skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask: Are content management packages like Drupal, Joomla, Zope, etc. worth it?
I've heard good things about "content management frameworks" like Drupal, but it's hard to tell whether it's worth investing time in any of them.

I don't like how Drupal advertises that it has plug-n-play modules which offer "features" that enable things like blogging, auth&auth, or whatever. That implies that all blogging/discussion/whatever packages are the same. What if that module is ill-suited to what I want for a particular application?

It's hard to tell whether it'd just be easier to do everything from scratch with a general framework like Rails.
Perhaps even recommend IRC. IRC has developed the brass balls on many of my programming friends. Though it hurts at first, I'd recommend it to anyone seriously considering programming professionally as a psychological benchmark for having ones logic and presentation brutally criticized.
Burying the lede:

"Parents still report feeling a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives than those who've never had kids."

So "happiness" or "sense of purpose and meaning." Take your pick.
Assuming you're located in Pasadena, it's nice to see another startup nearby.

I really love the design and execution. Keep up the good work.
I'm pretty glad Jonas Salk's forebears didn't share your opinions on "immortality". Fortunately, yours is one of the rare misapprehensions that self-corrects. ;)
Fortunately for us, despite his ad-hominem, your original argument was self-evidently broken. You might consider addressing it.
How to make WordPress more secure [pdf]
Well, but it also doesn't have very much to do with Islam, which is why all of these sorts of things do pander a bit to a prejudiced bent. The social patterns of say, Turkish in Germany (where I live now) and Mexican-Americans in the southern US (where I grew up) are roughly comparable and all of the specifically "Muslim" traits can be more effectively explained in socio-economic terms.

Islam, like all of the major world religions, has shown remarkable flexibility in adapting to the societies where it has spread. One way you can pretty easily see this is that despite the four countries with the largest Muslim populations not being in the Middle East or northern Africa, "muslim" culture, in this context, is almost always referring to those regions.
Sure, but there are plenty of downsides to this.

I've always been fascinated by and impressed with NASA's software methodologies, but they are neither cheap nor fast.

I'm not sure it's something to aspire to as much as one extreme on a continuum of code quality vs. code cost.

I would suggest that it would not be in Google's nor in most companies' interest to do anything like this. Where a company falls on this line depends on their organization's size, purpose, and business model.
First reaction: I agree. The systems we're building today should be able to support us well into the future.

The problem is that technology has advanced so quickly that what was adequate a few years ago (up to 20, even), is not going to work. We couldn't really predict that we would have taken to this whole technology thing so openly.

...after all, "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Hacker News feeds
Well I guess it depends on what you're doing. I have experience with both Drupal and Joomla to name a couple. I like Drupal, I don't like Joomla. Just my subjective experience.

If what you're doing is really left of field, then yeah, probably you are better off just making something yourself with Rails or whatever.

But to answer your original musing, I think it would be worth putting in some time to trial out the ready made options that are out there, you could save your self a lot of time. If you don't like them, you can always start your own thing. It doesn't take long to install either Drupal or Joomla (though I would choose Drupal if I were you).

Drupal has a well developed taxonomy system (essentially a way of tagging content with terms) that can be used in a variety of ways (from setting up a very granular access control system to just logically organising content) and is very flexible. It's got a good templating system. It has great community support and good documentation. As you allude, it has a huge amount of plug-in modules (all free, unlike Joomla, where more of a business has grown around selling plug-in modules for cash).

But as you are obviously aware, if you use software developed by someone else, you're of course starting from their point of view. I think this applies even with frameworks like Rails... Rails is DHH's point of view. Drupal is the Drupal developers point of view. If you're going to find it useful to stand on the shoulders of giant's, then you have to agree with the giant. :)

I've trialled many CMSes, and from the ready made options out there, Drupal is the best option I have so far found.
RIP: Returned Every Email
Great idea. What is your business model?
>It's not really a conspiracy. A conspiracy requires secrecy. Islamic theology plainly calls for supremacy. Not that this is a realistic threat, it just underlines a certain incompatibility with modern sensibilities.

What I would like to hear is Muslim "moderates" clarifying is this so or not. Its one thing for them to say its hysteria, another thing if they say that and yet believe in supremacy.
Yeah, you're right. I simplified it since posts falling down is easier to conceptually understand. New posts start out with a higher rating, and an old posts needs to boost its rating 10x to be at the level a posts starts out at 12.5 hours later.

The effect is the same though.
No, ratings don't change without votes being cast. But new posts automatically start out with a higher rating, so a post must grow its (positive) vote differential by 10x to "keep up" with the new posts. The rating increases as a log of the vote differential, so the votes need to increase exponentially, not the rating. The vote differential increasing by 100x would result in an increase of 2 rating points (this is what a logarithm means).

A new post submitted on June 8, 2008 would have started out with about 1753 rating points, and this number grows by a little less than 2 every day. So it's not that big to store.
Any game designers in Sydney?
I have always been interested in game design but am pretty terrible at the graphic/game design aspect of it (ok thats only because I havent been as fanatical about learning it as I have with my coding). Anybody keen to partner up?
I think the focus on critical thinking in addition to an understanding of fundamentals is a quick way to find people who can learn any existing technologies. What one knows shows what they're interested in, but can they learn new things fast?

I do agree that a title of junior-developer for people who've been in the industry for a while seems silly.
Weird things about git, #2: no bug tracking system
the parent isn't really coherent.

for example, could someone clarify/explain the following:

"Since (all ?) europeans countries birthrates are agnostics, they include the recently immigrated people as well."

"It appears on the contrary, according to our low birthrates, that they don't have as much childs as we fear."

"This doxa (more people = more consumers = more taxpayers = more economic growth) is the true responsible for the situation you describe. If you're looking for an ennemy, then fight this doxa."

I'm going to assume english isn't your native language. Please try to express whatever it is you were trying to express again. It reads like it was (poorly) translated by a machine.
I find this idea ridiculistic.
Any religion that doesn't tolerate disobedience/non-believers deserves hatred from all educated people.

In my opinion (as a theist, but not an adherent of any religion) anyone who believes in the quran or old testament deserves to be shunned.

Those books (and yes, I've read english translations of both) are full of hate mongering vitriol. They urge 'believers' to gruesomely kill anyone who disagrees with their particular set of outlandish beliefs (even if the non-believer doesn't do anything to harm you).

So yes, a priori I do discount Jews and Muslims. Frankly, if you choose to associate yourself with the sort of racist, misogynistic, intolerant tripe that permeates the torah and quran, I place you on about the same level as neo-nazis and book burners. You should be allowed to spew whatever bullshit you want, but you're a moron and will be treated accordingly.

Just so we're clear, I'm all in favor of religion (or atheism, or agnosticism) in principle. I'm just strongly against any world view and philosophy that demands you kill people who disagree with you, but aren't trying to harm you.
I don't think English works this way. The Buffalo and have/had examples are clearly valid (if extreme) sentences and their meaning leaps out once you see the trick. "Fish fish eat eat" does too, and so would "Fish fish eat eat fish". But you can't arbitrarily nest these clauses, and "fish fish fish eat eat eat" doesn't click for me. The suggested analogy, "Mice cats dogs chase eat sleep", seems accurate as an analogy because it's invalid in the same way; that is, "Cats dog chase eat" is clearly ok, but the next step of nesting is not. It would be interesting to pin down the reason.
Shi Ma? Somebody's been watching Firefly re-runs?
I've seen this type of story so many times it almost seems like a template:

There is a variant of our [primary audience's] native tongue. Its user base is growing. Soon you might be forced to learn this strange culture/young people's bastardization of our language to function in society!

It's an interesting topic, for sure, but the consequences are always so overblown.

I wonder if this is a common story in other languages.
Does anybody else feel like a bug tracker has a negative impact on community and coding enjoyment? I don't think I'm on-board with this argument, or his assertion that significantly more people are using Mono than git.

I find bug trackers satisfying, generally, but then again, I make money from my software--it's almost entirely Open Source, but nonetheless, my prosperity depends on the software being great. Anyway, closing out bugs is an enjoyable part of the job, and I simply can't keep up with things that come in via email or in the forums. I think there's a volume-of-issues-to-developers mismatch between my projects (which have two or three developers, tops, plus a few occasional contributors) and something like git (which has a primary maintainer, a few regular developers, and dozens of occasional contributors).
Cool stuff! Also recommending Feedity - http://feedity.com (shameless plug). Just give it the webpage and build a custom RSS feed on-the-fly.
People pick and choose their beliefs to reconcile it with a reasonable world view. Your equivalence of Judaism and Islam on this issue without considering the vast spectrum of beliefs in both religions shows your ignorance, or perhaps your desire to distort the issue to fit your particular world view. Religions are more than their holy books.
Thanks for asking.

Currently, we target three different sources of revenue:
1. Subscriptions
2. Advertisement
3. Strategic partnership

There are few more, less straight-forwarded ways, but those three should be enough for the first days.
Hopefully, I've answered it here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231570

Feel free to drop me an email to alex at atomkeep.com and I can tell you more. Thanks.
Plus they'll end up banning you anyway.
Aggressively De-Supporting Features - GCC Inserting Invalid Instructions on Purpose
also intrade.com is a full-fledged futures prediction market in ireland but may give some ideas.
Thanks. Drop me an email and we may arrange a meeting with a beer or coffee if you're close by ;) However, we're about to move to SF area in the mean time.
Thanks, good point. Actually, I am looking for a professional marketing person and copy-writer, who can develop good copy for the site. Any references?
Not necessarily. Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people.
Life is rarely black or white, more shades of grey (can't remember where I read that).

Corollary: Careful with the shades of brown.
The biggest problems faced by the two consultingware shops I've worked at, is that they thought they were product based shops and every design desision reflected that. But the product became so complicated that every client had there own special configuration and no-one really understood them all at the same time. It became very common to make a change for one client and break a feature for someone else when they upgraded.

IMO they would have been much better off to embrace consultingware and plan for it.
"the consequences are always so overblown."

Only until some Asian country country replaces Hollywood as the biggest producer of big budget English movies.
Colombia's Cocaine Cartels Learn a New Trick
And for anyone who missed this one lately ---> look at the stakes on this bet!
http://www.longbets.org/362
That's a fair point. I've met many people that are ostensibly muslim or jewish and are perfectly reasonable and intelligent.

But, I've never really gotten a good answer on which parts of the said holy books followers are free to disregard.

Can I ignore anything I disagree with and still be considered an X? If so, what meaning does X really have and why should I consider myself an X? If not, then who gets to decide which parts of the holy book I can ignore, and by what authority?

The 'party line' that I usually receive is that every word of the holy books is true, but we must interpret it properly. However, there are huge portions of the the old testament and quaran that unambiguously advocate violence and intolerance (I can dig up example if you like). They really don't leave much room for interpretation.

To the best of my knowledge, religions/philosophies have a core set of beliefs that define them. I understand that there is some latitude, but once you stray a certain distance from a religion's core, I'd argue you are no longer a member of that religion. And, based on my readings of the quaran and old testament, I'd say that violence and intolerance are part of the core of islam and judaism.

By way of analogy, libertarians hold a very wide spectrum of beliefs. For example, two libertarians could disagree on whether or not elementary schools should be publicly funded. But, when one of them contends that all private profit should be taken and redistributed, I'd posit that he's no longer a libertarian because he has strayed too far from the core principles.
I don't understand.. why would he specifically want to bid up auctions? To boost GoDaddy's revenue?

If GoDaddy wanted to do that, why do they need him - couldn't they already have been doing that, before they hired him??
I am not sure why the drug dealers think that these delivery crafts have to have human pilots on board. With the kind of money that these guys have, it would be relatively easy to implement a self-piloting craft that can go anywhere.
Common Lisp is future friendly. I downloaded a code profiler from around 1991, and it worked fine in Clisp in 2007 with no changes!
He Predicted Jerry Yang & Yahoo's Collapse in 2001
Ask YC: Learning an Editor
I've been an avid Vim user for about a year and a half, or maybe even two now. I'd like to learn Emacs, first of all because it seems (from an outside viewpoint) to be slightly more powerful, but also because it has a few features I'd like to be able to use.

I started trying to learn Emacs yesterday, but I find that everything I do doesn't get anything done, and beating my head against it doesn't help.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to get up to speed on usage of Emacs as fast as possible? Maybe a like to a "N00B Guide" or something?

Thanks.
It seems like this article blames Window's bloat on the fact that it's not a microkernel, which makes no sense. Linux is also a monolithic kernel, and has remained (more or less) monolithic even though Andrew Tanenbaum has argued with Linus for years about it. Linus recently had this to say:

> "The whole argument that microkernels are somehow "more
secure" or "more stable" is also total crap. The fact that
each individual piece is simple and secure does not make
the aggregate either simple or secure. And the
argument that you can "just reload" a failed service and
not take the whole system down is equally flawed."

Window's bloat is from providing backwards compatibility for 20 years of poorly written third party apps and weird hardware - along with Microsoft's habit of bundling everything possible with their operating system... it has nothing to do with being a micro/monolithic kernel.
How to Succeed? Make Employees Happy
not a problem... feedback or feature requests will be appreciated
Very cool. I always love a good, simple solution for a simple problem.
YOU may have had great experiences, but if you have no one with to share them, after you die they are gone.

Shall I introduce you to the phenomena known as "writing" and "publishing"? No, wait! I see you've already discovered them for yourself!

There are also concepts like "teaching", "friendship", "neighborliness", and "public service" that you might like to explore. If you die without kids and "nobody blinks an eye"... it's not because you didn't have kids.
They did, with VA Software when all the free software hackers became temporarily rich. And we all know how that story ended :)
Let me get this straight: in the middle of the dotcom collapse, someone went out on a limb and predicted that a dotcom titan would fall? Wow, now there is a radical, out-of-the-box thinker. We need more authors like this guy.
Beautiful. I just added the feed to my Snackr feed reader. The result is pretty nice.
Actually, I think I remember an article claiming that having a startup does make entrepreneurs happy. It's everything else (income, social life, stress level) that gets worse for entrepreneurs when they start their own business.

Working for myself has definitely lowered my income, at least for the short term. But I'm fairly happy.
Did you try the tutorial? Load it with Ctrl-h t

It would help to be more specific about what you'd like to learn about emacs.
Chris Anderson: Aware of All Statistical Traditions
I learned emacs from an O'Reilly book: Learning GNU Emacs

http://books.google.com/books?id=a_lea3-w-1kC&printsec=f...

If that and/or the tutorial doesn't do it for you, google "emacswiki" and see what else you can find. Also, "steve yegge emacs" (but maybe not on your first day, unless you need further inspiration).
Same, don't get much traffic yet but when I do MT should handle it fine.
ICANN gets pwned
>I understand that there is some latitude, but once you stray a certain distance from a religion's core, I'd argue you are no longer a member of that religion

I agree. Once you sufficiently liberalize a religion, say, by being a Christian that believes there are ways to paradise without ever having a personal relationship with your Lord, Jesus Christ, I fail to see the point. But, there are very many people that arbitrarily pick and choose beliefs. So even if it seems improper to us to pick and choose beliefs, that is just how it is.

>And, based on my readings of the quaran and old testament, I'd say that violence and intolerance are the core of islam and judaism.

I won't speak for your interpretation of Islam, but your interpretation of Judaism is wrong. You can't read a religion's book and claim to know everything about that religion. The ancient Hebrews existed at a time when tribal violence was a way of life. They genocided/smited their enemies with the help of God and wrote about it. They have mellowed considerably since then, depending on how you feel about Israel.

There are thousands of years of interpretation since the books were originally written. In Judaism, interpretation of the Bible is sometimes considered as valid as the Bible itself. So Judaism was reformed over time by people interpreting the Bible and publishing their interpretations. The Talmud is probably the most important of these Jewish Biblical interpretations, but there have been many since. If you want to gain an understanding of Judaism, you can't just read the Old Testament and call it a broken religion that advocates violence and intolerance.
> I think it is because in 2008, we expect a certain level of uptime for web services.

Exactly. Google is free, but what if you couldn't access it one day a month? Sure, you could just use Yahoo, but people would still be steaming mad.
Any lawful device: 40 years after the Carterfone decision
Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal
Alright, brilliant. Now which users are the must follows?
Zhende! (spelling probably wrong).

Seriously, the small amount of Chinese I've learned has made me come to take the rules of English with a grain of salt - so much overhead that you don't need in 95% of daily conversation.
Actually - in 2001 he is saying yang was unfit to be ceo of a then-smaller yahoo... So they pushed him aside for other executives. Now yang is in charge and yahoo is struggling - perhaps there is some lesson there? Some irony? Yes to both.
> Past the third generation, minorities stop being minorities. They become culturally indistinguishable from the overall society.

Excuse me? Black people are culturally indistinguishable from white people in the USA? And the whole miscegenation thing is still very real; try to name some onscreen romances between blacks and whites, and witness the backlash against the Super Bowl ad with Terrell Owens and a white woman.
Thanks, I just built this cause I wanted a way to get comments that where in response to mine, but I could add that feature.
A Founder’s “Daily Flash” for Executing in the First 6 Months
As long as English remains the international language of commerce the incentives to keep all dialects mutually intelligible should prevent too much divergence.
I think the author is confused between "tracking bugs" and "a bug tracking system". The former is a social process, and something that all projects do on some level. The latter is a piece of software, which may or may not help the project to do the former. The author even discovered the evidence for this, but missed the meaning: git's bug work happens on the mailing list, while mono's goes on in the tracker.

Don't confuse software with problems. That's how we get bad software.
Zembly Provides Social Context for Web Development
yeah it's darwinian. The british aren't too happy about american bastardization of english, but they don't have much of a choice. We're much better at exporting culture.
The nature of phone calls and emails are extremely different. Email is better for articulating complex ideas because you have the time to think them through; phone calls are better for hashing something out with someone live since the latency is in milliseconds instead of hours.
Some Proof that Marijuana is a Powerful Medicine
I would also add http://feeds.feedburner.com/HNWatrcoolr

It is the last 30 HN stories that made it to the top of the front page.
I'm not sure I understand it /now/.

http://tinyurl.com/6yb9t4 (warning, website is safe for work, but has sound.)
It amazes me how someone thinks he can generalize something about a 15,000-person organization having worked with a tiny piece of it for a short time. I think the author should have stuck more to Sergei's tune, when he said: "I left because Microsoft turned out to be the right place for me".

Want promotions and management positions and fancy titles? Then a flat organizational structure is not for you.

Want exhaustive tests, project managers, and countless meetings? Then a "startup mentality" is not for you, either.
This is really cool. I'm subscribed to pg's feed now via FF. It would also be cool if I could post my upvotes to FF as well.
"... Hacker News feeds ..."

Hey twism, this works a charm with wget (fails loading for Fox3 for some reason). The ability to get comments the process them later makes this a very useful tool extract your own data. Thanks for this neat hack.
Ars Technica digs into iTunes App Store payment rumors