skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Whether the president makes the decisions or if it's someone behind him, what I was asking was about the level of the decisions made.

For instance, it's plausible that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was made well in advance by a small group. Is that what is meant by "run the US"? The outcome and consequences of the Iraq war don't seem to have gone to anyone's plan. What part of the US is being "run" and what part isn't?
Ruby and Python are also mainstream, and both provide saner OOP.

C++ templates at least have a purpose and provide extra benefits (e.g. performance, compile-time computations for pre-caching). In Java generics are practically implicit type-casts and nothing else.

About verbosity ... clear conventions are a lot more effective for readability and learning. In a dynamic language like Ruby / Python, if you don't know what an object's type is or what it does, the fix is as easy as ...

obj = don_t_know_the_return_type()

# doing lots of stuff

import pdb
pdb.set_trace()

That opens up a Python debugging console at the current point of execution, and you can inspect "obj" for its type / members and also modify its state. Also, if you're using "ipdb" instead of pdb then you've also got auto-completion on <TAB> (e.g. Intellisense). You can do something similar in Ruby, and in Smalltalk the whole application is active while you're typing in the IDE.

There, problem solved.
Apples: skin color, sexuality, ethnicity

Oranges: peacoats, scarfs, personal tastes

If you want to take a jab at what I'm saying at least think through what you've written before posting it.
That paper towel holder I see in toilets everyday too - http://is.gd/0w72Qk and tooth pick too http://is.gd/48leIg
My main problem with Java isn't the language itself. [...] My problem with Java is the way it's currently being used.

Absolutely agreed. Java has some weak spots, but the really bad things (and the most criticized things) are not in the language per se.

E.g. the complete over- and abuse of XML for anything. Complex Ant build scripts. The whole EJB disaster (the older versions, that is). Bad APIs (though in all honesty, most of the really bad ones are 3rd party and not from Sun). The over-use of dependency injection, beans, etc. without a justifiable reason.

Many of these things are just stuff we learned to do better by now, for example JSON and/or Yaml over XML configuration, and convention over configuration. That lower overhead and higher understandability are more important than some would be architect's dreams. On some things the jury is still out (e.g. more or less functionality in basic classes like String, List, ...).

Overall, I think some people are overlooking the many benefits Java has made available to the main stream. It's entirely possible to write beautiful Java code, you just have to go the extra mile of leaving the convention sometimes.
"Or radium (maybe a different radioactive) they use to paint on clock/watches to make them glow in the dark."

You're thinking of tritium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_illumination
I'm personally mad at Doug Cutting for perpetuating Java.

Java is a virus. If Lucene and Hadoop were written in C/C++ you'd be able to easily use them from basically any language. Because they're written in Java, it forces the rest of your code to live in Java land as well.
Nice article. Good to see a positive Java piece.

I'm formerly a COBOL developer, now working with Java. Did anyone else think that his main argument for learning Java could also work for learning COBOL? (substitute COBOL for Java in the quote below)

<quote>
It's not going to go away any time soon. There's too much momentum. There's no need to worry. Ever since the launch of Java I've heard that it's going to be gone or unusable tomorrow. History shows that just doesn't happen to popular programming languages.

If you learn Java now, you may still be using it 20 years from now. Or 30.
</quote>
Idea dump, January 2011 edition
6502, 68000 and ARM are the most elegant.
To be honest, they don't really need engineers. All of their products could be easily outsourced.
Not true. There are good software companies in India to whom you can outsource your work and be somewhat confident that it's done in a reasonable manner.

Many people won't go to them because they are not cheap.
Logitech Webcam Drivers - Accurate Driver for Accuracy in Performance
Do you get irritated and pissed off when you see that your Logitech webcam is functioning incorrectly or sometimes just doesn't function at all.
Catholic Match | Catholic Dating Site Review & Comparison
South Korea needs a special mention since Google is not even #2 search engine here. (I believe it is #2 in other 4 countries.)
Wow, I can't believe they haven't built a centralised solution and that they think web-based sync is slow because of all the disk accesses. I don't care how big their user-base is, they are still only storing tasks - not images or videos.

Client to authorative server sync seems to be the way to go to me… it doesn't have to be live (they could queue up the syncing asynchronously) and they could control whatever subscription model they decide to put in place for one of the most expensive task management apps in existence (especially when you buy a copy for your Mac, iPhone and iPad).

For example: Remember the Milk seems to have solved this problem without having a slow application, and they have a web-based version (the default) of their app to boot with more features than Things would have.

I think the problem is they approached the wrong 'web developers' when they asked for a synchronisation solution. I could easily see 5+ million users on a single, active DB server with under 64GB of RAM being able to hold a complete index set in memory and being able complete 10,000+ queries per second with communication occurring via a queueing product like RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ or a custom long-lived Java/NIO web server written in under a couple-hundred lines of code to keep connections open to 100's of thousands of devices simultaneously (http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/2010/08/24/c500k-in-action...).
i am usually clicking on ads of my competitors. i am doing this to learn about their marketing strategies and waste some of their marketing cents :)
Inheritance instead of composition. Too much worry about security theater public/protected/default/private instead of actually reusing code. The inability to fake stuff for tests without designing ability to fake things into every class. Basically, you write the code, and that's what you have. If anything changes, it's basically a rewrite, even with Eclipse's "refactoring" features. Type erasure.

When all you have is Java-style OO, everything looks like an AbstractHammerFactoryInterface.
It's fine as long as what you're outsourcing is not core to your business model.

If you're running a software company (and the startups referred to in the article are software startups I believe) then outsourcing the core product you want to make money off of is a poor strategy.

If you're doing a restaurant startup, then by all means, outsource the software that runs your place.
One of the monitors shows:

chunk of code

identical chunk of code

identical chunk of code

identical chunk of code

I found it amusing.
As the article states, the numbers come from referals collected by Toplist, a Czech web stats service similar to Analytics. Not sure how that itself skewes the results. What’s more interesting is that Google only comes before its competior if you sum the numbers for google.cz with google.sk, its Slovakian version. I’m not sure why would we want to do that if we really wanted hard numbers for the Czech Republic only.
Essay Samples for the Novice
When unsure about how to write an essay, students will be benefited by going through an essay sample. Essay samples can be found in abundance on the internet. However, the most beneficial for students would be from those that provide reviews of the samples given.
Hey shyam - while there are no blanket rules about anything in life other than the prevailing law in any country there is always examples that people can draw from and people always draw from the best examples. Can you give me a few examples of great companies that outsource their development???
Generation Cheat?
Yes, Java 7 finally will fix this bug (which is 7 years old!). The fact that good IDEs can work around this bug, doesn't mean Java sucks any less for it though. I have similar issues with syntax for anonymous classes (which you need a lot of, to even poorly simulate fp), but we'll save that for another day.

I don't want var data = {} in a statically typed language. I want something like Map<Int, [Int, Set<String>]> data = new HashMap(); to use the exact same example that I used above. This way gets all the benefits of what java currently does, with literally half the characters and more readability.
Naver, right? I've been using their image search engine a lot and have been quite pleased.

In general, I find Google's image search to be one of their weakest areas, even in English.
Naver is #1, Daum is #2, Google is below that.
Maybe if smaller state-colleges are smart they can leverage OCW to their advantage. Instead of doing their own lectures and coursework, they'll use OCW and focus on adding value where OCW cannot with things like instructor led discussion and Q&A sessions about the lecture you've just seen, helping with and grading coursework, one-on-one assistance with assignments, handing out certificates or diplomas upon completing a set of courses, and all the other good stuff an actual college can to better than a pre-recorded video. In fact I'd probably sign up and pay money for just that.
Google air scare
Yes! It's amazingly hard to do inheritance right. As a rule of thumb, if you can't prove that the inheritance doesn't violate the Liskov substitution principle, you shouldn't be allowed to do it. (It amazes me how many java 'programmers' have never heard of lsp or a refinement proof).
The Remarkable Pattern Of Neuronal Activity In The Brain
I found the key with his waking up early system was that you only fix your waking time, and you stay up (ideally doing something without stimulation close to when you need to sleep) until you're ready to fall asleep within 5 minutes.

I got extra waking time because my body was regulating how much I slept. If I stayed up too late I'd get tired earlier the next day, but in general I dropped my sleeping hours by about 1.
For programming questions, I created a very simple Google custom search engine, which works quite well for me - http://laughingcomputer.com/search/
I've always been an independent learner, so I think this is great, but the concept of a "course for independent learners" sounds a lot like herding cats.
You're completely wrong, sorry.

Pass by reference means you change the value of a variable passed from the caller's context. You can't do that in Java.
Freshest and Newest Coming Soon Pages for Your Inspiration
"Alone Together": An MIT Professor's New Book Urges Us to Unplug
I doubt it is really identical. You don't really see that on the picture.

HTML looks often just like that. (I think it is HTML but you cannot really tell for sure from the picture.)
Google's Purchase of ITA Software May Be Challenged by U.S. Antitrust Suit
Yeah and this cough medicine from Bayer was working fine with some side-effects:

http://www.bonkersinstitute.org/medshow/bayerheroin1901.html
I agree, the hoverboard itself would revolutionize much (well, maybe for skaters), but the technology behind would change how we travel; Heck, we could use it to decrease the weight of the cars we currently use at least.
Enabling A20 is just an or and an out opcode. It's all the stuff you have to do around it (because you're switching from 16 to 32 bit mode). For the purpose of making formerly lucky people now unlucky, here's some background on A20. Please correct any inaccuracies, it's been a long time since I've written toy OSes.

The Intel 8086 could only access 1MB of memory (using 20 bits). While this was great for the early 80s, it started to become a problem later on. This was fixed in the Intel 286 (which could address up to 16 MB of memory) but needed to be compatible with the 8086 at the time.

The 8086 had 20 individual gates or address lines numbers A0 - A19. This meant that there were different ways of referencing the same addresses in different numbering systems, most notably in hex. When you went over FFFFF, you'd actually wrap around. Some software relied on this (it was the 80s after all. For further examples of wrongness in the 80s see big hair and shoulder-padded suits).

For the 286 to access 16MB while enabling compatibility with the 8086 a kludge was invented. An extra logic gate (A20) was added to the keyboard controller that would enable or disable access to memory above 1MB. The bios enables it when it checks memory, then disables it when transferring it to the OS. The boot loader (normally) runs through a series of checks, reads the keyboard, makes sure the keyboard buffer is empty and sets the gate as part of switching into 32-bit mode on x86.

This still happens, even on your top of the range 64-bit quad core behemoth if you're running a 32-bit Operating System. I'm not sure whether this still applies to 64-bit Operating Systems as they were after my time, but if anyone here can tell me I'd love to know.

Personally I've always felt that the A20 part wasn't that hard - perhaps it's the wrong term but the hardest thing for me was all the checks for the right hardware, I kept finding stuff that works fine in bochs or qemu then barfs on real kit.
1 second Linux boot to Qt
Perhaps a URL encoded as a barcode, which anyone with a smartphone camera can check.
there is a C++ port of Lucene (named CLucene iirc) Not sure if there is such thing for Hadoop though.
via: http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=b3cedc67

And related: 5 seconds Linux boot process (2008): http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/
This is very much true. I live in a country with a high living standard, comfortable work arrangements and many (government-sponsored even) options for taking time off.

Yet we have one of the lowest startup rates in Europe (not just in tech).

It's definitely a culture thing.
Already discussed in-depth on the blogosphere and Hacker News; see for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2100689
or in this case "glass 9" :)
HeyStaks makes searching social
New startup, the idea seens nice, but I think google is still bullet proof.
This is a fantasy come true.
She clarifies right at the start of the interview that she is not a Luddite.
The Second Coming Of The Internet IPO
It seems to me to be a very bad business decision to decide to write a framework first, before delivering on your core product.

As the deadlines have ended up slipping, they have ended up with a set of very defensive posts about why they haven't yet delivered.

I don't see why you would jeopardize (that might be a bit of a strong word, but I'm sure they haven't done amazingly in sales in the last few months compared to what they had been) your business by attempting something far more complex when your product was already behind others in the marketplace.

There's no reason why they couldn't have gotten cloud syncing working just for them, then rolling out the code into a framework later on. That seems to be the smarter way to go about doing it - not writing a series of defensive posts saying that it's so hard.
Why give up turf (mostly): a bluegrass lawn = parking lot
Classic Data Visualisation Papers
I would argue the lowering cost of entry into photography is what is decreasing quality. Those willing to make the larger investment in past years are also more likely to improve their skills.
For every dollar a good Indian firm makes, the average developer gets anywhere between 50 and 80 cents. Good devs are equally expensive anywhere, but oddly enough in India the salaries don't grow linearly when compared with first world salaries. A dev with a year of experience will cost 1/5 what he/she would cost in the first world. A (good) dev with 15 years of experience would cost 1/2 what he/she would cost in the US.

This was something we covered in some detail in our talk at Rubyconf last year. Here's the link FWIW: http://speakerrate.com/talks/5120-india-ruby
Clicking on a Masterpiece: Surfing for Pollock, de Kooning and Basquiat
Full-size image: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/2pa7akochkgsnos/IMG_0988.JPG

The blocks are similar, but not identical. If you look closely you can clearly see that the line lengths are different.
My bet is they will only change that when they lose their 1st place on market share.
Although you then have to solve two problems; optimizing the constraints, and then optimizing within the constraints.

If I applied the arbitrary constraint that x must be an odd multiple of pi, then I'm not going to get a very good answer to trying to maximise cos(x)...
...secondly for entrance to a club of peers of similar ability to learn with.

I do not know what university you attended, but honestly, the learning ability of 'peers' within most universities varies greatly.

If they were so similar, all the 'peers' would have similar SAT scores, undergraduate grades, majors, and graduation rates.

Educating is not a priority for the majority of undergrad programs in the US (in terms of academics).
Flagged, submitted and discussed ad nauseum already.

Please refrain from re-submitting content, especially when it was recently discussed in future.
Ask HN: Startup programming language/framework stats?
I'm curious to know which programming languages and web frameworks are en vogue with startups right now. Can anybody offer any insight on this or links to statistics?
I suppose "somewhat orthogonal" is like being "almost pregnant", perhaps the author was just speaking loosely here.

I agree that the examples were toy ones, but it's precisely these simple things like projections that we see folks struggling with when coming from the relational world.

The answer to "can't you just do this in SQL" is always yes you can. Things change, non-relational dbs were around before relational ones and are now returning for a variety of reasons.

I'd like to see some follow on posts that delve into the subtleties of rereduce, another real pain point for new users.

One thing that is not emphasized enough in my mind is the flexibility that a schema-less database such as BigCouch gives you. Consider the trivial schema one would construct to support the 3 or 4 lines of SQL required for these toy examples and then consider how that schema might evolve as needs for different queries change, as the data grows, as different apps with different O-R mapping issues are brought into play and so on.

A schema-less approach does push more of the complexity into the app layer for sure, but it allows the schema to evolve more naturally. After all schema-less doesn't mean the schema really goes away conceptually.

I agree also that Cloudant is doing great things, that's why I joined the team, that and the free coffee :) Thanks for the feedback.
Is the law to blame for the excessive remuneration of company directors?
Telemarketing Outsourcing: Easy Way to improve business
No, Web forms don't need to go (and obviously they won't). When you do POST intensive apps they are much better than MVC.
Instead of a 90's style "search aggregator," how about a "SEO-less search" website? Basically, it would be a search engine that would aggressively quash SEO spam. It would be monetized through micropayments up-front through services like Paypal, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout. There would also be search-results ads.
No, they require OSX and Apache.
The three-finger zooming I refer to (Settings-General-Accessibility-Zoom) is global.
Not consistently.
Essay Conclusion-Start Ending Things Effectively
The essays conclusion is an important part of an essay. This is because it signifies the end of the essay and provides the writer the opportunity to remind the readers of the strength of his stand on the issues. Paying attention to how an essay conclusion is written is recommended.
Sainsbury’s programmer jailed over massive Nectar points theft
Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete

Likely why the revolution has not arrived.
Monad in plain English?
Spawn of Groupon: Coming soon ... a lot of them
Do a whois on 'noseo.com' :)

That was why I wrote in some other thread that years ago I worked on a toy search engine, it was exactly for that purpose.

I'm still pretty sure that it's viable but the results would have to be at least as good as google for 99 out of 100 searches or so and even with the SEO spam killed that's a pretty high hurdle.
This is a poster case of political correctness gone wrong. Making millions of dollars does not make a woman significantly attractive. Case in point, Kathy Bates, who has a terrible time meeting men, despite her success/wealth/talent.
This was a while ago (about 10 years) and I only had a vague idea that patents were a bad idea from a practical perspective - I was mainly motivated to try and avoid doing them because it was a huge amount of work, I hate reading "legalese" and I thought there were better things I could be doing.

So my objections were mainly selfish rather than principled. I like to think these days I would act on principle...
Exactly. Why cannot OCW serve as a sort of standardized curriculum for state schools to model their classes off of?
I am curious how www.seznam.cz resisted so long against google. I tried it and it does seem as fast as google and it has a suggest feature, also very snappy. However, I just searched for 'hello' and got a Goatse in the images.
Goal for 2011: Do not learn another programming language
On the other hand they're almost entirely dependent on another platform (albeit one that has a vested interest in their success), some of their most successful promotions
are the sorts of things likely to attract the attention of legislators (e.g. reverse SMS billing to minors, often of "free" services; not to mention a simulated gambling app), and their offerings lack the enjoyment factor that ensures longevity. Also, the only real barrier to competitors eating up their market share is Zynga's willingness to throw more money at ads. I figure they'd do well in an IPO but they don't sound like the best long term bet.

Tamagotchis were highly addictive and demanding of attention in their heyday.
Seznam.cz itself (quite vehemently) claims that the numbers are not accurate and this claim isn't true. Still, there is a very clear downward trend with Seznam search and I don't know what can be done about it. Seznam search is most likely (technically) good enough to search the Czech web, but it doesn't cover anything outside that, it uses Bing for the rest of the world (in fact, it did use Google search for that, 5 years ago). But even if seznam.cz had 100% share of the Czech web search, that won't generate enough money to compete with Google (and seznam.cz has, in the Czech republic, still much greater revenues than Google). Also, it's not just search engine, seznam.cz has it's own freemail (still much more popular than gmail in the cz) or maps (mapy.cz, also more popular than google maps here). Personally, it everything feels like lagging at least 5 years behind Google. To illustrate, google maps can offer public transit routes and search here, in Brno, mapy.cz can't. There are salesmen that could easily make arrangements with the local transit company and make profit from it, but not enough developers to make it happen.

(I work at seznam.cz, not on anything search-related.)
It's definitely HTML, from https://dl.dropbox.com/s/2pa7akochkgsnos/IMG_0988.JPG. The blocks are definitely not identical either.