skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Considering the book that you are reading, I assume that you are not yet strong in PHP. If I am correct, then I would say go ahead and consider the other suggestions to learn another scripting language.

Telling you to check out another programming language is not really answering your question though. If you need to build a web app RIGHT NOW and PHP is your trade language then you build it in PHP. Learn another language in your spare time, but use your known tools today.

To answer your question, the Zend Framework is very much worth learning. There is not much to learn if you are solid in PHP though. Though I have not been keeping track of the ZF, it started out as a collection of libraries rather than a traditional framework. If CodeIgniter or Rails is a framework, then the ZF is more like a framework parts store. You grab the components off the shelf and you build your own "framework." Further, you can easily use ZF components with another framework such as CodeIgniter. Zend intended for the ZF to complement rather than displace the other available options in the PHP community. All that may be different today though.

Good luck!
ummm.. recursive solution? What will happen if you try to sort a million of items. Don't you run out of stack space at some point.

I know that some compilers are smart, and can inline things, but still method calls are not necessary the most efficient way to go.

Sure, it might look pretty, but it is not efficient.
The 1% is better than "very rough" :) Assuming 1/3 of Americans go to college, and a life expectancy of 75 years, there should be a little more than 1 million college grads per year, and those schools together should graduate roughly 7-10000 a year.
Blender: far from a toy, it can produce beautiful 3D images and movies (and it's free)
Some experts say Internet is dangerous. Is your family safe?
Call 1800CompuServ to order your compact disk today
Compressed air engines are fairly common for both cars and other purposes.

I wouldn't call it bunk science - it's certainly nowhere near as bad as the 'runs on seawater' cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_vehicle
As a student without a job, I've had the pleasure of watching this shitstorm unfold for over a year now with no personal consecuences. Call it macroeconomic shadenfreude.
Reminds me of the old game designer joke:

Q: 'What would a game look like if a UI designer designed it?'

A: 'A big button that says: "Click here to Win."
Amazon Kindle is a Hit
http://startupwarrior.com
Hmmm here is how I accessed the full article. I used my local public library's online magazine access. I don't have a personal subscription to HBR.
I agree with your interpretation (if you write positive stuff I don't think they'll complain), and I think they do have the right to just arbitrarily decide that someone is doing something bad and cut them off.

I don't like that they are saying that this is an open system, then laying down a legal trap where "everyone" who writes anything about the service would be in violation of their TOS. You can't have it both ways.
Sorry, its a stupid paintball reference. It probably is meaningless. What its supposed to mean is that as a chemical pressurized (to the point of liquification) boils and creates the pressure in the tank, this pressure remains relatively stable as long as there is some liquid left to boil.

So most paintball markers use CO2 because you need a simple regulator to get an even pressure for most of the tank. Some markers use plain air pressure, they require more complicated regulators because the pressure changes dramatically during the entire use of the tank.

So the dumb jocks say that the CO2 tanks are "pressure stable", I suppose because pressure in the tank is constant around 850psi so long as there is any liquid CO2 in the tank.[1]

I made this comment because this to me seems like a desirable property for a fuel gas in a compressed gas vehicle to possess. I will attempt to be more succinct in the future.

[1] And since we are nitpicking, I am in fact aware that that this figure of 850 is variable based on the temperature of the tank.
I was just talking about the kindle with one of my housemates. I don't have one, but my boss does, and apparently loves it. E-Ink is definitely a cool technology. I've heard some people say there are some things that should be changed in "Kindle 2.0". Any word on if/when the next version's coming out?
Have you never driven behind a welding supply truck with all of those tanks rattling and smashing around back there?

Some of those tanks are both under extremely high pressure and contain explosive gases.
The amount of awesome things the teams have accomplished prior to DreamIT (from MTV to TechCrunch recognition to by another winning grant money to winning an award via their Ivy League school(half come from Harvard)) seems to be unique!
It costs 359 dollars, which is insane for something which has capabilities somewhat short of the 386 laptop I bought many years ago for 40 dollars. Yet...print is dead. I've come to this conclusion as a long-time book-reader and semi-ludite. There's just no reason to haul around wood pulp at a storage efficiency 1/1,000,000,000th of the state of the art.

So, I guess things are bound to change. But 359 dollars? Cripe.
If I could buy the black and white screen used on the OLPC XO in bulk I could make a better ebook reader (for geeks, wi-fi and USB will have to do for connectivity, CDMA is way too much money and hassle though it is what gives the kindle such broad appeal) and sell it for $199.

When is that screen technology going to move beyond the XO?
I love the thing. I've played with it hands on and it's a remarkable gadget... BUT I have two complaints:

1) I'd love a backlight that can be switched on to conserve battery

2) I would pay for ability to surf the net / access blogs without the Kindle-subscription service
I think its worth mentioning that explosion is not the danger we should be thinking about when it comes to gasoline.

Gas is a low viscosity, oily (duh) substance held in flimsy metal or plastic containers that ignites easily and is hard to put out. We are comparing the danger of being injured by the compressed air explosion with the danger of being burned severely by sprayed or leaked fuel.

Sign me up for the shrapnel because burns suck huge.
It's totally different, the compression there is just for more effective storage, the power still comes from the gas itself.

In compressed air however it's the compression that contains the power to move the car. Drive an accident and the same power that moves your car will release its power with quite an unpleasant speed.
We're focusing on more general, soft issues such as the boss, coworkers, training, etc. On that respect we're more focused on glassdoor.com than coderific.com. Meanwhile now we're focusing just on the tech industry.

Later down the road we're gonna differentiate from both of the companies, in that we're gonna build more social features. Encourage people to participate even though they're not currently looking for a job.
PG, agree/disagree? i ask because this is an interesting contrast to what you've said about writing a crappy v1.0, then iterating on and improving it. but the two concepts aren't mutually exclusive, because maybe "crappy v1.0" can simply mean a well-engineered subset of your eventual goal.
Wow here I am oscillating between leaving my day job and joining a startup. I want to start a company of my own. Yet I can't shake the feeling that I should at least work in a startup to get the feel and learn what is to be in one. It's akin to saying that programmers who want to start their own games companies work in places like Blizzard for a few years (which the creators of Guildwars have done).

Thank you
Go for it!? I am desperately waiting for a good e-book reader.
How is the competition? iRex? There must have been some new devices coming out since the kindle launched?

Is the Amazon ebooks shop compatible with other ebook readers, or do they do the iTunes thing?
Wow, an 8 page NYT article that didn't bore me. Well done.
It sounds expensive until you try to estimate the cost of my book collection. Double cripe.

The number of O'Reilly books that can be bought for $359 is depressingly small. If and when O'Reilly fully supports Kindle (and vice versa) Kindles will really start flying off the shelves:

http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/select-oreilly-books-soon-on-...

UPDATE: Of course, some of the book pricing is going to need a reality adjustment. $10 more than a used paper copy is too much. And the catalog could use some proofreading too: did you know that Don Roberts wrote "Refactoring"?

http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design-Existing-...
Masala Zone in Camden - A Review
I have been using PHP for webdevelopment for 7years now and I recently started using Zend professionally and I must say it works ok from my point of view. It should be easy to learn php with it. But it has some downsides too. Like skinnging of forms for example, is not as easy as it looks! There are also still problems with the form validations. Overall it's not bad, especially because it gives you much freedom of where to put your files and things like that. But to be honest, like I mentioned before, after those 7 years of php, I suggest looking at python (django for example) too. I don't say you shouldn't learn php, it's really great, but django just seems to have it al. Don't know about scaling though...
Could the Euro and Dollar Share Reserve Currency Status?
Retaggr - your online presence everywhere
Passpack Online Password Manager
Picsviewr
“On a title-by-title basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles…".

So, it is 12% of those 130K titles, not 12% of all book sales on AMZN. I am not sure how many titles Amazon sells overall but it's probably much greater than 130K which means that the Kindle's share is lower.

Just wanted to point out that the post's title might not be entirely accurate.

(Update: it looks like Amazon stocks several million book titles)
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. It's 12% of "sales" not 12% of revenue (or even profit). Does Bezos have so much invested in making people believe Kindle is a success that he's willing to basically lie?
In this paper they show how to do something like this in CL.
http://rali.iro.umontreal.ca/Publications/urls/LapalmeLispCo...

(defun qsort (ax)
(and ax
(let ((a (car ax))
(x (cdr ax)))
(append (qsort [y (y <- x) (< y a)])
(list a)
(qsort [y (y <- x) (>= y a)])))))

If you want the x:xs stuff you could load fare-matcher and write something like:

(defun qsort (l)
(ematch l
(nil nil)
((cons x xs) (append (qsort [ i (i <- xs) (< i x) ])
(list x)
(qsort [ i (i <- xs) (>= i x) ])))))
> I've heard that the belgian iPhones, while "unlocked", only work with Belgian cell phone companies

That's true in a few countries, Italy too IIRC.

However the locking is based on IMEI number, which can be changed with ziPhone for this reason.
I don't think it's for sale, but I emailed and asked.

http://www.pixelqi.com/products
That's very true. I mean, the very same people who use Rails probably sneer at VB but it's the same principle - you can trade development speed for runtime efficiency.

The important thing is to be aware when and why you are doing this.
Exactly. I saw the title and said, "I don't believe that for a second." It just didn't pass the smell test.
Architecture != "a pile of kit in a datacentre".

System architecture is algorithmnic in nature. There's no charge for having good architecture. You just need to put some thought in up front. In choosing to use Rails - and note this is NOT a knock on Rails - Twitter chose to side-step a large chunk of architectural work - and that choice - NOT the choice of Rails - is what bit them.
It's not stupid at all- governments with enormous, unpayable debt have two options- inflation or default. The US can't default without destroying the world economic system, so we'll just undergo obscene levels of inflation until the debt is relatively small enough, relative to other currencies, that the rest of the world can organize a bailout.
Iphone 2.0: How to Install the iPhone 2.0 Update Right Now
It doesn't "run on air".

It runs on some traditional power source and stores its energy in the form of compressed air.
The PSI 4500 containers they use are brittle, but they don't explode or shatter -- they just crack.

It's actually a mature technology.
It's exciting that they're announcing this. I had actually started specifically working on supporting technologies for this (off-grid sustainable refueling strategies) about a month ago.

If anyone is interested, email me for details.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4916.html

Not really worth the read, honestly - a lot of fluff
(OT: domain extraction doesn't seem to be working with "trak.in")
Touching and Gesturing on the iPhone
"The screen with the backlight off can appear as bright and crisp as paper, but also supports full video speed playback and color."

That sounds cool indeed. I wish I would be able to create electronics devices myself :-/
Our Electric Future - Andy Grove
What's the business model for the site? I don't even see any ads!
Am I the only person who thinks that the subjective "WOW" is unnecessary from the post title?
I was just thinking about these. Yes, they're used for years, but they are incredibly dangerous and treated as such. I remember that not any compressor can load them: if it leaks the tiniest amount of oil in the air it'll create an explosive mix.
What a fabulous idea for a non-profit
Is it relevant whether or not an open source project of a given age
is better than a proprietary one of the same age?

We all know initial conditions are very important. Once a community
adapts to the rules of a given open source or proprietary application
it rarely decides to change even when the alternative may be superior
in some way.

Also, if GIMP can't catch up in 14 years, will it ever? That's
basically infinity in the software industry.

GIMP is already superior to Photoshop in at least one significant way:
you can give copies of it to your family, friends, students or whoever
without breaking any laws. Of course if you're a design pro who uses
Photoshop because it has features GIMP lacks then that may not matter
to you.

However both those topics are besides the point. My main issue with
your essay lies in the statement

It’s obvious that up to this point, proprietary software has created
a vibrant ecosystem and immense profits that probably would not have
existed were all software open source.

That's not at all obvious. What is obvious to me is that some
proprietary companies have made obscene profits by preventing fair
competition to keep prices artificially high and stop people from
switching to lower cost or free alternatives.
Wow. Read this. Completely. This is exactly the kind of news I hope to pick up in this group... (the dot dot dot is indeed a reference to the watered down crap that has been posted here recently)

How refreshing is to to get a perspective from a former CEO of an enormous corporation. He writes for a large audience, beyond the easy geeks and enthusiasts.

He brought 'global warming', an issue that not everyone agrees with, out of the picture, and more into the 'free benfit' category, a necessary move for a national (i.e. midwestern) debate. He challenged the current and previous leaders of our free world as to why they have not even come close to upholding the degree of nixon. Brilliant.

We have a problem people should want to solve. This is a good step in letting people know exactly what will help their kids to be truly free.

(I'm sorry for saying the word 'crap' up above but seriously, only 1/4 of the posts here have to do with innovation, hacking, and making something from nothing. I really don't care about twitter's issue of the day. Let's do a weekly summary.)

ok.
out of my system.

geekworld ignite!!
Superstruct - Play the game, invent the future.
Agreed, the title is misleading. But you're also misleading by saying that these are merely some 130K out of millions of titles.

Those are 130K of the highest-selling books by volume on Amazon - I wouldn't be surprised if they accounted for 30-50% of sales, even though they're a much smaller fraction of the millions of titles

So it's not 12% of Amazon sales, but still a significant fraction of that.
The difference between burning seawater, water catalysts, cold fusion, and this, is that this is based on science and technologies that have basically been known for more than a hundred years, and many of the technologies used have already been quite solidly demonstrated. They simply hadn't been put together.
Let's not underestimate the cost of always being online + ready to download/buy. Amazon made a huge step in selling a consumer electronics device that is always 'on'-line.

There really isn't anything comparable.

And what is so impressive is that they realized that the 'reader' needs content on demand to be a viable product beyond us geeks. (ok, Us non-wealthy geeks, of which I am a member, would like to join you in the campfire song: I like to read digit-a-lly, but the kindle sells so expensiv-e-ly)

(it has a country twang to it)
In the winter you compress the air at home and use the heat to keep your house nice and toasty.

Your calculations are off: energy density of gasoline ~35 MJ/L, compressed air at 300 bar ~ .15, so per volume is ~230 times, so w 10x efficiency, it's down to 23X volume required: tank to be used is 340 L : divide by 23 ~= 15 L ~= 4 gal. Much closer to their claim, no?

The compression stations will have heat exchangers, so be able to use at least some of the wasted energy...

(Note: energy density figures from Wikipedia)
Or eating a razorblade?
Ah! That makes a lot more sense.

The only trouble with using a gas like co2 that liquefies easily is that once you reach that point (850psi) you pretty much can't go any farther. And they are running this thing at a much higher pressure than that - about 4500.

I'm sure there are gases that would liquefy at this pressure, but none that you would want to release into the atmosphere.
Unbelievable Car Rental Deal Thanks Alamo
Commentary on how to find the best Alamo Rent A Car coupons.
It's not so much the fear of common knowledge, it's the fear of the truth and what that exposes about oneself.
Hats-on-seals
lasers on sharks next
Man, that's embarrassing. I also got my numbers from wikipedia, but typed .01 instead of .1 in my calculator :(

So yes, now I have to retract what I wrote about the size of the tank. I have new respect for the power of air.
Currently there're no ads on the site =) We think it's more important to attract users/content before we put on any ads or other revenue stream.
There is no email overload
As I replied to someone else, you are right, I was off by 10 in my calculations (a typo in my calculator, sigh). But I did take efficiency, and light weight vehicle into account.

But I still maintain that the heating/cooling losses from compressing the air are going to hurt efficiency a lot. It's really hard to do anything with waste heat, especially since this car probably won't be sold in cold climates, so the waste heat can't be used for heating.

But, since an air engine is so much more efficient than internal combustion, it might work out.

But if it works so well, I wonder why no one did it before now - is the tank the problem?

Does it make sense to use a larger, lower pressure tank?

I'm very interested in these ideas, and I spend a lot of time dreaming up ideas - basically every time I have to fix something in my car I think of a way to design a car without that part. But I don't know if I could actually help you - I'm a computer programmer, I don't have experience with any of the skills you mentioned.
If someone would pay me... I'd find the time. The code I released to do that analysis is a simple version. I actually have a better version that's much more accurate and fast:

1. It eliminates a lot of false positives (such as detecting that the white sky has been copied when it's simply white)

2. It automates manual tweaking of the parameters.

3. It's multithreaded.

I guess I should be cold calling Reuters etc. to see who wants to license the fast version.
Also, the ebooks are just as expensive as the paper books, which just doesn't seem fair. Especially since I can sell my paper books, but not the ebooks (I presume).
Which would be all fine and dandy until we look at past history of such maneuvers and find that no government has ever done this and survived. A good example of a government inflating currency to repay debt would be post-WW1, pre-Hitler Germany.

Furthermore, there aren't just two options for huge unpayable debt. First of, even a debt of $14 trillion is not enormous and unpayable for the US gov. (though with a few decades of medicare, medicaid, and social security benifits, it will be).

Furthermore, here the US gov. has a choice to reduce tax payer liability which is what makes the idea of explicit backing for Fannie Mae and friends particularly stupid. If done carefully, these monsters can be slowly unwound and the ticking fuse they represent, diffused. Even if they were to implode in the middle of this process, I would like to argue that the longterm benefits of removing these companies and not adding $5 trillion to the US national debt would outweigh the short term losses.

Lastly, the only description for an organization which

a) Can tax a group of 300 million people,
b) can decide its own liability, and
c) still ends up incurring crippling levels of debt

can only be described as terminally stupid and a drag on society.
The Sony prs-505 is very similar but without the full keyboard and ability to get books without a pc. I got one earlier this year and I like it.
Sounds like a great bandwidth saving gift from google.
It's a fallacy to think that you can avoid all scalability problems. You can't. If you're successful, you will have scalability issues, period. So yes, since the problem is inevitable so long as you're successful, it is a nice problem to have.

It's a bit like having a cold. That's practically inevitable at some point in your life if you're alive. Well, I'd rather be alive with a cold than dead, even though having a cold sucks. If you don't want scalability issues, they're very easy to avoid: just build a crappy service. One of my start-ups never had any scalability issues, and never had a stampede of users either.
I read the American Scholar Article http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.htm... . Its well written from a man who taught English at Yale for the last 10 years. Worth a read independent of this VC issue.

This issue of lack of innovation or exclusivity in the VC and start-up founders community comes up often.
The general thesis of these jabs is that somehow the world is "missing out" by relying on Ivy Leagues too much. My instinct says this is true. However, I don't think it matters. Innovators from non-Ivy Leagues will always find their way. VCs will one day loosen up and chase the deals from these sources or they won't and someone else will reap the rewards.

If the point is: The rich get richer and people with access get more...well, ok sure ;)

fyi, I'm not from an Ivy League background and I do just fine as an IT entrepreneur. I do not have easy access to capital, partially due to my non-Ivy League background, but only a very small part. I don't lose sleep over this. I rely on building good products and a customer base in order to attract investment and preferably revenue. I've come to prefer this approach. Every time I've had access to VC money early, its been a disaster.
You could probably just sell the Kindle itself, with the books embedded, as long as you close your credit account afterwards. ;)