skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The relationship between Software Engineering (60% of the most used languages are "scripting" languages) and "running cable," is that they are both concerned with creating direct utility to people. I fully understand and respect that the completely theoretical side of CS might seem more difficult and therefore superior (?) to engineering, just as coding might seem more advanced than "running cable," but I could never see dismissing "running cable" as inferior to writing code. I would also point out that the top 5 U.S. CS programs, for whatever misguided reason, are all very much interested in creating direct utility to people -- through HCI, Software Development, even bad code: http://hci.stanford.edu/research/opportunistic/
The integration of web/mobile/life is rapidly accelerating and there are many new apps to be constructed and countless other extensible options to explore. My reasons are a combination of the first three options listed in the poll. My goal is to engage in a personal entrepreneurial mission; a challenge to my personal ambition to become independently successful. More easily stated, I want to be part of the web apps community, a la Dropbox and other startups.
Flippa.com sounds about right.
Mystery of how fleas jump resolved after 44 years
Ah, I see. Could be cool, as long as volume is limited to something the crafters can handle (as everyone else has noted already) and the lowest possible price is also something they can live with.

I signed up, for what it's worth, and would interested in it as a buyer.
Yeah this-
1. It's an app I wish existed - I want to use it
2. There's a small chance I'll get rich
3. Worst case scenario I'm learning a lot
4. It gives me something to care about - "hope" that I can one day work for myself. And we all need hope.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and
therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore
better."

-- John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider"
I've enjoyed using it - I was already checking my mail online, using Google Docs and Calendar to manage my documents and time so the transition was pretty smooth. It's become my daily browsing, bookmarking and emailing machine. As for using it for any type of development, well - I can say I tried haha.
Steam in various forms had existed for a while; firstly in 2002 as a more efficient distribution engine for Counter Strike then to provide authentication and matchmaking for the HL1 multiplayer after Valve's publisher Sierra planned to turn off their servers in 2004. They offered upgrades for all old HL1 cdkeys to a steam account and then started selling their games (I think Counter Strike: Condition Zero was the first new release) through it too... which wasn't appreciated by Sierra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Valve_vs_Vive...
These are some really interesting ideas.

"A browser based real-time multiuser sketchpad" - It made me think if it is possible to develop a collaborative, online, vector graphics design tool. Not a heavy application like Illustrator but something like light version of InkScape that can help in quick and easy graphic design for web such as logos, buttons etc.
You should allow anonymous submissions until you build up a decent amount of content. Change the green. Use only one font. All the text should be slightly smaller.

Are you applying for the reddit job?

http://blog.reddit.com/2010/08/reddit-is-hiring.html
social apps are also not just a an end user application, it's also a massively distributed and open messaging infrastructure. :)
I'm using node.js for a personal project: http://boxsocial.fm

The site reads and writes to last.fm in the background and pushes updates to client's browsers while doing so.

I'm sure it would have been possible to write it using some other technology but node.js just made it so easy. Also, writing the entirety of the app in just one language was an additional bonus.

I'm excited about building something bigger with it soon.
I feel like math teachers have a fundamentally different task than coding teachers. Everyone needs at least a low level of proficiency in math - being able to make change correctly and balance your checkbook. Not everyone needs a low level of coding proficiency.

If you've reached the level in your education where you need to learn to code, then you've probably already advanced past the point where everything has to be presented as "fun" before you'll learn it.
Wikipedia has some info that might be helpful:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Attributes_of...

This article shows which licenses are GPL-compatible and/or allow you to link to code under a different license.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comparison_of...
A little chat, a little soundcloud, a little ge.tt, sophisticated privacy management... and you get http://secretsocial.com ... a node project.
Well I do build web applications for my job (financial/job), and I also very much enjoy doing this (hobby/itch), so that essentially qualifies me for several options. I'm not ambitious enough to think I can get rich quick from building web applications, but it is basically for financial gain, since I do get paid for the work I do.
Cheap holiday tours
Pretty greedy isn't it?
Generally if your employer wants to take whatever you created, they probably can. So best not to draw their attention to your side project.
The FSF's materials are a little geared towards the assumption that you're using the GPL, but they're no doubt a significant part of the source material for the Wikipedia articles.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
Users that paid $2.99 shouldn't be upset. When making a purchase decision they decided it was worth that to them. The future lower price could have saved them $2.00 but it isn't a reason to get upset. If you spend time all of your life being bitter by the fact you could have gotten a better deal if you just waited... well this is how bubbles happen.
I asked how to roll back the changes. He said "we don't roll back, we fix the code."

Not the best idea. I don't debug as well under the extreme pressure of my site being broken with the clock ticking.
It sounds sufficiently vague that the company could claim that your extra-curricular IP belongs to them if they want to take it.
Is this alternative client for last.fm? I wonder how useful developing alternative clients can be apart from learning purposes. I have seen a lot of twitter clients coming up. Do users really care about using these?
A word of caution: the results of this poll are meaningless. Yes, you may kick off an interesting discussion, but beware of statistics collected in this way. For example, you have no control over how long the question stays up on this page. Chances are you will not get any people who only read HN on weekdays (maybe because they spend their time building awesome web apps all weekend and don't want to be distracted). This introduces bias. You also have no control over randomizing the possible answers, so there may be another kind of bias. Basically, you have no guarantees that the people that upvoted individual answers here (a) actually build web apps, (b) are being honest (c) are in any way representative of the industry or any part of the industry, or even of HN. I would look more towards the comments instead for inspirational quotes, etc.
Great post! Completely agree w/ "DO: Choose a partner that has connections." and "DON'T: Choose someone that has different goals."
There probably is a business in there for you if you want it! Call yourself a "community engagement strategist" or something similar. Build a platform - write a few online articles, maybe have a video on Youtube and a blog you write to about community engagement.

Plenty of people are building online communities and sinking lots of money into development, design, and content, but never getting over the chicken and egg problem.

I don't know if you have a software background, but the way to really go about making this a business would be to create a community analytics tool that you could use to quantify your success.
A SuperAngel’s Investment Guide
I do it for my day job (and my last few day jobs).

I have built a few of my own, but nothing with the intent of making money. The real impediment for me is not the technical side (I can do that myself, and I know enough people in the business to help with gaps in my knowledge) it's more coming up with good ideas.

Ideas are cheap, but really good ideas - the ones that make you think "why the hell didn't I think of that" - that light you on fire and push you to do 24 hour non-stop coding sprints because you just want to see them work - are few and far between, and much harder to come up with (at least for myself) than people realize.
How do you handle things like form/model validation?
Nice. I liked the video. Is beta available?
Love and Kindness Never Fail..Pass It On
I see your point but the problem would be focus - you may be into something like "new mobile phones" but are truly only into Windows Mobile, not Android/iPhone/etc.

If you got put in a category that didn't exactly match your focus, that would reduce the value of the service to you. That's what you'd have to avoid (and why I brought up the Netflix challenge).

The point I'm trying to make is that you'd have to select content so well that people could rely on it - that's where current selection engines used by marketers aren't up to snuff.

The key insight I get from your original post is that, given two sets (one of items that you're subscribed to, and the subset you "vote for" by reposting), you would have a fair chance at doing this.

Amazon does the same with "items you view" vs "items you buy" and one step further if you review the item after purchase.
Web app is the way of the future, rapid deployment is much more fun and effective than developing desktop software
That's how we roll at Cloudkick. We ship the code. We're going to get all of Rackspace to do this too if we can.
The Joy of Coding
Last year, I thought of an idea for a mobile app and decided to code it myself. This is significant because my prior programming experience was limited to some PHP, along with HTML and CSS. I hadn't worked with Objective-C before and I am a self-taught programmer--I knew I was in for some work.

So I signed up for O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf and added some books to it (several from Apress) and started reading.

Next thing I knew, I was building some basic-level apps. This gave me the confidence to build more complex apps, so I tried my hand at some more challenging tutorials. I was so engrossed in coding that I would routinely look up to find that it was 1 or 2am. In the morning I would wake up, make sure my laptop was charged and get cracking.

This went on for 2 weeks (mostly over the holidays) and then I realized that I had other matters that needed my attention. After missing an important phone call because I was so distracted with coding, I wondered if I should set up an Automator task to remind me of appointments (I eventually caught up with the person and everything worked out great).

These days, I am reading up on OOP and writing up use cases. And I'm still coding. All this in addition to the work I normally do.

I gave coding an inch and that sucker took a mile.

I guess the point of this is to say (and of course you all know this already) that coding is awesome. On some level, I knew this from my previous programming efforts, but OOP has opened my eyes to a whole new world of coding. Now that I've gotten started, I can't stop.

I wish more people understood the joy of coding.

JFC

P.S. I know that coding, like everything else, has its downside, but let me enjoy my coding honeymoon for a little while longer, okay?

P.P.S. I've built over 30% of my app at this point.
Not the best idea, if you don't debug as well under such pressure. Some people do.
Well that's one way to attempt and make your eBook store competitive.
I had hours of fun with that leaked HL2 tech demo that was essentially a room with a pool of water and a bunch of physics objects to weld together and throw around. Heightened my desire to buy the finished game greatly.
Thanks Anuj! Very soon. Sign up / Tweet and you'll be invited.
When an app is more then 99 cents, one of the key things I look for in the Description field is upcoming features. It makes me find more value in the app, because I believe the developers are actively working on updates and I will be more likely to purchase the app knowing that its feature set will be increasing.
What if Apple started demanding 30% of all sales transacted on every device they produce? What makes an iPhone so different from a MacBook?
How will this work for O'Reilly books I purchase in pdf format? How can Apple stop me from reading it without blocking all non-DRMed pdfs?
Personal communications ("Hey, how are you doing? / Are you busy tonight?") are increasingly drifting to text and social apps, but there are some significant barriers (IMHO) to businesses adopting any existing social platform for communication (namely, loss of control). However, I think it's very likely that mail clients will more closely resemble social apps. Google Wave was a step in that direction, but it wasn't quite ready for prime time.
To help myself with some problems, that might be useful to others as well. In the process learn a framework and updated my programming skills.
"If you have a math background (as I do)"

Ah, there's the resolution then. I would never argue that a strong math background is not easily converted into a very effective computer programmer with little further experience. Please do not go around telling people that they "don't need experience" based on that result; they will not hear "I can get a math background" instead.

What you say sounds obvious, but please let me remind you that you've almost certainly seen people who could not leap directly to those conclusions correctly. I can name names of people where I work with years of experience who still engage in "flail at the problem blindly until it seems to go away". In fact just the other day we observer one programmer created a perfect loop; patched a bug, created a new one, patched that, created another new one, another programmer jumped in to fix that, and then the original programmer patched yet another fix resulting in the exact same source code we had at the beginning of this process, only with another new line. (I am not sure what the degree status of this person is but it doesn't seem to have taken.)

(And I would agree you can learn a lot without formal training, but at some point you're still going to have to learn what that formal training covers. You also have to learn more anyhow.)
Why does the bill need fixing - it seems to function perfectly

The purpose is to make two politicians look good, to allow their respective parties to claim they are doing something while at the same time being able to reassure their supporters that nothing will change.

That's basically the point of politics since some greek guy stood up in the market place
Thus why you should only buy ebooks where you get easily transferrable formats, like unencumbered PDF or ePub.

I'm a big fan of O'Reilly's multi-format approach. This is the correct end-run around proprietary stores.

Regarding this issue in particular, I don't see the problem with Amazon and others kicking their users out to Safari to do purchases, and thus as the purchase wouldn't happen "in app" it wouldn't be covered by this.

Not as smooth of a purchase experience, but not impossible to deal with.

The other alternative would be to tack on a 30% surcharge on any books bought directly through the app.
"All they need is electrical power and an optical fiber connecting them to the phone company's network."

That seems a lot harder than building a couple of towers in a town. Aren't we trying to get away from stringing cables all over the place?
Or, more commonly, people think they don't perform well under this kind of pressure, but they actually do. Usual scenario:

Employee calls the CEO of the company in the middle of the night panicked, saying the site is down and there is no way they can fix the problem, they don't even have the right skill set.

CEO tells the employee to calm down and do their best.

Site is back online twelve minutes later.
Actually, it was about Okinawa. The previous PM of Japan, Hatoyama, made loud noises about forcing the U.S. to move it's military base off of Okinawa ("The time has come for us to seek a more equal relationship with the U.S." @see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1978647,00....), and the Toyota episode was a way to slap the wayward child on it's hand and show him who's daddy.

After Japan cried "enough" and sent Hatoyama packing, things slowly started to return to "normal".

Toyota ADRs have rallied 19% since Hatoyama's resignation.

Also, by the way, there is a small U.S. presence (not 100% sure if it military or otherwise), but there is a clear area right in the middle of Tokyo in the Roppongi area which seems to be reserved for U.S. personnel. You can see helicopters (and they sure as hell looked military) land there regularly from the top of the Mori Tower building. The "H" for the helipad is quite visible even on Google Maps in Satellite mode, and whenever I saw a U.S. helicopter land there, I used to wonder how any country can be such a puppet to another and still act "free". The lack of awareness and discussion about that area and the lack of access to it by everyday Japanese spoke tons about the Japan-U.S. relationship. I believe Hatoyama stood for the right thing.
Because I couldn't not do it. It's like why you get married in a lot of respects.

I was so compelled by the opportunity and the unique position I was in that I couldn't not build MyJibe. It would be like defying deity.
I really wish awk were less awkward to type (no pun intended). The single quotes plus the brackets is a brutal combo.

Does anyone know how to achieve the following command in a more type friendly way?:

awk '{print $1}'
Do you believe that we have a right to a public education?

Because i think that internet access plugs into that pretty well.

Many of the people who seem to be down on positive rights don't really discuss the fact that positive and negative rights are matters of degree and flow into each other pretty fluidly.

Okay, so right to a fair trial is a negative right... but right to council is a positive right? How are you going to get a fair trial w/o competent representation?
If you invite a girl out on a date with an iPhone - you then have to go round and give an Apple shareholder 30% of the complements, backrubs and sweet-sweet loving she was going to get
They likely won't.

There are also plenty of PDF readers in the store already (Goodreader, for
example) that are independent of Apple's iBooks.

Unlike Sony, Apple isn't generally known for removing functionality from products after purchase...
Mobile Credit Card Processing is using mobile devices
Anyone have good pointers on the best tools for continuous deployment of Django? I know there are tools like Capistrano, Fabric and Django Evolution out there but if someone has first hand experience using some of these it would be good to learn about.
I'm pretty sure they are only interested in books purchased on the device. If you don't purchase it on the device they don't get a cut.
I've used http://paper.li/ to create a "newspaper" from my personal twitter feed (http://paper.li/Stuidge ). I follow people I'm interested in, and paper.li picks up their links and gives me an interesting daily summary.

This isn't quite the same idea as the OP, but I have found a lot of interesting links this way.
" I don't see the problem with Amazon and others kicking their users out to Safari to do purchases"

At least as far as I can tell from this article and others, this is one of the things that Apple wants to disallow. At least there must also be an option to buy using the Apple system, giving Apple a 30% cut. And I highly doubt that Apple's going to allow an app that says "click here to buy through Apple, click here to buy through Amazon for 30% less".
Clickable: http://www.zezeniaonline.com
Here's the actual source article, which has much more information:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870477560457612...
To some extent. It copies a user's scrobbles/now playing info to one or more other users' profiles. So if a bunch of you are in the same room listening to music you can all scrobble at the same time.

That said, it was mainly written to get to grips with node. As well as to scratch a personal itch, obviously.
This is clearly legal, as Apple don't have a monopoly.

But also clearly not in my interest as a putative Apple customer. (Alas, I fear I am not in Apple's target market.)
Likewise with education and defense, no?
For the record, I'm not a programmer.

I agree. That was the sentiment I was trying to express.

I can create useful products that are a step past trivial, but not engineering masterpieces.
But they are well known for pulling apps arbitrarily, so make sure you download and install as many book readers and other apps with similar type functionality now. For instance, I'm glad I installed the Safari Online reader when it came out. (Although in this case it was O'Reilly that pulled it due to whiny complaints that it wasn't a native app).
I was talking about odds of marriage, not the age of losing ones virginity.
Professor Ehrman's works have been helpful to me in learning more about the historical context of Chritianity and the Church. He has some excellent videos from The Learning Company as well as several books on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

It's pretty easy to realize that all the miraculous tales from the bible are false - unless you've been indoctrinated since you were a child. Ehrman's works helped me to understand how the collection of ideas that became the Christian canon, were able to take root and spread.

The ideology is far from static and has evolved over time to address challenges to its validity and acceptance. I find the history of Christian thought to be a far more interesting topic than Christianity itself.

In understanding the malleability of Christian beliefs over time, it establishes that the roots were not handed down from God and set in stone, but fit nicely into into a very human framework of an adoption of a set of memes that have evolved and become institutionalized over time.
First off, if you trace the article to its source, you'll end up on a WSJ article that says something slightly different:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870477560457612...

As far as we know, Apple has not directly set a deadline for Amazon. In fact, there's no knew information other than the date: meaning there's still a lot of questions about the subscription rates and the actual requirements Apple will have in place.

Personally, I can't see how a 30% fee for what amounts to little more than payment processing can stand. It's one thing to charge the fee for app distribution and marketing in the store. It's another to handle on billing at which even 10% would seem rather high.

I don't see this lasting. Either publishers will charge an extra fee on iPad users and/or Apple will be taken to court for anti-trust, probably in Europe first.
Isn't Flippa.com for websites?
Who cares about Amazon, they've got volume. While this one precedence might instantly bump Apple's revenue, it means that indie developers that deal with licensed/purchased content without in-app transactions will also have no choice but comply and take into account Apples 1/3rd.
That would be the core issue - I'm not sure Apple would even allow a "Buy Books" button that jumps to their website from within the Kindle app.

At most, maybe a "Visit Amazon Website" button that goes to the home page, then after Apple approves the app have their site detect iPad users linked from the app, jump them directly to the Kindle bookstore. That's the best end-run I could come up with.
Jennifer Aniston cumplió 42 años
The whole article is complete speculation.
> P.P.S. I've built over 30% of my app at this point.

The other 130% will take 50 times as long ... <grin>