't.

I tried to get Auburn to even start an alumni club here and they ignored my mails, for instance, whereas the Penn, Harvard, etc. clubs are an ongoing valuable source of connections and relationships for their members.

I have plenty of connections at this point but it's a natural advantage I often find myself having to work harder to make up for.
Poll: How Many HN'ers on Facebook/Twitter/Neither?
I've been on and off of Facebook and Twitter. I noticed even Paul Graham has started posting on Twitter (@paulg). I've seen different responses to these networks on HN, so I'm wondering what the demographics are.
On Facebook
On Twitter
On Both
Not on either
Lectures, Screencasts and conferences for real web developers & designers
Lectures, Screencasts And Conferences For Real Web Developers & Designers (JavaScript, NodeJs, jQuery, Ruby, Rails, HTML5, CSS3, UI, UX, ...)
So a person that creates software for the web is not a Software Engineer?
Indeed - they are not dying anytime soon. See also this:

http://codingrelic.geekhold.com/2010/08/x86-vs-arm-mobile-cp...

for why ARM's technical advantages may be overblown.
TC: only if you let them.
I think all you really need to do is solve an identified problem that the customer will pay for. The rest is just a matter of how big your business will get and how fast and that depends on market size, competition and execution.

To get early customers I like the domino theory that Clayton Christensen first described in his book Crossing the Chasm (assuming you have built a product that solves an actual, difficult to solve customer problem that is worth paying for):

1. Start with one (paying customer), that customer then;
2. Gives a testimonial that you can use to sell other similar customers and;
3. Actually provides you names (and sometimes even actual referrals) of other customers you can sell to.

As you build reference customers it gets easier to sell to other customers because now you start to get a rep as a must have in that particular industry.

Nowhere in your posting do I see anything about "we have X number of customers" or "we worked with X number of customers when developing our product". If you spent $60k plus your own time developing a product before showing it to any customers it's possible that there is no need for the product, and that more than anything may be why you are not getting the response you want from either investors, "journalists" or customers.

I know how this can happen, I've been there myself! (It seemed like a good idea when we started building it, how come nobody wants to buy?)
Perhaps it would be easier to use Fibonacci numbers which approximate the golden ratio. For example, the two examples they show are both about 13 x 21.
Netflix suffers big outage as stock hits new peak
I had mefeedia on Techcrunch, and mentioned in the NYT, WSJ, Rolling Stone back in the day. The press didn't drive that much usage/traffic, really. It was mostly about being in a hot space though, I don't have any tricks to get press to share.
Oh right. Yes, I agree, then.

All a new platforms needs is a great webbrowser (which these days seems to mean "port webkit") and it's instantly viable.
Adobe’s New HTML5 Video Player Widget, It’s Kind Of A Big Deal
... And windows will be locked out of the datacenter until they create ARM-compatible versions of windows.

Next thing you know Windows runs on both ARM and x86 (with x86 emulation for applications) and pushes x86 out of the commercial / domestic arena.
I didn't realize Apple did this (not a Mac user personally). Didn't Microsoft get sued for providing their own Java runtime years ago? What is the difference here? (just out of interest) Obviously Sun/Oracle have been fine with it, so is it different to what Microsoft did?
> Still not a Mac though.

In the more general market of consumers that want a ~3 pound 13" device, the ones that see Win7 vs. OS X as an important differentiating factor are a small minority. For the market served by the underpowered Air, a Win 7 laptop will "just work" every bit as well as a Macbook.
Someday publishers will learn that free products creates exposure that creates fans who buy products.

I can't even name how many bands I listen to because of Napster and Limewire in the early 00s, which led to me buying several albums from each band and attending many of their concerts - actually, I got into entire genres this way and now that I'm not a broke student, have spent a lot of money. If I hadn't been able to download full versions of songs and listen to them as much as I wanted, I never would have found out how much I like these bands.
So the smelly bum on the street corner who mutters to himself is at the peak of the evolutionary hierarchy? The assertions made seem too simplistic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...
> Making your software hard to interface with is making it less open

We are using two different definitions of "open". Back in the 80's Unix was considered "open" because you could compile a program for various flavors and the various flavors could share data on the same network (contrary to other platforms of the time). GCC is open not because it runs on many platforms, but because you can freely inspect, change it and redistribute it. Those are two completely different meanings.
That disconnect has always confused me. How does country manage to maintain the best universities and among the worst high schools in the first world?
This misses the point. Hosting companies aren't the ones that really need to switch to ivp6, its the ISPs. Most hosting companies have several thousand, if not hundred thousand IPs already owned by them, that are constantly turned over by users leaving and new users signing up. The push is on assuring that new customers at home that sign up have an IP address, especially in developing/new markets.

Having an incentive for websites be IPv6 compliant would only push the focus to the wrong area of the issue.
There's a difference between what ops people see and what developers see. If the ops people have the same headache no matter what, why force the developers to think about consistency?
Only half of surveyed users use “shell completion of commands”. It’s useful (e.g. autocompletion of branch names), but doesn’t come with the default Git distribution (at least on OS X). I expect this to change as a result of this survey.
Fix these problems and you may have yourself a viable startup.
Read up on how TC traffic is not all it's cracked up to be.
Stop caring about TechCrunch.

You are doing it backwards.
Start with the market first. Your idea is only as good as it applies to the market it serves. You should not have spent 60k on a developer, you should have spent it leveraging a way to talk to your proposed customers.

Yes I agree, shit products get sold all day every day and rake in billions. But you see the product may be shit BECAUSE everything else is so much more important. The system, the sales force, the production line, the logistics, the tracking. I love Mcdonald's. Nah not their food, their system.

I know you are just venting and now may not be the best time to say "you are doing it wrong", but well, it actually is the best time.

You are doing it wrong.
I know because I've done it wrong for a long time too!
I actually am more of a programmer than a business guy but its kind of funny... "I want to run a business" kind of entails that we think more like business men and less like programmers.

Best of luck to you.
STOP doing shit that doesn't work and doesn't matter.
How would they risking their edge? They take hundreds of things into account that are all left up to the websites themselves. This would simply be SEO.
I agree with the sentiment that a UX/UI engineering need is going to be a necessary requirement not easily fulfilled in the near future. The good ones are fluent in back-end keyboard mashing, front-end spit shining, and everything in between. They need to have design skills, programming chops, user experience knowledge, a taste for the tasteful, a writers intellect, and a certain je ne sais quoi insight into what makes people want to use your product. They are not designers, nor are they programmers... They are both.