skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When you're starting with a blank slate of a project codebase, having to write and then keep evolving a SQL schema -- and do data migrations -- can be a real pain. With MongoDB, a collection (think table) has no schema, so each object (document, approx like a row or set of related rows) can have whatever format you want, can vary from object to object. While there is greater risk, esp in long run, of accumulating objects with structures that are unexpected or unsupported by dependent applications, in the short run it gives you a development speed boost. Also, the native document format is JSON, which, if you're doing web development, is more likely to be the web client-side data format you'd want to deal with anyway. Plus JSON is very close to a Python dict, which makes Pythonistas happy on the server-side. JSON is also a bit more of a "self-documenting" format compared to say what a SQL result dump looks like (every column/property has it's name/key declared in the dump itself). Also, if you have model data that's naturally document-like, with many sub-structures within it, hierarchically composed, then rather than having to slice it up across many distinct table schemas, each with an appropriate chain of foreign key references leading back to the mother table, you instead just stuff the entire model document, including all it's sub-structures, into a single slot in the Mongo database. So it simplifies that as well.

I recently evaluated a lot of different database systems too for a new project, and settled on MongoDB for a key part of it. While it has many positives (the above, plus performance and scalability) one of the negatives that worries me a little bit is the "running with scissors" feeling of not having database-enforced table schemas. Ultimately, we'll find out firsthand whether that leads to disaster or not, and whether it's a net win. My bet now is net win.
I see this type of argument often and I think it misses the point. The argument is:

"Techcrunch will send you un-engaged traffic. Nobody from Techcrunch is going to actually buy your product"

Which is used to persuade people that the "Techcrunch Launch" is not useful.

Wrong.

What Techcrunch can do for you - in one fell swoop - is declare that you've arrived. You get instant exposure across its audience - many of whom run tech blogs themselves, and I'm guessing a whole bunch of investors / VCs too. It's strategically useful to get in front of those eyeballs, whether you ship a single unit or not. That is PR. Yes it will die down almost instantly. But for a moment, you were in front of a ton of people. There is immense value in that.

People are confusing marketing with PR. They are not one and the same.

See Techcrunch as PR and personally, I think it's invaluable. It's not something I would invest much resources in because it seems like too much of a crapshoot, but it's definitely not something I'd poo-poo with a bunch of hand-waving about the psychological impact or "not being ready".

hint: you're NEVER ready for massive PR.
How do you know how many people use the lock feature? Maybe I know a paranoid group of people, but at least half use it, probably more. Even if it's 10% that's still a very large number of people.

And what's "silly" about preventing people from getting immediate access to your email account or text messages? You can get into most people's online bank account once you have their email.
If I made this, it would allow for you to input as many things for "X" as you wanted. Thus, it would be much less successful.
Maybe it doesn't count because it doesn't fold closed? :p

That's the one that runs for a day or something on just AA batteries, isn't it?
Wow. That's pretty interesting actually.

Doesn't work 100% though. My girlfriend is completely obsessed with sushi, but she's hard-core Republican.

However, she is socially liberal. So who knows. I'm pretty apolitical as well.
Anonymous voting reduces quid pro quo, vendettas and other sorts of unproductive behaviour.
Indentation sensitivity: a post-mortem?
I think that http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/amazing-feats-of-clang-error-re... gives a number of nice features that clang brings to the table which could be very useful for kernel hackers.
On the other hand, Apple is pushing LLVM very hard — Xcode is growing more and more integrated with it in each release — and I would not be surprised to see Clang declared the one true Mac and iOS compiler while GCC is shown the way out. So I think we might have some healthy competition on our hands.
three personal (primarily instrumental) favorites:

explosions in the sky: http://gorankem.com/artists/64517-Explosions-in-the-Sky

sigur ros: http://gorankem.com/artists/11546-Sigur-R-s

mogwai: http://gorankem.com/artists/3544-Mogwai
The Unspoken Truth About Ben Frankin's Kite-Flying Experiment [video]
FYI if you're still looking into this, this comment helped me http://codebutler.com/firesheep#comment_5843350

I have filevault turned on. Moving the binary out of my home folder (and adding a symbolic link) solved the problem.
Wealthy people can receive faster service for hundreds of government services.

http://www.google.com/#q=site%3Agov+expedite+fee
that's an awesome music, but how can you work listening that.
Your comment is frankly a load of crap. (I would be more polite if we were in person, but then I would have been able to interrupt and say, "Oh hang on a minute", when you came out with some rubbish like "the situation here is untenable.")

It's not untenable. If you don't like the community, leave! If you know a lot of people who are disenchanted with hackernews, great! Start something new for you to chat. You could even import the hackernews front page so you have something interesting to chat about.

But for me, this site still by and large works. Yes, there is some useless fanboyism in a few places, but this place is not a cult locked in a warehouse. And you can avoid the worse of it easily enough - just avoid discussion of shibboleth topics where the S/N drops and wait until it's a post on someone's blog instead of techcrunch.

I'm also intrigued - can you link to a discussion where you feel a craven minority destroyed the utility, or is it more of a general feeling, hard to pinpoint and reason about? Can you suggest who needs pruning and how it should be done?

Finally, community is what people put into it. So, what are you putting in Chris? You say you had a failed business. Could you do a post on what went wrong and how it would go better next time? That's the kind of thing that makes hacker news great.
> my main concern was something that can $set individual elements of a JSON instead of retrieving the whole doc and modify it.

i ran into the same question
I mean, working under post-rock doesn't sound like a good idea
Clang is really good at C and Objective-C. C++ is kind of its weak point, most likely because C++ is a couple of orders of magnitude more complex than either of those languages.
in a way i agree and disagree with you, i think the name kind of says what the web app deos, but at the same time its looks spammy, personally i dont like to use numbers for app names, i dont know maybe im wrong.
Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony aren't consumer apps but they both have a pretty big user base beyond typical Eclipse users.
Azureus is the first consumer app that comes to mind.
Agreed, it's weird that we continue to preoccupy ourself with the carpenter analogy.
Edit: I didn't realize that there was a second part. Maybe it wasn't too easy after all.
Are you saying that "boyfriend" is a legally recognised relationship status in Europe?
I have no affiliation with this site, or any experience with their services, but Pinsky Law in Toronto is offering several promotions for startups right now: http://www.pinskylaw.ca/News/startup_legal_package.htm there are several more promotions for trademarks, IP etc.

Also take a look through their site, lots of information there for you.
I agree that it is their site and they can do what they want, but I think the main issue people have is that they pretend that they are open and for their users. It is one thing to do what you do and not be ashamed of it, but to try and pull the wool over your users eyes and make them out to be stupid is just wrong.

I don't use Digg, I haven't for years, because it was too heavily gamed and not enjoyable to use anymore.

Your comment about Google though, they have to keep the trust of the users and the web as a whole. If they were to game their system for their own gain (that is artificially influence results to improve their own standings) and people found out or could prove it, Google would be in trouble. I am not saying they don't or haven't, just that with Google the trust is important because people have more at stake than on Digg, a lot have their lively hoods tied to it.
If you need someone to fix it for you I can certainly use the work.

Sometimes it irritates me to see so many people apparently complaining about the shortage of competent / qualified programmers these days. I'm more than 50 years old with nearly two decades of professional experience as a programmer. I ran my own outsource programmer training center in Asia for several years and we ran more than 200 trainees through the system before we closed.

I also have an additional range of business experience that might come in handy to a future employer, especially in a company run by people much younger and less experienced than me.

And I'm not afraid to put in 12 hours days for weeks on end when it's important to the company.

But I never see any job listings for people who can bring what I want to bring to the table. Instead I typically see complaints about startups not being able to find qualified engineers. Yet I've been back in the USA for more than a year already, and so far I haven't been able to get a single startup to consider hiring me.

Is it my age that puts them off? Or should I be looking for work with companies other than startups? Or am I looking at the wrong startups?

Or should I just do my own startup and stop trying to help with someone else's?
I think the karma is irrelevant, but the lessons aren't. Often the lessons we learn on online forums can carry onto our real lives. Rather get spiteful, rude or angry and be downvoted hard, than lose your job or mess up your relationship.

Many times I've seen someone online be piled-on, and while I've felt sorry for them I've often seen them come back much more respectful.
Using Technology to Find Love
"The points made in this piece are very good ones but it is not primarily an issue of intelligence - rather, it is mostly about one's point of reference."

I don't disagree, but is that not the same sentiment of the article and the closing sentence? "People are not really stupid" suggests it's not an issue of intelligence, and I think "it is just that you know a lot more" argues your point of reference. I absolutely agree with your correction, but I assumed it was implicit.
That looks like an interesting tool, I'll have to try it out. The program is deterministic given a fixed seed.

The bug depends on whether or not optimization is on, so it might be in the backend. What I've heard is that the C++ FE in particular still does have some troubles with miscompilations, so that is why I suspect it.
Treat potential candidates like people, rather than interchangeable pegs that you try and fit in whatever square hole you're trying to fill at the moment.

This means:

- Spend time to build real connections and relationships with the people you're trying to recruit. Find out what the look for in a job, and if you none of your clients fit the bill, say so point blank, but that you'll get back to them when you find one that does.

- Build a tribe (in the Seth Godin sense of the word). Build a group of people that look to you about finding jobs and hiring. Organize events that get lots of smart technical people together, that isn't just a recruiting event. Think about the 37 signals blog and the conferences they've organized. Think Super Happy Dev House.

- Don't cold call. Speaking personally, I'm much more likely to talk to you if you email me. Aggressive phone calls are a major turn off. If you must call, don't call before 10am in my time zone.

- Being open about the companies and positions you're trying to fill. No caginess about what the company is, and being open about any potential downsides you know of.

- Don't recruit for companies you don't believe in.

- Know what you're talking about technically. This means not recruiting people for positions that don't match the experience they list on their resume. It means not recruiting them for positions they're highly unlikely to be interested in, based on past positions.

In general, recruit people like you would want to be recruited. In the short term, this will likely be less effective than more traditional approaches. In the long run, as you start building a network and reputation for integrity, I bet it's significantly more effective.
"quid pro quo" i didnt know what it means, but it sounded pretty kool, just checked it on wiki, it sounds so british, im a londoner myself, fantasttic use of words @brudgers
I'm a 19 year old college student, actually. I have no affiliation with Apple, nor a formal relation with Clang or LLVM.
that's hilarious, thank you. and very much on topic!
I don't see the harm in specializing, really. There are plenty of room, and need, for both generalists and specialists. Being a specialist doesn't mean you are unable to learn new things, or that you are daft.

I think what people really mean is "don't be daft".
Weirdly, hard trance that I know well. I can work to rock or classic, but something like a good Astrix album really gets me working well. If I know the album well I don't think about it, I can focus on the work at hand.
They're trying to capture data for as many as they can, and I'm pretty sure they tracked that. Recent events tracked also included the Boulder wildfires, Haiti earthquake (ie range is from local to international significance)
It's unlikely that it'll get that 'blessing' - a while back certain versions of GCC were recommended against by Linus.

Also, on some esoteric platforms, GCC dropped compatibility. For example, OpenBSD still supports an older version of GCC for VAX and m88k platforms IIRC.
Correct, I went to Harvey Mudd.

What you say certainly has some truth to it, and I am skeptical this policy would work for the population at large. However, the other colleges (especially Pomona) are also pretty selective in their admissions, and there is a significant overlap in student life between the various colleges. While Mudd's honor code may not work as well with other student populations, I also think that other regulatory systems would not work as well with that student population. For one thing, it's essentially a college of hackers (in the HN sense), so having a stricter or more explicit set of rules would probably result in "creative" ways of following the letter of the law, with less regards to the spirit.
good work, lance & co.

a couple initial thoughts:

-fivesecondtest was the first thing that came to mind when i checked it out (before reading your blurb) so glad to see you guys aware of the market.

-as opposed to "rating" initial impressions, i'd focus on the oft-used phrase, "initial impressions mean everything" as a part of the pitch.

-is there any way to delay the signup proces for after an initial look? i think a number of people who would otherwise be willing to check it out are turned off by having to sign up for another site off the bat (and i imagine a number of the HN community would agree with the sentiment)

-i think goodreads & lulu would provide great opportunities to leverage their existing communities...maybe future partnership with the latter?

hope that helps!

-adam
> Your comment about Google though, they have to keep the trust of the users and the web as a whole. If they were to game their system for their own gain (that is artificially influence results to improve their own standings) and people found out or could prove it, Google would be in trouble.

Don't tell me you really believe that all those sites that happen to be google affiliated really have that much standing in their algorithmic view of the web. Google has been artificially inflating the ranking of their own site for a long long time.

For instance, not that I'm in the habit of searching for celebrities, but type in paris hilton in the google search bar.

The first result is a link to google images, followed by half a page of sample images from images.google.com, followed by wikipedia (ok, that's a good one) and then a bunch of youtube stuff.

I'm sure they're all 'relevant results' but I highly doubt those image links are really the most relevant results on the subject.

The wikipedia link should have been #1, the images and youtube results probably don't even belong on the first page (unless you search for 'images').

This sort of thing will happen with a great many subjects, but with a high frequency query like 'paris hilton' the effect must be enormous.
Yep, as noted above it's University of Colorado. Woz's autobiography iWoz includes a few interesting stories about it too.
Why did you stop there? Why not continue with the things that those things abstract away, ad infinitum?
Sorry, but your HN bio is empty and you didn't submit the article. Did you spearhead the effort? And is my comment regarding Apple and Clang incorrect? Thanks!
Right, and while we are at it, why don't we all post our "smoking a fat joint" photos on Facebook.
+1 for explosions, trying out the last.fm station right now
Why people are defecting from some fast-growng startups
Apprenticeships were traditionally tied to family and social connections, e.g. Ben Franklin apprenticed for his brother. Within modern employment markets apprenticeship is infeasible due to the conflict between the contractual obligations required and standard employment at will practices.

Among the advantages of a college degree are that it is to a considerable extent tied to merit and, in the US, it is largely accessible to people from all economic backgrounds.

Vocational education is important, and is successfully implemented in places like Germany. But not by leaving it up to the goodwill of individual employers.
Digg partner-site upvoting stops after Digg informed - they're self-gaming?
"Compared to you, most people seem dumb" :)
Here's your chance to make it better: what are the queries that turn up too many Made-For-Adsense pages, and what results should they be returning instead?
I don't have a bias against companies with numbers in their name.

TheSixtyOne is a site I used to use a lot.

I have a lot of respect for Core77.

ONE is certainly a well known non-for-profit.

Personally, I like the name. It has an interesting rational.
It all depends on the definition of "solved". I doubt whether the same standards of "solved" were applied to computers as well as to the bees. If one is willing to relax the standards, TSP isnt that hard to solve on computers either. One such old solution is to simulate the dynamics of an elastic band that is attracted to the cities. http://www.google.com/search?q=elastic+net+tsp

It is not guranteed to reach the absolute minimum cost, and no point of the band may pass through a city location right away. But more often than not the band stabilizes at a decent solution. Would this be considered a solution of TSP in a computer science sense ? No, it is not even an approximation algorithm. But for practical purposes it may be good enough, and I think thats what the bees care about.

Statistical physics has answers to such problems if the standards are weakened to "solves it to within an _acceptable_ tolerance _most_ of the time". However, both the weasel words, "acceptable" and "most" are necessary. These tools may be applied to other biologically motivated solutions as well.
I agree, having a demo or some sort of sampler would be great. Even something simple like being able to click on the thumbnail to get an enlarged pic.
Some really good discussion about f.lux on this other HN post:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1832339
congratulations on the marriage dude
Chatbot manages to fool a judge into thinking it's a human
I'm not Google fan, but I don't believe that they special case "affiliated" sites in search results. That would be an idiotic move on their part. Possibly undermine their cash cow (search) to boost marginal sources of revenue?

Honestly, your claim sounds like most conspiracy theories. It completely falls apart when you assume the participants are even mildly logical and rational.
Why Apple Saddled the MacBook Air With Weak CPUs
Yep. Also I am compelled by ancient tradition to point out that Caltech's style and traditions are going down the tubes due to the shift from administration by faculty to administration by professional administrators. (Note that this has been the received wisdom for long enough that it can't possibly be quite as true as it's made out to be.)
ytmp : Play videos from video hosting services without the need of Flash
Fun and entertaining
Why are you debating about applying?

Just apply if you don't get accepted then you know that YC isn't interested, maybe someone else is.

Feedback:
Why do I need to sign up to start reading?
The page IS stunning, but it takes a long time to load.
Instead of a feedback form, have you considered just having a next page button?
While you are correct that Orwellian dictatorships are also well-served by not havinv explicit rules, having lived in this particular environment, I think your analysis is wrong. What happened was not that people were kept in line by fear of punishment. What happened was that people had regard for the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. If you ever caught yourself wondering if you were running afoul of the honor code, the internal monologue was not framed in terms of "will I get punished," but rather "am I harming others."

Also, to counter another point: the administrators did not actually have the authority to punish students. The disciplinary board was student-run, and while I was not a part of that process, I am under the impression that the administration was pretty hands-off. While I don't remember for sure, it is very likely that the students giving the presentation were actually the ones with the authority.
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Being a master at your own system doesn't mean they are artificially influencing it. It is hard to avoid, and I don't doubt that they know more and use it to their advantage, but I don't think they are doing it in a way that impacts their competitors like you think.

Search for 'search engine' or 'engines' and you will find that Google isn't the first, in fact it is 4th and isn't to the main page but to their custom search engine. There are other cases where this exists, but I guess it isn't the best example just a simple one.
Who Has The Oil? A Map of World Oil Reserves.
MongoDb lets you query inside the document/tree. It's sort of like how some databases (eg Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/xml2.html) let you store XML in a blob, then query inside that using XPath

And yes, XML/XPath support in SQL databases allows them to act as schema-free document stores. However, they aren't optimized for that, so indexing inside the document is limited. OTOH, SQL DB vendors might be able to add that quicker than NoSQL vendors can improve tool support and querying. OTOH you have to deal with XML instead of JSON. OTOH...

It's a trade off.
Of course. I was just curious if this had any other value.