skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is one of the best ideas I have ever read.
I associate that background with launchrock.com. The majority of your user base probably won't, though.
Speaking of which I thought I read an article recently about the city of SF attempting to negotiate with Twitter to get them to stay in town. If SF is trying to encourage tech startups to stay, this tax seems more than a bit counterproductive to the cause.
Can Android Without Dalvik Avoid Oracle's Wrath?
Wow that is pretty damn similar. Stock photos ftw.
You're forgetting portman's first point - hire slowly. Avoiding people who, for whatever reason, can't meet expectations, should be the first priority of any organization that cares about results. You can do that by aggressively pruning people who don't meet expectations, but you can also do that by doing everything you can to ensure that the wrong people don't even get in the door.

I've worked in the converse - hire-quickly, fire-slowly - and I found it a horrible, hollow experience. Nobody, from the top down, gave a shit about getting anything done or learning. This is a place that refused to allow generics in Java code because people might not understand them. There were enough C players across the ranks that had moved up the ranks just by being there forever that the culture revolved around ignoring problems and not making waves, and it nearly killed the company. I bet you've heard of them. The company was AIG.
$65,000 Raised for Robocop Statue in Detroit
According to Yaron Minsky (Jane Street Capital), yes:
"One of the things we noticed very quickly when we started hiring people to program in OCaml was that the average quality of applicants we saw was much higher than what we saw when trying to hire, say, Java programmers. It’s not that there are not really talented Java programmers out there, there are. It is just that for us, ﬁnding them was much harder. The density of bright people in the OCaml community is impressive and it shows up in hiring, when reading the OCaml mailing list, and when reading the software written by people in the community. That pool of talent is probably the single best thing about OCaml from our point of view".

More: http://www.janestreetcapital.com/minsky_weeks-jfp_18.pdf
Go Robo!

Donate with kickstarter here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detro...
Except, Brazil treats them as one issue when most other countries treat them as 2. Instead of going, "what can we do to encourage more Americans to come here?", and "how can we lower the US VISA requirements for our people". The former is an active discouragement, most Americans don't leave the US so putting $160 visa fee is a huge roadblock. The latter, is just misguided, it affects americans, but the people they should be addressing are the lawmakers and the state department, the people that actually write the VISA rules.
What happened to linking directly to the article?
I was pushing for ZeroMQ as an alternative to WCF at my company, because we will eventually need to integrate components not only written in C#, but C++ and Python too.

I encountered resistance because of WCF handles not only the serialization, but the method routing on both ends of a service (by means of a proxy class, which would be hard to set up in C++/Python anyhow). My reading on ZeroMQ leads me to believe I could set up one socket as a front end which routes message to a different publisher dedicated to each method?

Is this a good way to do it?
Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out as a possible future venue.
So Leonardo was a defense contractor. I think the lesson is that no matter how big a genius you think you are you still have to get out there and sell something.
Where "fast" is defined as "involves disk reads" and "prime numbers" should have the qualifier "under 200." The algorithm is brute force testing of all values up to sqrt(n), which is worse than the one the ancient Greeks used.
Is it a bubble or something else?
Glad to see that the new beta now allows you to set a master password for sync as well.
Tips on How to Learn Social Media Marketing
For the noobs, can you add the word "like" and some descriptive stuff to that last sentence?
jshon $(sed 's/\./ -e/g' <<< ".a.b.c")
Definitely interested! I also have a recommendation for future events: Post the meet up information on hackernewsdc.org as well. DC is a big government town and a lot of federal agencies block meetup.com. It's hard to check out the information at work without blatantly circumventing the filters.
I wonder if the money that Batman spends to fight crime could be used more effectively in other ways. Batman is essentially a guy who uses his millions of dollars to fund his private war against criminals of Gotham city. If he used the same money and time to educate kids, invest in rehab programs or create community programs he might be able to get more done than what one man can do in the night. But it probably doesn't have the same kick you get out of beating up criminals.
According to someone I know who got a job there, Pisa is a very boring town. Some scenery plus a few tourist traps, low standard of living compared to the US [1], very little to do. Sounds fun before you go, much less fun after you've been there a few months.

[1] For hard numbers, I found this site, suggesting a professor in Italy has a real income about 2/3 that of a US professor: http://www.worldsalaries.org/professor.shtml
Well, I thought people were pointing out that this was an interesting automobile, so I immediately went to the wikipedia article.

The fancy stuff is like a 4 color brochure. Always skippable if you want information. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/four-color-glossies.html
Do you know the names of people at last night's tech dinner? (pic)
This 'Modern Browser' stuff is getting kind of old. The question is relatively meaningless, but if it were meaningful, the answer would be more complex than something you can diagram in ~5 minutes.
You have many more rights with a merchant account. What is that worth?
This discussion reminds me of an article Derek Sivers wrote about switching back to PHP from Rails. http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_swit...
Basically he states that programming in PHP using the rails mindset (but no framework) saved him mountains of time. I think the MVC idea is great but I also agree that frameworks are over encompassing beasts that can add more functionality than you need to a project.

I keep being attracted by the thought of using a framework but they always seem to over complicate things. I like using SQL and I feel hand tied when frameworks hide that functionality away.
As someone who has worked for several companies that provide "enterprise" software, I can say that's only the case with bad companies. There are many companies that are constantly trying to improve and update their documentation so that support only has to deal with the unusual or complex and difficult problems.

Edit: And I should add that there are plenty of people who will call support for every single problem they encounter, no matter how clear the documentation is.
In economy, if you want to avoid bubbles/pyramid burst, you have to check who is investing (as stated by Warren Buffet)?:

The three "I" actors:
- "I"nnovators: Time to invest
- "I"mitators: Time to be careful
- "I"diots: Time to leave

The key to success is to spot when the ecosystem's actors are switching from the 2nd to the 3rd category.
Google opens up Public Data Explorer to your data
Think of this as an answer, not the answer. :-)
> I'm getting the feeling that some of you get offended by critique, justified or not, of some of US politics.

I think many of us would actually make the same critiques.

But not on this site. We don't want to talk politics here.
Oops, I was wrong. The figure is actually $150 million: http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-27/bay-area/24099065_1_ho...

It is outrageous indeed. Every time I walk by a homeless person sleeping in the cold on the sidewalk, I am reminded of this figure.
Let the Apple-Google Subscription Wars Begin
Data Nerds Will Nerd Out Over What Postrank's Doing With Data Now
Play Git Like A Violin
http://www.metacircus.com/hacking/2011/02/18/play-git-like-a-violin.html
I wish we bought more software from companies like that :-)
Are you just submitting everything from your company's blog?
Results of various cheap marketing attempts
There are few industries which do the kind of research that they hire PhDs for.
The real question is why you would want to be Batman when Iron Man has so much more fun...
Spoiler: Front Page of HN > all targeted efforts.
How viable are algae-based biofuels?
COICA and IP law
Chromium-9.0.597.84(0) and I see tons of flash on that page. I know because I'm using flash blocker.
This isn't really hacking, it's just using a mail server, for sending mail... The problem is/was that SMTP AUTH was overlooked as a requirement from the original SMTP spec, and the bigger WTF is that it took about 20 years before it was added to the spec.

Edit to add:

"While he was on the computer I shut off all the power on the floor." - Because everyone can just stand there and shut all the power off on a floor... if it were indeed a 'hack' then give more specifics, if it's flipping the switch on a breaker... well... that's just that.
I started having problems with the camera on my Droid 2 right away.

The color balance is random and difficult to reset. Sometimes there is a 5 second delay before the shutter fires (it is confused by motion - like rain or snow even). The pictures are often fuzzy. The Sport setting is the only one I use, since these problems are worse in the other modes.

It even crashes sometimes and takes down the entire phone (it reboots!). Sometimes the flash gets stuck on for 15 seconds first. Yes, the picture quality is often bad on the Droid 2 - sometimes it is perfectly good, though, which is even more frustrating. I can't rely on the camera at all.

The camera on my iPod touch is actually better, though it has 1/4 the resolution. It's reliable, has good white balance, snaps right way, and the photos almost always look good.

I'm definitely wary of Motorola products as a result of this and a few other issues with this phone. It has nothing to do with Android, though. I wish I bought a Samsung or HTC, not an iPhone.
A Twitter Knockoff Has China Talking
The question was deliberately broad and honestly inquisitive. But born of the narrow observation that while there are standardized, published formats that separate style from content (HTML/CSS) and similarly, say, LaTeX, much human "work" is put into formats where the style /is/ the content. Say, a pretty resume in Word or a PowerPoint presentation.

We have conversations where we say things in passing. Maybe we don't care to preserve those words. But when we bother to document things presumably they are worth something. So I wondered how much "worth" was being lost or later mis-read.

Perhaps some or much documentation is simply a means to an end and its longevity is immaterial.
Awesome!

Big supporter of Romanian development too! Some very talented developers out there.
Get LinkedIn on Empire Avenue
That looks very complex for a structure. Are other viruses this elaborate in structure?

I have very limited knowledge of biology.
Cool idea - definitely enjoy giving people the freedom to teach and learn as they please.

I will check it out in a bit to give it a go.

Out of curiosity, what do you use to send and manage your emails from the site?
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/

http://energyfromthorium.com/2008/12/11/a-review-of-mark-z-j...

http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-for-critical...
One of php's main advantages is the availability of many options.
You have the option to do web apps in plain php.
You have the option to do web apps in many mature frameworks.

Languages like ruby and python lack this. Can you do a website in plain ruby as easily?
How many mature ruby web frameworks are there in ruby?
There are many in php. Zend Framework, Agavi, Kohana, CodeIgniter, Prado, Yii, Symfony and many others.

Of course some stuff in php suck hard. I would personally love an string-object to replace all the stupid str_*() functions, but php is in the right direction of adding features. (My last issues are fixed by 5.3's late static bindings)

And im surprised how php community quickly adopts changes. PHP 5.3 breaks compatibility but i see more people using it everyday.

I think despite all the negativity, PHP is going to stay for long-term.
Cool car. Oh, nevermind.
Roger Penrose (among many others) thinks so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
Connecting to Active Directory in Java: Still a Sorry State of Affairs
I getting quite tired about this subject, the short answer is NO.
Grooveshark has an HTML5 version now, im pretty sure
If you want to deal with "real man's" prime numbers (those large enough to be used for secure cryptography) there are fast probabilistic tests which can quickly ensure confidence greater than the probability of your machine not getting blown up by lightning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test
"Compiling my own kernel" is often a metaphor for the effort involved in running a Linux system. I run a dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu system right next to my MacBook using SynergyKM to control both, so I have a good opportunity to compare both on a daily basis. The "compile my own kernel" factor with recent distributions of Ubuntu (9.10 and newer) is really, really insignificant.

So, it's a mixed bag. "Linux" means so many things that it's hard to say "Linux is easy to use" or "Linux is hard to use" and not be right in both cases.
Good call. Done:
http://hackernewsdc.org/news/
http://hackernewsdc.org/rss.xml
This reminds me of the quote, "In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only we can't control when the five year period will begin."

Yeah, we'll be totally on alternative energy in 20 years. It's just that we don't know when this "20 years" will begin...
The disincentive is because the rates are badly chosen. If there was a wide buffer with a marginal rate of 0, it would work better.
Because if the fake name is ever "outed", then the bloggers and tech journalists will go nuts over it.
Doh! Need a facebook account to "watch the electric revolution begin".

Never mind.
Sure you can, but why would you want to? Reinventing the wheel is not fun.

A colleague pointed me to Yii Framework [1] a couple years ago, and I stopped looking for alternatives. Don't see any reason to invent my own frameworks, since Yii has practically every feature I could want already implemented and, more importantly, well tested. In those rare cases when I need to customize or extend something, it's fairly simple to do so, since the code is well documented and organized (though the authors seem to be suffering from a severe allergy to whitespace...).

Controllers with access control rules and filters? Check.

Autoloading? Check.

Caching with support for multiple mechanisms (file cache, db cache, eAccelerator, MemCache, XCache, Zend Data Cache)? Check.

DB layer based on PDO? Check.

ActiveRecord? Check.

Mass attribute assignment to Active Record, complete with validation and allowed/forbidden attribute configuration)? Check.

Named scopes? Check.

Multiple database engine support (MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, SQLite, PostgreSQL)? Check.

Testing environment? Check.

CLI mode? Check.

I18N support? Check.

Plain PHP views with simple HTML escaping and HTML construction? Check.

Event raising and handling? Check.

[1] http://www.yiiframework.com/

Edit: However, no framework can take away the programmer's stupidity. My former colleague used another framework that has decent support for parametrized queries and still concatenated his SQL from raw user input and printed data into javascript variables by simply wrapping it in '' with no escaping... So glad all of his code has been retired.
I wholeheartedly agree and I intend to start working with my potential users very soon.
$30/night is roughly $11000 a year, which is almost 3 times more than I pay in Pittsburgh for my share of a nice house. If there really is no way to cut those costs in NYC, the answer is to get out of NYC.
Whatever your taste in ORM mappers, templating, localization and other "magic", you can get away without a framework, but you will (in one way or the other) need to do all of the following:

- Define/create some controller or structure in how URLs map to different scripts/functions etc. That includes some "system" that you use (even just remembering) for where each app executes.

- Handle output and page parsing. If you want errors and other messages to always appear within your template and not before even the starting <html> tag or if you need to be able to set cookies or send other headers() before the output you will need to control output buffering (using ob_XX() functions)

- Authentication. Most (99%?) web apps need a user to be able to login. You can roll your own in this regard, but that will take skill and careful planning. You need to be able to specify which parts of your controller are available to which users, etc.. this can start getting complicated real soon.

You can roll your own, but you will actually be rolling out a framework.

So just realize you're not choosing between using a framework or not using a framework - you're choosing between using your framework or somebody else's.
This is pretty basic, but in addition to mysql table structure and query optimization, have you done/considered any tweaking of the mysql config itself? (Usually at /etc/my.cnf)

We've repeatedly experienced huge performance gains even with basic/minor tweaks of my.cnf.

HTH
What Are President Obama And Other Silicon Valley Tech Stars Toasting To?
One of the things that killed Macromedia Director Schockwave (remember that?) which was in many respects superior to Flash (SWF stands for "shockwave flash" -- Flash originally rode on Director's coat-tails) was too-frequent releases. As a Director coder you never knew what platform you needed to target and the end-user experience usually comprised being pestered to update their plugin before seeing your content.

Flash forward to 2010-11 and Google is doing the same thing with Android and Chrome (and Firefox is following suit). This is actually a BAD thing, even though we all have broadband, etc. now.

There's some kind of happy medium between significant, reasonably well-paced releases and shoving stuff out the door constantly.

"Real artists ship," but they don't spam you with incremental releases.
Great post with lots of good info. Especially important for apps that utilize a lot of JavaScript. We've been getting bit by this lately in ASP.NET MVC since it has no built in strategy for dealing with browser asset caching/ expiration.
In a lot of cultures, being concise is not a virtue. Eloquence is valued, and demonstrating a facility with words is a marker of status. Using a lot of words to describe something shows the amount of attention or value you give to it. So spending a long time and a lot of big words on his accomplishments is an indicator of how cool they are.
I think they are strong anywhere you need dependable core of the system.

I see it as a trend, actually, statically typed languages grew stronger in various fields, from operating system kernels [1] to web development and shell scripting [2].

[1] http://www.ok-labs.com/

[2] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4197
An App with Literally No UI Elements
I don't "switch" operating systems or devices, I supplement them! My setup with an Android phone and an iPod Touch works great as I am now familiar with both OSs.

Similarly, I have a MacBook Pro, a Toshiba with Win 7 and also run Linux on both of them.

I like Android, but I will be buying an iPhone 5 when they come out. I'll also be buying whatever the next Nexus is too, though. Isn't that how most serious device geeks operate?
This is the exact same thing i am planning to do. i am currently in a lavish tech consultancy firm, but the whole idea of being a "resource" is really stagnating my brain, and also objectivizes humanity. I still can't stand being called a resource.

Im planning on quitting soon, and doing independent research while creating non-startup apps. Posts like this (and the link above) really motivate me. :)

Best of luck to ya!
Some have called recent times the Credit Card Era
Awesome report. Especially for a startup with low funds my advice would be to start a blog and twitter account and just put high quality, relevant content out there. It doesn't hurt to notify the "celebrities" in your genre and link to your content.
Right, the problems with the Droid cameras have nothing to do with Android itself. It is just Motorola being shoddy.
Yeah, but 18 months is a long time to wait to see if you need to do a recall on a potentially deadly product.
Moving a slow algorithm to compile time, or precomputing it, does not make it faster. This title is wrong.
Kids these days. This isn't "hacking into MTV.com".

If "hacking" were equivalent to "breaking into someone's house, making yourself a breakfast, cleaning up and leaving without taking anything and anyone noticing you were there", then this is more like "ringing the doorbell and running away". Just sayin'....
I did not downvote you, but man, you are different.
I think that might be true in cases where you're not building on such a widely distributed and incredibly backwards-compatible / gracefully-degrading platform such as the web.
I haven't been to Stetson's, but I would love to see more meetups in DC proper. The fact that I live off U Street certainly helps.
I'm sure that this is a common phrase, but one of my friends gave this advice to me:

"Their perception is your reality."

He was talking about management, and maintaining a good image to your employees, but the phrase applies to everything.

People's perception was that Toyota had some terrible electrical problems, and the news media, being a for-profit endeavor, ran with it.

So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that.

Unfortunately, that's how things work.
The interesting part of this is that NASA did a study. I used to work for NASA as a contractor. I never met anyone with automotive engineering experience. Not that there weren't any, but wouldn't it make more sense to hire an automotive engineering consulting company to do a study? Come to think of it, I wonder who NASA hired to do the study. I bet dollars to donuts it wasn't government (NASA) employees.

But people (and therefore politicians) see NASA and think smart. It just shows you how political this whole mess was.
Ok, so I go to the site and the default settings have $20K per month in sales with $440 for Paypal and $478.90. The difference is $38.90. Or 0.2%.

If your going to choose a credit card processor exclusively based on saving 0.2%, then I don't know how the hell you got to $20K in monthly sales.
Who's in this picture with President Obama?
Can't upvote this enough.. Back when this came out, I shared the link on Facebook. It was interesting because I know a whole spectrum of very liberal to very conservative people among my family and friends.

This exercise really opened a lot of eyes, and I saw people with very strong political views start to change their minds about long standing beliefs. In order to fix the deficit, we will need to put politics aside and accept the best ideas from both sides.