skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny how things change. In mid 90s people were praising Microsoft for being so incredibly nice to developers: MSDN and Visual C++ were bargains compared to ridiculous amounts of license fees IBM wanted to for OS/2 development tools and (!) documentation. In the end, many cited IBM's ignorance towards developers as a key factor behind the ultimate demise of OS/2.

I asked someone at Microsoft once why they even charge for Visual Studio and he replied that otherwise they'll get happy Borland lawyers going Netscape route after them.

That's understandable.
It's Not So Easy Being Less Rich.
You wouldn't happen to have a link to open-source Bryce, by any chance? The only relevant link I can find in Google is a newsgroup post dated six weeks ago indicating that they might open-source it, so I'm not surprised it hasn't been improved yet, assuming it was released.

Blender of course has been open-source for years now and is being improved, but note that it too was proprietary software prior to being open-sourced.
People who describe themselves as "young-ish" similarly evoke images of crummy half-baked ideas. Things grow. As you grow older you will learn to try to not discount the entity you are presented with now based on impressions made in the past.
Funny how even INT(P) types and such enjoy celebrity gossip, just in a different bubble.
MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL all have deep enough pockets to keep this issue in the courts for years on end. They may lose in the end, but it may be irrelevant by then.
Ya -- mixing complex hierarchical OO libraries and programming metaphors in one project? It does sound like a trip through the underworld.
I understand. But thinking about it. We are trying to write in English. And good English essayists usually write much more succinctly. So why not trying to write like English speakers? And the best way to do it is to imitate the best English writers.
Ask YC: Experience with Connecting to Credit Reporting Agency
I'm looking for information on interfacing with Credit Reporting Agencies and pulling credit report data for users. If anyone has experience or can share any information resources on the topic, it would be a great help!

thanks in advance.
Note "GNU Project" and how the text emphasizes that "open source software attends to the hacker community's needs, not the end user needs". I did some solo writing with LaTeX and darcs, but there's no way that would fly in an office environment. And I work with very smart people -- my main work colleague has finished his MSc. in physics at age 21 before dropping out of academia. But should we bothered to establish a protocol and working practices to collaborate on documents? Microsoft Word does that and enough document type-setting/FrameMaker stuff that five-digit projects are written straight into Microsoft Word with no posterior editing work.

Microsoft Word's UI is sometimes counterintuitive, but it's simple enough that people outside the hacker community can use it.

One problem with open source I didn't point out because the main idea was to focus on de Landa is that too many people thought competing with Microsoft had much to do with compatibility. If there was a working environment for collaborative writing as usable as Microsoft Word people would eventually go for it because it's cheaper.

I know, I know. I actually wrote my undergrad thesis on compatibility issues in software competition and how Apple was attempting a "partial compatibility strategy" by adopting Unix while keeping Macintoshness. But with time I realized that wasn't really the core problem, it was just a road bump.
Here are some thoughts I think are worth discussing.

1. Did Facebook do this out of competitive pressure from projects like OpenSocial?

2. Is Facebook doing this because they're a good citizen or because there's something in it for them (or both)? Are they looking to have other people improve the platform? Are they looking to make it easier for other SNs to adopt their technology?

3. Do you think people outside Facebook will actively contribute patches back to the project? Do you think Facebook thinks this?

4. Does this in any ways indicate a diminished importance of the platform in Facebook's overall strategy?

I'm not sure what I think, myself. They've released Thrift as OSS already, so this is just another release in that vein?

I think the most likely scenario is two-fold. One, they want to look like the good guys, especially in the eyes of the technical set. Releasing a major component as OSS goes a long way towards doing that.

Two, they want other platforms using their technology rather than Google's. The platform license is the CC Attribution license, so the only restriction on using their code is that you have to attribute Facebook in there, somewhere.

That's a really low barrier to adoption.
I meant Blender. My bad ;)
Time Bomb in Vista | Tech Jaws
I've been trying. Check out the more recent text on social networks for something that's not so nested.
Read:
WSJ

economist

inc

Check what current businesses are trying to solve. Don't use techcrunch... instead go right to the source. See what the VC's are investing in by looking at their portfolios on their website. Explore those startups... you'll probably see something that says "you can do better"

also: irc #startup
Modeling Hacker News Upvoting as Poisson Processes
TheStreet: GPhone delayed until 2009! What GPhone?
Trion developing its first server-based, "thin client" MMORPG
Yeah, that's obviously the source of their mistake. The problem, though, is that Delicious Library is designed to solve a completely different problem.

Delicious Library can afford to lead off with a beautiful display of the covers of my books because I don't need to see an information-dense, quick-loading set of prices, reviews, popularity indexes, and text samples for books that I already own. In fact, the last thing I want to see when I launch Delicious Library is a detailed page of data which summarizes how much I overpaid for my books, or how crappy my taste is compared to the average. What I really want from Delicious Library is a big screenful of my stuff that looks good and makes me feel proud of my collection.

I'm sure that Borders executives feel the same way. Now they can look at their website and be confident that, by god, they've got great taste in books, designers, and photographers!
I would try the vmware route. The vmware player is free (I think the server verison as well), and you can boot any linux in it.

Use windows for developping, use rsync to transfer your changes to the vmware image (or use a shared disk, or mounted disk, etc...).

You will ahve much less hassle to install perl modules (they often require a compiler) and no path issues ("/ vs \")
Install Ubuntu on your notebook.
Well, the blog is full of crummy half-baked ideas, not to mention weird rants written in panic while on drugs. My professional work is not described as something by a young-ish person.

The thing is, it's too late to change the average (intelligent, well-informed, willing to try new things) user's perception of Linux. For a while, people like classical musicians were trying Linux because it seemed like the better alternative. They gave up. The world gave up.

It's interesting how people using Linux are so insistent and proud of their technology. (Check this reddit mini-thread: http://reddit.com/info/6ku5n/comments/c044vs7 )

I never once mentioned in the blog post I use a Mac. It's just something in the background. I don't think about it. I use Windows at work, incidentally. The taskbar works differently, but I'm not playing OS freak anymore.
Glad to see these guys doing well, I hope perhaps they can stay independent and get some longevity out of the deal...
Articles like this remind me of everything that's wrong with the tech hiring process. Especially the linked "new-hire checklist", which says that you should demand "imbalance" and "a glass full of kool-aid" in your candidates, but mysteriously downplays the importance of "domain knowledge" (really...this is what the author considers to be good advice?)

Beyond that, I don't think I'm the only good developer who is tired of the "gauntlet" mentality in tech interviews. Coding questions are fine and puzzles are sometimes acceptable, but you have to remember that their only purpose is to answer one question: does the candidate know how to code? If you already know the answer to that question, it's time to sell the interviewee on your company -- not to alienate them by beating them senseless with ever-more-difficult problems and brain teasers.

Every interview question should satisfy one of two criteria:

1) if the candidate answers correctly, would it make me want to hire him/her?

2) if the candidate answers incorrectly, would it make me want to avoid him/her?

If your questions are "hard", but they don't satisfy one of these requirements, they're useless. And importantly, once you've got a sense of the answer to these questions, you're done with the interview. There's no need to drag it on, and subjecting a candidate to a grueling, capricious interview process can only serve to alienate her from your company.
Yep. They sure do.
I'll buy your tickets, but don't make me or anyone buy your data (Stats). If you do, I won't by your tickets.

People only care about the sports because of the data which composes the story line, make that a closed garden and I think a lot of people would be collectively pissed.
NASDAQ quotes go real-time on Google Finance
Oh. On growing older, I'm 25, soon to be 26, and actually trying to present me as younger. I wish I was younger, I wasted my teenage years and I'm trying to live it now while growing to be "serious" professionally in parallel.

It's an interesting thing. I have had two relationships with 30-year-olds who are in the same late-adolescence trip I am. Anyway, that's a personal rant.
Remember the Juwo Guy? Here's a Demo Video
Kindle: Electronic Device Stirs Unease at BookExpo
The guy he's showing it to comes up with a succinct summary: "a way to consolidate different media in one place".
OSX may not be open source, but isn't it built on top of BSD and doesn't it include/use a lot of open source software?
Thanks for the help.

I totally forgot about VMWare/VirtualBox; I'll have to look into them more. Seems easier that way, and I get to use the same OS that the server runs.
This seems to be giving me different results than google.com for many queries (examples: my name, "java", "specialtys") . I presume this is because searches I do on google.com are personalized to my search history and whatever other data google has on me...
Good points.

Agree with the premise that interview questions should provide useful information.

However, recruitment is a delicate dance (much like any kind of relationship where there's both "buying" and "selling").

Anything that's overly formulaic is probably sub-optimal.

At the end of the day, you're trying to have a conversation that helps both parties determine if it's a good "fit". There should be an overarching "goals" for the questions, but not everything that's said or asked will neatly satisfy the criteria. Successful recruiting is more nuanced.
Most folks don't realize, but desktop Linux has surpassed Windows and OSX in convenience, features and usability. Sure it still lacks some critical desktop applications and high quality UI design to truly shine. I've been alternating between Ubuntu and OSX for quite some time now, and dumbness of OSX (and it's visual polish) amaze me to this day: brand-new "naked" Leopard needs quite a few add-ons (sometimes commercial) to get on par with even (!) Gnome.

Lets face it: conquering consumer market is impossible without millions spent on "Mac vs PC" commercials and I wouldn't expect Linux to ever get there, unless PC manufacturers start paying for it. Linux gets a nice chance to be a major player whenever DELL/HP/whoever develops a nice line of Linux-only machines with a catchy name and distinguished set of applications, accompanied by a massive PR-campaign, kind of like Eee PC on steroids.
If you meant Blender then your offhand remark of "was it ever improved" kind of missed the mark: http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ is the second open movie project based around Blender - this one and the first, Elephant's Dream, have pushed major improvements into Blender. They're doing a game project next. The commercial packages can still claim a lot of additional features, but Blender is clearly catching up.
Plato is outright evil. And Aristotle is not much better.

They helped kill the first scientific revolution that took place around 300 BC in Greece. Read Archimedes and folks instead.
To save others some time they put up info on alternate resolvers:
NTT x.ns.verio.net 129.250.35.250

NTT y.ns.verio.net 129.250.35.251

H2 67.15.31.131

H2 66.98.240.131

http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=90185...
"Your claim that you can achieve everything in C++ misses the point."

Well, no. I was responding to a comment that implied that it was impossible to do things like anonymous functions and closures in C++, due to the restrictions of the type system. That's wrong.

You'll get no argument from me that C++ is verbose.
I still don't understand the OLPC move. The whole _point_ of the things was to teach a man to fish, not to give him a fish.

From that basis everything (even the hardware) was open so that it could be studied and changed. It made perfect sense. The sellout doesn't seem to gain anything at all (as you say, it even uses the same interface) whilst giving up the fundamental principle of independence for the recipient.
This legal cloud contributed to the death of my first startup. Though you're not in the clear yet, the legal environment looks a lot better for Draftmix.
Did you get the news that the next batch of OLPC laptops will use Windows XP? They weren't bribed by Microsoft.

Sure, but the governments OLPC needs to sell to in order to succeed, were bribed (and threatened, and lied to, and pretty much all of the other tricks in Microsofts 30 year history of FUD and scorched earth tactics).

And, of course, all but Negroponte were disgusted by the change of direction and left the project.
I added an "elevator summary" to the beginning of the text, prompted by the friendly remarks in these comments noting that it's hard to find the point I'm trying to get across.
I agree that it is easier to use and configure a debian-based distro, but I would add that if you really want to learn Linux intimately you should check out Gentoo. The Gentoo docs are really good and will take you through the setup step by step. By the end of it you will have configured and compiled your own kernel and have familiarity with a lot of the /etc config files. Of course things may not work out the first couple of times and you may just get so frustrated you want to give up.
Take a look at sliding scales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale

They likely know that any payments received from users will be worth more than a bunch of banner ads that never get clicked on.
Tipjoy seeking kick-ass developer
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Tipjoy is a new micropayments service that will revolutionize how payments are done online. We're strong supporters of free culture and currently support a voluntary payments model. We make it extremely easy for people to leave tips for stuff they love online. Rather than turning people away by gating content, Tipjoy allows people to choose to leave a tip for a content if they think it was valuable.

Requirements:

0. You need to be really, really smart.

Plus:

1. A sense of aesthetics and design

2. Deep knowledge of the tools we use: Linux, Python, Django, Javascript, CSS, and some Flash/ActionScript

3. Experience in configuration, scaling, and deployment for servers and databases.

4. Experience managing complex, dynamic systems (especially people)

We like effective people that can focus to get things done and make real things. We're building a culture which demands excellence. We understand that anything that lets you perform better is worth it: fully loaded Macs, enormous monitors, Aeron chairs, food, etc.

Apply by sending mail to founders@tipjoy.com

Make sure to tell us about something you've made that you are proud of. You can also try your hand at these puzzles:

Puzzle 1: explain python generator expressions in 140 characters or less and tweet the answer to @tipjoy

Puzzle 2: Concatenate the page source for each level of http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ and find the number of times the substring 'tipjoy' can be found via character removal.

Puzzle 3: Make up a puzzle which can be solved in less than 30 minutes which we're unable to solve. It must be possible for us to find the solution, and you need to know it.

Tipjoy's offices are in San Francisco.

View this job ad on our site at: http://www.tipjoy.com/jobs/2/#2
I wouldn't recommend gentoo in a hosting environment until you're comfortable. I know a few people who completely hosed gentoo boxes during the learning phase.
Who are these 'most people' you speak of? If you mean people, in general, then you are talking about middle aged parents in suburbia, the elderly, or youth outside of the IT field. What do they know of software? But if you would like to talk about anyone in software engineering, scientific computing, high-performance computing, embedded systems, mission critical systems, server side development, etc., then most people will tell you Linux is integral to their work and not some half-baked piece of software.
But see, that's the point - C++ is intended to be multi-paradigm, and MS made it one-dimensional. Stdlib and Boost both take advantage of multiple paradigms while the MFC is a framework prison whence there is no escape.
Just do it. Though it's easier said than done.
What's more formulaic: asking a small set of questions that are known to provide real information about a candidate's skill, or conducting an eight-hour "gauntlet" interview loop of brain-teasers and puzzles?

Questions assessing "fit" satisfy the criteria I outlined: a good answer "fit" question will make you want to hire the candidate. A bad answer will make you want to avoid her.
Looks like Yahoo beat google to real time quotes. Plus, their NYSE/AMEX quotes are also real time.
Do you own trees?
I have better things to do than invest time in trying Linux again. Gnome may have features that Leopard doesn't have, but my subjective probability that Ubuntu just-works like my Mac does is very low, and I'm a geeky user.

This isn't about commercials. Millions were spent in server-space commercials and Linux still came out winner because it was a cheap good-enough solution. Large companies have given desktop Linux many opportunities to catch on because it's economically more profitable. The crummy QA of desktop distributions (server distributions also have crummy QA, it's just that the geeks who run them are able to surf through it) made desktop Linux fail.
I have to agree with rtf, then: Blender is actually a counterexample to your point. It has improved dramatically since it was open-sourced; it has actually implemented some features (like automated texture unfolding and Python scripting) earlier than its proprietary competitors.
It's great until you realize that you need to write a C function to do real work in a reasonable amount of time.
Sure, I wouldn't expect most computer users to learn TeX/CVS/etc. I wouldn't even expect a majority of new hackers to learn it any more. But for those that do learn it to a sufficient level of mastery, it's not only usable but at times wonderful.

I think there are actually two "problems" going on at the same time. On one hand, open source software is "too difficult" for most people to use. I agree. But on the other hand, most people aren't putting that much effort into learning the software.

Is software supposed to be easy to use? As much as possible, I would think. But some "hacker" software that has a tremendous initial learning curve (TeX, Emacs, even Lisp, depending on your background) offers equally tremendous rewards over similar software that is easier to learn.

The reason, perhaps, is that in learning TeX, you are learning how to prepare documents at a more abstract level than Microsoft Word. The resulting documents may be largely identical, but TeX offers the user more power and control in exchange for taking the time to learn how to operate it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if your job is to prepare documents. It may be a totally awful thing if you only need to prepare an occasional document, as the benefits of TeX are not likely to be worth the effort required to learn it for you.
Ouch, rather hard to read.

However:

- Open source (in a way that works) is here for web 2.0. Check out the AGPL (I'm releasing a big project under it this weekend.) This offers the same advantages for companies as desktop/server open source (no license administration, no data lock in, market price for consulting).

- OSS is not a failure. It ships on 99%+ of all desktop/laptop computers (including Windows and OS X machines), and even if you limit your count to shipped devices that have more open than closed software then Open Source still wins (routers, cell phones, appliances, set top boxes, even watches!)

- OSS doesn't have to dominate to win. As long as it fits the needs of the people who are developing it, then it will continue to mature. Maturity will (and has!) naturally bring more users and more development money.

- This is really the first full year you in which can buy consumer computers from tier 1 vendors with Linux pre-loaded. (HP, Dell and ASUS - the last of which has shipped a million plus units.) This was a precondition for mass market success. As the offerings mature expect sales to grow - up until now Linux wasn't really in the competition, but rather just a curiosity in the market.
You do realize there are smart people outside the computer field, right?

Anyone can become a Linux sysadmin in six months of training. Most classical musicians start in their early teens to get to orchestra level.
Print it out!
Click the "books" link...

"Error
This page can't be displayed due to a security violation. Contact support for additional information"

But the magic book scrolling thing on the homepage is pretty nice.
Matt hasn't realized just how awesome piracy of music is if you are a member of a site like waffles.fm. It is much better than any legal music service. How could the RIAA compete with a mainstream waffles.fm?
We don't need more power than we already have. I have done the whole hacker grand tour (well, I don't know C but I know Haskell and some Common Lisp), learned Emacs, became profficient in Vim, etc. etc.

The cost-benefit equation just doesn't work for "hacker software" as you say it. We're busy doing econometrics (we do use GNU R, but Matlab, Stata and SAS are far superior for most work) and statistical work, and just need to get reports done. We're trying to make money in here, not join a religion.
I find it easier to develop in PHP/Perl on Windows than any of the other language/framework combos. Most of the frameworks these days are geared towards the Mac/Linux developer with extensive use of the command-line. It can still be done on Windows but it can be a PITA sometimes.
I use perl on Windows all the time via Activestate, and it has no significant problems. The shebang doesn't matter if you use perl file extensions. Some Perl modules aren't on Activestate, though you can easily install them yourself and most of the time they work. I've found a few bugs, but not many.
For the six years I spent reading Slashdot, I read most of the points being made in this comments page. I'm answering them because I'm waiting for some other stuff to happen. But, oh well, these remarks keep on being made by the inside people and the world keeps moving on doing actual stuff.
Perhaps folks just think differently about software usage.
Congratulations you guys! Let us know if you need to syndicate or label wedding photos. ;)
I swear by this. It's not perfect in many ways, but it's MUCH better than standard windows.
Luminotes versus Google Notebook