skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Just wanted to mention...

(e.g., A4 in a MacBook Air).

incorrect. Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4 GHz processor in a MacBook Air
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Air-11-Inch-Model-A13...

I guess author wanted to mention iPad
If, by closed platform you mean Windows, how is that different from EC2, which locks you into either the closed platform of Windows or the closed platform of Linux?

Either way, it's a pretty big platform to be locked into. Kinda like saying your new laptop locks you into a closed platform.
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It's good software in spite of the difficulty of creating such a system in any language. It's good software in spite of the inherent difficulties in creating software. It's good software in spite of computers.
Famous photo which captures this:

http://www.life2point0.com/images/2007/12/14/stevejobs.jpg
"So before you jump on that bandwagon thinking nothing interesting could possibly be done with PHP, think of us (or Facebook)."

Before I jump on this bandwagon I think I'll forget all about mailchimp, and think about all the many, many, many great companies (such as Facebook) that use PHP.
Although then you make the ui more complex. And twitter.com has to be easy to use for people who are new to Twitter.

Maybe there should be an advanced.twitter.com?
When are you going to launch? I've been waiting since March for the details on how you'll market to your target audience. Personally I don't see how you're going to do it without going door to door, but if you manage to crack this nut, I've got a bunch of products lined up for which I'll copy your marketing strategy :) (totally different from yours, I don't think any of the JoS board BCC copycats are making a dime, so I'm not going there ;) )
Since I'm at -4, I just wanted to clarify that comics on the iPad are gorgeous. You can count on comic consumers desiring the physical product when the alternative is a PDF on their laptop. The experience on the iPad is far superior to that and a much better substitute for the real thing.

And by "iPad" I mean the iPad and future tablets.
Can you please name some examples for "business based on a Mac Java apps?" Especially those that don't use OSX specifics.

I don't understand this question.

Either it's a Java app (no platform specified), or it's a Mac Java app that does use OSX-specific code.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1819050
I kind of agree. But I still find 90% of extremely talented programmers breath a sigh of relief when they find they're not having to use PHP. Even for web development.

PHP was great a few years ago, and by great I mean "one of the only options". PHP is active on every shared web host around. It's the norm. Only recently have the likes of Ruby and Python become popular on shared hosts. Personally I think that's fantastic.
Why not transition to a different language over time? One that more great programmers want to use?

There's no reason they couldn't (over the course of years) move to another language. I'm not suggesting a total rewrite, but they could start writing entirely new subsystems in a new language. It's very rare to have 100% of your code in one language anyway.

Recruiting great programmers is one of the most important things in a software startup. Why stick with PHP if it makes that far more difficult?
Because rewriting it in a different language automatically makes it better software..? I don't think the language really matters.
I don't know, I've had this discussion a few times, about the differences between PR and marketing. Ppl at my company say they do 'PR' and 'because it's good PR' but I'm not interested in PR, I'm interested in sales. Marketing leads to sales, it leads people to learn about your product and to want to buy that product; PR just leads to people liking your company, which is only a small factor in the buying decision, and only after they've already decided they want to buy. But, and here's the rub, being in 'marketing' is not cool, it's full of negative connotations, it's hard and full of elbow grease; PR is about writing lofty prose from your well-lit corner office before going on a 2-hour lunch with some journalist. So 'doing PR' is something people want to do, 'doing marketing' not. (which makes that those who want to do marketing, and are not afraid of it, can make huge hits).
Way of the future may be sidecar funds that are for passive investors interested in angel investments. The sidecar fund invests automatically in all the deals of the angel group to which it is attached. This is a good way for the angel group to be assured of committed capital - especially during economic downturns where members may be less free with cash - and also allows external investors to achieve a diversified exposure to start up investments with a relatively small capital commitment. This is a good way for newbie angels to learn more about the angel group and their investment process - and if they like they may later choose to join the group and become more active "mentor" investors.
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iTunes U has some amazing lectures. Gilbert Strang (MIT) has some video lectures (MIT OCW) on linear algebra. They are a bit dull, but they are pretty decent.

I also recommend academicearth.org.

If you are near a university, take a class "mathematical physics". These kind of classes usually cover a lot of undergraduate material in a semester and are offered by many physics department. They usually use "Mathematical Methods" by Boas as a text.
Also, AWS/Heroku/GAE give you non-shared-hosting ways to deploy. Still, another tool in the box.
auto increment considered harmful, from joshu:

http://joshua.schachter.org/2007/01/autoincrement.html

Your tables almost always have a better unique key to use as a primary key other than auto increment (which sorts your table by the order they were inserted in - almost always useless outside of a blog).

Getting out of the habit of beginning the design of your tables with ID int autoincrement is a good thing. Even better if web frameworks stopped depending on it and setting it as the default primary key and ID used in views/routes.
Logistics query for a shopping portal
Hi, I am exploring the feasibility of a niche shopping portal. Am yet to finalize the product but one of the strong potential short-lists is luggage and bags.

1.	How do we update the images (pictures with different angles with or without models) /information/specifications of the product, specially if they are drop shipped directly to the consumer from different locations of the brand manufacturers across the country?
I doubt any dynamic language implementation on top of .NET could ever compete performance-wise with one of the modern JS engines. The CLR doesn't allow for certain low-level implementation tricks, like tagging pointers, and doesn't give you full control over the memory layout of your data structures. Also, all code generation has to go through the .NET JIT and the .NET runtime code generation APIs, which both aren't really optimized for the use by dynamic language runtimes.

However, Mono might be a better platform for dynamic languages, because the Mono team might be open to extending the core with some specialized infrastructure for dynamic languages...
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Probably because you overestimate the added value of Python and Ruby over PHP and underestimate the cost of language migration.

Language is not that important. Your engineers are. They will easily compensate for suboptimal tools.

The best hint for this is that most (>70%) of the money goes into salaries. Not software. Not hardware. Not office space. Salaries.
I offer a counter to the assumption on page 2 of the article..

Its not User experience in its end-all but reducing R and D costs with right R and D choices that allowed the focus on user experience. Let me explain.

Several universities concentrated on Mach Kernel OS design patterns. Thu,s when SJ left Apple he founded NEXT based upon extending this pattern with an OOP C language as the trade-offs with MACH in the OS do not benefit unless you adapt an OOP language to build the apps sitting on top that Mach Kernel OS and to be blunt C++ is a poor OOP computer language.

So when NEXT was acquired by Apple they had the opportunity to lower R&D costs as the initial R&D costs for this new way had already been paid by NEXT. Apple in its purchase of NEXT was just securing a price level of R&D for the next 20 years by buying the R&D team.

The assumption that Apple started with user experience is somewhat miss-guided and completely wrong.

To give you an idea of that initial R&D investment ..how many decades has GNU Hurd been limping along? Exactly..
> Language is not that important. Your engineers are. They will easily compensate for suboptimal tools.

That's exactly his point: it's much harder to find great engineers who want to use PHP.

Disclosure: I'm a PHP developer who has had to hire PHP developers in the past.
It doesn't take astronomical amounts, though, as I think most cable lines can support at least that much bandwidth ;)

What we're really seeing here is that the majority of the population is moving to internet video instead of their televisions. I imagine some TV networks want a technical guarantee that their video will be streamed uninterrupted by lag, at which point, it's only a matter of time 'till all video content is consumed.
I think it's not so much about the 'physical' part as about the 'rigorous training, certification and qa assurance practices' part. Developing software is very different from constructing a building (I do both, not as an engineer though); software is new, almost each and every time, because once it's build, you can just copy it byte by byte. Developing software is about pushing the edge in an unconstrained space. Physical construction (buildings, bridges, roads) is about repeatability; rigorous standards to reach a quantifiable production standard, and a build-in inertia to change. Large outfits (IBM, IT dev depts of big-four, that sort of thing) want to get software development to those levels, but nobody has managed so far.
I disagree with this. It shows a lack of maturity to reject a job over a specific tool.
For the record, I had (and anyway, I had never visited this page, so it was not a local cache problem).
I don't commit anything with

"Talked to client"
"Wrote email"
"Made blog entry"
"Spent 60 minutes wasting time doing X"

Also, the gaps in the timeline are just as telling. I always feel that little bit guilty returning from HN and seeing a 1hr gap where I could have worked.
If you think it is difficult recruiting good PHP developers in your area you will have almost no hope getting good Ruby or Python developers.

At my office we use a mix of languages. PHP for the services, Ruby for one set of management panels and Python for one of our other systems.

So during interviews we're happy with anyone that knows any of these with the intention of cross training when needed. During times when there is a shortage of good PHP developers to be found there is usually a shortage of good developers period.
Ask HN: Why is ipq.co so fast?
I've discovered http://ipq.co here, and I'm amazed by how fast the DNS record is available throught my company's DNS server. How is it possible? I've always been told that DNS propagation could took from 24h to 72h...I'd be really glad to know the trick to such blazzing fast updates!
I would understand why a great engineer might get annoyed by having to use PHP, but I think that the larger quantity of people that do know PHP would probably make it easier to find a great engineer in a pool of people that know PHP.
I believe it's still the case that you can only install apps from the marketplace.

Which is a deal-killer for me.
When I first wanted to build a website, I wanted to use C, because that was the language I knew best at the time. I'm glad I decided against idea as time went on.
"The best hint for this is that most (>70%) of the money goes into salaries. Not software."

I'm not sure what that proves, considering all the languages we're talking about are free, and the largest price you have to pay is probably for the IDE (which also tends to be free).
To me many of the responses sound politically correct. You shouldn't bite hand that (may) feed you.
Why not transition to a different language over time? One that more great programmers want to use?
There's no reason they couldn't (over the course of years) move to another language

Probably because by the time they've transitioned to the more popular language, an entirely new programming language will be the one more great programmers want to use.
Don't know about US/UK but in Australia the government has set up Early Stage Venture Capital LP structure to encourage investment in innovation. Investments via these structures are income and capital gains tax free. Here is link to news story regarding sidecar fund linked to Sydney Angels http://t.co/RoicITs
And no-one ever mentions them, but Markit Group and a host of other financial technology plays.

And hedge funds. Lots of hedge funds.
I use PHP at work for creating not only web applications but, also to do a lot of non-user facing backend stuff. It's great to know that someone out there is using PHP at a much bigger scale for backend stuff.I hope he shares more technical details. If you don't like PHP, fine, but, don't think all PHP programmers are stupid.

I once had a Python programmer looking at the kind of stuff that I was doing with PHP and he was surprised that such things could be done in PHP.

This is an actual conversation that I had in a meetup:

Guy1: If PHP were to disappear, it would bring down a lot of the web with it, wouldn't it?

Guy2: Nah, but, that would be the case if Java or .net were to disappear.

Me: (to myself)Wtf!

Guy1: But, most of the links that I click on the web end with .php.

Guy2: um.....

Me: (to myself)pwn3d!
I've used Macs for years, and I haven't seen a Java app I didn't hate. They're UI is never native and the UX is much slower than good webapp's?
Well, the post does imply that they've had problems recruiting exactly because they're using PHP. It's no mystery to me either, I imagine it must be hard to find great engineers willing to spend all their days dealing with the idiosyncrasies of PHP.

Great salaries is a great thing, but what if your competition offers great salaries and a less obnoxious programming environment than PHP (and better hardware, and better office space, for that matter)?
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I think you can write good software in any language. Moreover, PHP is a powerful language, in its last versions at least, it's just that the way it has been developped would make anyone serious about programming language developpment vomit.

But that's not really a problem.

I guess the problem is not that good devs can't code in PHP. And when they focus on the task at hand, they might not even notice. Because PHP has everything you need. I'd prefer coding a website in PHP than in Java, C, or C++, because PHP is dynamic, has first class functions and the kind of stuff you need to be expressive.

One of the problems is that if you think too hard about the fact that the language you use is suboptimal, it will affect the pleasure you take from doing your job.

The other problem is that a lot of PHP code is really horrible, so people have grown to associate PHP with bad code.
Why take a job where you would be working with a language that makes you miserable? It would be bad for both you and the company when you leave in several weeks.
I used to be in the "eww, PHP" crowd, but only until I really started using it.

It doesn't have to be the security blackhole or spaghetti monster it's made out to be.
I use tweetdeck and I tweet with all my accounts at the same time.
I've turned down a job before specifically because I didn't want n years using MUMPS on my CV.

(Okay, they didn't actually offer me the job, but I would have turned it down anyway.)
Microsoft was sued by Sun because of "a deliberate course of conduct to fragment Java" and had to settle by removing their own Java implementation from the operating system.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-1997/jw-10-lawsuit....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine

As far as I understand Java license doesn't allow you to make a platform specific Java implementation.

So who's then to bet his business on Mac Java apps? The only potentially "safe" approach is not to depend on Mac specifics. But is there any example of a profitable Java app (which made profit by targeting OSX customers) applying the mentioned "safe" approach?
"Thinking about people directly" misses the benefit of an objective, well-defined third-party evaluation (i.e googlebot).

If you think about "people" directly, I would imagine that those people, in your mind, all browse the web with your web browser, in your OS, with your abilities. These people all find content the same way you do.

Of course, we both know that many people do not browse the web in IE8, just as many do not browse the web in Windows at all. A great number (but perhaps a tiny percentage) don't have flash.

Having a nice objective measure of what makes a page accessible is a very useful thing for a web developer.
E-mail headers would be much better evidence.
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I am a Ruby on Rails programmer from the early days. It is my platform of choice. And yet, I still have massive respect for PHP. For me, it's the next best option.

I worked in PHP for five years before I worked in Rails, and I think PHP is a great language for web development.
Cyberduck generally gets hauled up at this point as an example of a good Java OSX application: http://cyberduck.ch/
I use exactly one Java application on OS X. And that's Minecraft.
Link to full article:

http://oppugn.us/posts/1287608776.html
I want to patent money too.
PHP's warts are shallow — syntactical quirks, disorganized standard library, idiotic config options.

In practice you disable stupid options, don't use quirky parts of the language, set up your IDE to autocomplete functions, and PHP stops getting in the way.

What you're left with is a decent OO language, which recently got namespaces and closures.

It's OK speed-wise (with APC) and has got stable implementation.
I wouldn't say that anyone has the impression that "all PHP programmers are stupid." Rather, it's more that PHP, on top of attracting O(N) competent developers like any other language, also attracts O(k >> N) marginal developers who barely know enough to get off the ground, and couldn't really manage to code in any other language. When you randomly select a "representative" PHP coder (such as by listing "knows PHP" as a criterion for resume submissions), you get a marginal one.
The "cool factor" of a language is inversely proportional to its popularity.
"So before you jump on that bandwagon thinking nothing interesting could possibly be done with PHP"

The problem is not that nothing interesting can be done in PHP. Lots of interesting can be done in any Turing complete language. It would be just 'plus points' if you would use for example Scala for the kind of task you described. I just cannot see why to use a dynamic language in a task where performance is important when there is a statically typed fast language which is as good and as concise as Scala. It is not that it is impossible that I would join a company developing in PHP. We have to make compromises all the time. It is just that developers evaluate companies, and join the one with the most 'plus points'.
I remember old BBS games where you could give money to the operator of the BBS to buy turns and gold. The latter could be given to others.

Virtually all poker sites have allow you to play using "play money".
Quote by Dee Hock the fonder of Visa.
- Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern.
- Data becomes information when assembled into a coherent whole, which can be related to other information.
- Information becomes knowledge when integrated with other information in a form useful for making decisions and determining actions.
- Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in anticipating, judging and acting.
- Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principles, memory and projection.
PHP-powered sites accounted for a lot of vulnerabilities through the years. Part of it was due to its popularity (like VB was back in the day), but part of it could also be blamed on certain design decisions e.g. register_globals.
"Get out of languages, platforms that's the important thing" - Zed Shaw said something like that a while ago
Rejected; I invented this first.
The most distant object observed from Earth
Darn top poster.
Ask HN: Where do you find good Twitter app designers?
I've tried scouring Elance etc, but what other avenues could I look into to hire a web designer to spruce up my app?

Thanks.
while this might be true for the mobile world, the author does not seem to consider that people do more of their computations in the cloud or data centers that in turn have to purchase great numbers of classical high-performance chips. While people are happy with the performance they get on their home machines the demand for greater computing power in the cloud will grow further.
Well, not really - it takes a lot longer to soak up c02 from the atmosphere than it does to burn it and put it back in. 10-20 years to grow a tree - 10 hours to put it back. So yes, neutralised over a short-ish term timeframe. If you had even a small percentage of people driving cars like this, forests would disappear pretty fast.

All biofuels have the 'zero co2' factor. I'd rather see electrics powered by hyrdo and nuclear, myself, if you consider c02 to be important. Because those two options have zero airborne emissions completely, and that's a far bigger factor in air quality than the amount of c02.