skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this post is neither trolling nor calling on people to blindly switch to Dojo. It is pointing out a thing I see over and over and over again: people choosing jQuery for tasks to which it is simply not suited. Yes, if you know what you're doing you can make it work -- Alex Sexton makes this argument quite well in his post "On 'Rolling Your Own' Large jQuery Apps" (http://alexsexton.com/?p=106).

This post asks developers who blindly choose jQuery, based on its popularity and an often-misguided sense of self-assuredness, a straightforward question:

"Tell me how, exactly, you plan to solve these problems you haven't even thought about yet? If you proceed blindly with jQuery, then by the time you think about them, you will be effed. So, maybe you ought to ponder, for a solitary moment, that there might be things you haven't thought about yet, and consider a toolkit that's thought about JavaScript app development questions for years, rather than a library whose competencies are still and painfully limited to DOM, Ajax, events and effects."

I applaud the people who answer this question competently with jQuery as a base. What I take issue with is the people who aren't willing to consider for a second that, for all its popularity and simplicity, jQuery might not be the right tool for every JavaScript job under the sun.
I've been teaching myself, somewhat similar to OP. I'm too isolated to know about trends, but the few conversations I've had with more experienced people are enormously helpful.

-- They help weed out the bad and the WTF to bring forward the good (in my case, okay) stuff.

-- Their discussion of design issues can help you figure out your framework, and show directions you hadn't known.

-- They give you some sense of what you've accomplished, what you haven't and what you must improve.
This. HN often has discussions about an article here because of the community and the calibre (as opposed to HN members on the site itself), while Techmeme relies on the inherent "conversational" properties of blogs themselves.
I don't think you're educating anyone. It's a free market, what's the problem with buying a Corolla over a BMW? Everyone and their mother (including mine) have a website now. 95% of those people don't need a professional design which is why sites like 99designs work.
You're right, but this is another case of the same problem.

If one bureaucracy-- government or corporate-- controls it, then it stagnates. Big single choke point equals bad.
Due to SEO "the era of clever headlines and above-the-fold mentality is over"
Apple showcased something in that context yesterday. Namely, that 5 out of six models in iPad matrix were cheeper than Xoom.
If the rich all left, they'd take their 80% tax burden with them. Who would make up the difference?
In addition to what others have said:

1. For some reason, the data is wrong. When I put in 92688, it comes up with Corona, CA - which is not correct.

2. When I focus on the input box, the border is not rounded, but the corners of the input box are rounded.

3. The 500 internal server error is ugly. To repeat, just put /asdf or anything else at the end of the domain name. Should probably be generating a 404.

4. You can also use html5 tags to try to get the location of the user - and fall back if no html5 support. Myriad of examples on web how to do this with both html5 and free services for <html5.
This is a vastly different issue from subprime home loans. The key difference is that depreciation of cars is reasonably predictable; car prices are not typically subject to speculative bubbles.
Well and truly said. But my frustration is that the public debate has not moved far beyond the stage of settling on a common vocabulary. No party will cede to the other's framing of the issues because that would admit defeat. Thus we have a stalemate. Skipping this stage and cutting to the chase may not be the best strategy for "winning", but it stands a chance of actually generating some insight.
I'm not sure about that. Sight happens in the brain. When the eyes don't work this doesn't have to mean the visual part of the brain doesn't work.

Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185429
> How much memory will the new iPad have? We don't know, because Jobs didn't tell us. Given that he ticked off all the other major specs of the device

Not really. He said the CPU was dual-core (not even sure he said it was 1GHz) and he said the GPU was much faster. That's about all he did.

> But given the standard pace of technological improvement, one would expect a 128-gigabyte hard drive by now. Could tablet design have reached some kind of inherent size limit?

God, can't these people learn to look up information?

It's at the limit of wide-availability NAND. That's why all flash pmps on the market also top out at 64GB. Toshiba demonstrated a 128GB chip in 2009, which at the time was supposed to reach production by the end of 2010, clearly that has not come to pass.

> Contrary to what the rumor mill had been expecting, there was no improvement in screen resolution -- meaning the iPad 2 is already lagging behind the iPhone 4, with its much-touted retina display. (An iPhone 5 is expected later this year.)

Except, of course, last time I checked the iPad's resolution (1024x768) is bigger than the iPhone 4's (960x640). And if you want to go "but... he's talking about density!"... the iPad already lags behind the iPhone (not 3G or 3GS, just iPhone) as well as the 2010 macbook air (11") or the nanos (since the first generation).

And why the iPhone 5 reference? Is he expecting an other bump in iPhone resolution? ('cause it's not going to happen)

> And while Jobs told us how many frames per second of video the new iPad's cameras would shoot, he didn't mention megapixels. This is not a spec he has been shy about announcing when it came to iPhone models.

I'm pretty sure he said "VGA" and "HD". You can argue that "HD" can be 720p or 1080p (it's the former), but that's hardly "didn't mentioning megapixels" and the iPad specs page was put up on Apple's website during the announcement. It has the camera specs.

Finally,

> Cloud sync?

Is not a hardware feature, it was not in the iOS 4.3 betas, and Jobs was definitely not expected to demo iOS5, why mention it in relation to iPad?
Memristor Processor Solves Mazes
Not at all. The analogy was completed with the reference to cooking at the end. If you are not willing to cook for yourself and have no one to cook for you, you cannot avoid going to a restaurant. You'll die of starvation! If, however, you are willing to cook for yourself, as with work, your options are nearly limitless.
> From the evidence we have

Link?
Not really. Software can be copyrighted. Words can be trademarked. Books can't be patented. Just because the analogy falls apart when you change the subjects doesn't mean the original was wrong.

Though I think you can make a much stronger case than the OPs simple analogy.
Here's what boggles my mind. Motorola was never in the PC business.

Why are Motorola and Nokia following Apple in this direction? If you look at it as a question of where historically these companies have been competitive, they are chasing Apple right into their home turf. I mean, let's say that whatever degree of success Apple has in the smartphone market is due to software/hardware design, marketing, and vertical integration. Isn't software even more of an issue with a larger, more powerful form factor? Isn't vertical integration even more of a factor when there's no "subsidized" phone to buff your margins?

I don't totally believe what I'm saying here to be honest (Android tablets will probably beat Apple in price at some point, for example), but I still find the process odd - 1. Apple enters the cell phone companies' market, 2. Apple creates the tablet market using its cell phone operating system, 3. the cell phone companies follow Apple to the tablet market. Somebody's being led around.
If I hear a joke on TV one night, and I repeat it in a meeting at work the next day, I might even attribute it, but technically, I've committed (gasp) some type of infringement. Now we might "hrrumptffff" and try and call that "fair use" but what this really is, is a casual use.

Now it's debatable whether or not we could actually function as a society if every little use was tracked, accounted for, and billed; technologically it's probably possible. But realistically, I don't want to live in a society where casual use of intellectual property (a concept that is harder to define than you might imagine) is minutely tracked and logged.

We have a name for that kind of society, it's called a Police State.

The bad news for Old Media (and commercial software developers) is that digital technology has made "casual use" almost frictionless. I can give my brother a copy of Jon Stewart's latest rant, half a dozen different ways, as easily, or easier, than I can repeat the high points over the phone. It's the _ease_ that defines casual.

I write software for a living too. And I've worked in broadcast TV. My TV job, which paid pretty well, thank you, was screwed by the imploding broadcast industry. Boo hoo. The price of progress. If I have to suck it up and re-invent myself, then Old Media can too.

The recording industry did it to live performers, the TV industry did it to Radio. The VCR ... well you get the idea. The only way to stop it is a nuclear war or a police state.

I'm not trying to minimize this. This is a weather change in the way media works. It is gonna be _hard_. But worrying about old models, and trying to prop up old players, who add little value in the new world, is only going to make it harder.
It was probably done to get the article onto one page, not the five that the normal article is.
Yes, and my point is that the ECB was therefore be stuck: too high a rate and Germany suffers, too low a rate and places like Ireland suffer. Ultimately the ECB chose a rate which was better for Germany than for Ireland, in the balance of things, and now Germany is very unhappy that it got such a good deal.
'...dreaming is a gradual cognitive achievement that requires the development of visual and spatial skills and other forms of imagistic skills as well.'[1]

Those who've never seen, or who were blinded very early, have auditory dreams. (They dream in sounds.) Those who were blinded after the age of around seven -- when the ability to form mental images necessary for dreaming develops -- are able to dream in pictures.

[1] http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/kerr_2004.html
No, I said people here "appear to be laissez-faire on this issue". I'd say that's accurate, given that the primary interest appears to be the semantics of "theft" vs. "copyright infringement" while the practical effect in many cases is the same.

My experience with the issue includes an incident where an organization with revenues in the multiple billions of dollars used the software I built in a widespread way for free for years without a license or payment. They were provided with technical support when they had problems by indicating that they were evaluating the software (when they had actually routed around the license-verification routines in the distributable). It was only when a new manager there learned what was going on and contacted me did I learn the real story; we've since come to a fair arrangement. I probably could have made a lot more by suing them, but I don't need the distraction or the heartache.

As far as I can tell, the countermeasures I could use to prevent the above would make life less pleasant for my paying customers. In the meantime, piracy continues to be viewed as a victimless action, even by those making full use of the copyrighted works in question and with plenty of resources to pay the price set by the creators.
It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
I wonder how a brain that has never "seen" an image would percieve technology to allow the blind to see using this:

http://vision.wicab.com/technology/
Well, I hope the "troll" wins

The troll didn't go after Microsoft or Google directly, it went after hundreds of smaller companies that it had a better chance of defeating.
Ongoing until inventory is depleted. They aren't continuing to produce the iPad 1 at the lower price point.
He's Daredevil!
Just because 70% of people pirate the software doesn't mean that 100% of them would have bought it.
What I like about the concept of the mythical "top 1%" is that every company must hire only these cream-of-the-crop developers.

It's quite presumptuous to believe that you could convince someone with a PhD in CS and probably at least a bachelors in Math to work on your web application. This is someone who could literally be considered in the top 1%: think Norvig, Sussman, etc. The truly great programmers who taught the rest of us everything we know. Let's be realistic -- your company may be innovative and fresh in the marketplace, but the technical challenges you're likely to face are hardly interesting to these sorts of programmers at the stratosphere of technical achievement.

My advice would be to forget about hiring the top 1%. What you're really looking for is someone who is serious about the job and has their head on straight. Someone with practical sensibilities and whose ambitions align with the goals of your company. It doesn't take a genius CS PhD to do good work.
Sorry, yes, I was referring to personal choice. Although I do think that there are many more options in any given situation (personal or otherwise) than people are willing to consider-- comfort and inertia are deceptively powerful forces.
The LG Optimus [V/S/U] (LG 670) is a great phone for the price - it can be had in the US for $130 without a contract.
Sure. What is it that you want?
3 downmodders didn't read the article...
Of course what you call it is relevant! To claim otherwise is to pretend that language has no influence on thought, which simply isn't true and I believe you know it. Human brains will have different thoughts in a discussion of "stealing" than in a discussion of "unauthorized copying", and that will influence how we ultimately decide to deal with this issue.
I don't know about that. While that system is clearly easier to use, from what I've heard about echolocation it provides much more detail than that system.

If you look at my other post, I linked to a video of a kid who used echolocation. He could distinguish objects - he walked past two garbage cans in the street, and said "Is that a car? clicks his tongue several times No, it's a garbage can."
Argh, blocked at work. How was the 65% rate determined? And was TechMeme's 16.5% rate compared to any other sites?

If that's all explained in your article, then I'll just read it later :)
Do companies pay women more if a male CEO has a daughter?
If "everything else" is being compared to desktop searching, then I'd wager that at least part of the increased search count can be attributed to the fact that mobile keyboards are imperfect input devices. On my phone I tend to perform searches with fewer keywords, resulting in a less-perfect result-set ... which sometimes necessitates a second or third search.
Copyright infringement is not theft and it is not criminal in Germany. It is illegal for sure, but not criminal. It is probably criminal to sell pirated stuff in a large scale, though. (Again, sell, not distribute)
Kish figures it would require $15 million to prove whether or not his idea is feasible. He fears he’ll never get the opportunity.

Sounds like he needs some real angels, those who measure the success of their investment in something bigger than dollars. How does one go about finding and pitching to them?
> In fact, one thing I have noticed is that the people who I consider to be good software developers barely ever apply for jobs at all.

And if they did they sure wouldn't apply for a company that makes a shitty web publishing app and a mediocre bug tracking system, uses a monstrosity of a custom-built language that spits PHP and VBScript, and is run by the man responsible (and wanted) for the creation of Visual Basic for Applications and a god-awful UI design book.

Joel has written some good essays, I give him that. There is nothing on his other endeavors though to make me think it worthy to listen to his hiring advice...
Microsoft has used patent threats to extract a "Linux tax" from vendors such as Amazon and a number of smaller companies.

Microsoft has also directly sued for software patent infringement. (TomTom got sued for using Fat32, presumably for refusing to pay Microsoft's "Linux tax".)
Pc Tutorials
Great new entrepreneur web series about hustle and grind with GrubHub
Pretty amazing. It is quite difficult to understand echolocation since we are able to see, but it is also difficult for him to understand vision since he can't. I think that vision is the lazyiest sense we have, it's too easy and the body have a great potencial to use our senses to the max; we're just not using it.
Here is a post to a video to quench your doubting mind: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2284276

(Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBv79LKfMt4)
Indeed. People are so used to the abstraction of "property" that they've forgotten it's an abstraction.
Apple really does need some serious competition soon, if only so that people will stop writing irritating articles comparing Apple's product line with figments of their imagination.

It would be one thing to read an article saying "the iPad has X amount of RAM, but Tablet Q has Y amount of RAM, and that's probably why Tablet Q is so much better at tasks A and B." But instead we get "the thing that you can buy right now at a store offers X, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the thing I saw on Star Trek last night".

Real engineers ship, people. There are a lot of constraints. You can't wish them away, so you can't compare a real thing with an imaginary one. You can only compare two real things. And you can't part them out, imagining an animal with the vision of an eagle and the reach of a giraffe and the speed of a cheetah and the fecundity of E. coli. That can't happen. Maybe you can design it on paper, and maybe you can build a very scary-looking prototype, but that animal can't be shipped.

The only actual comparison I see here is one sentence about a RAM spec: The Xoom has 1GB, and that's bigger. What this means in real life, however, I do not see here. Yeah, I know the number is bigger, but tell me why I care. Tell me why it's worth every other compromise that I'll have to make, just to get that RAM.
I'm glad you got something from the numbers in that article because I didn't. Something about 1% of the registered users coming in the last 24 hours? And a million out of 600,000 being such-and-such.

Is there some place other than that puff piece to get real MineCraft numbers from?
Five suppliers you should avoid like the plague
Facebook has something like 500 million active accounts, right? If we assume that the overwhelming majority of those have a 1:1 mapping with real-world people, then somewhere between 15% and 25% of Internet users have a Facebook account.

So, the lowest-friction way to authenticate users still cuts out 75-85% of people on the Internet.

Edit: Not to mention everyone under thirteen.
Passing Through: Why the Open Internet Is Worth Saving
Which Billing & Subscriptions App to Chose for your Business?
Indeed! Unfortunatly we will never be able to practice Echolocation. Imagine if we are able to give him back vision.... What will he be able to do from there !
Sorry, haven't been clear. "Ideas" was supposed to be slightly tongue-in-cheek -- compare "you can steal hearts as well as pens".

The thing that is being stolen is the right of exploitation. That is what copyright protects.
IMO, Doing this sort of approach within the micro-iterations of an individual programmer's edit-compile-test cycle is not quite the best place to do this. I envision the "hardness level" of a code base to be about the same throughout one iteration/release. This gives time for the production application to generate runtime profile data from actual use. In this case, the more data, the better. This data can then be massaged and verified by programmers using suitable tools and their in-depth knowledge of the application. (So runtime traces which contradict each other's type inferences can be looked at, etc.) Such tools can also apply a set of massaged type annotations to a branch of the code base, which can then be tested and merged back into the main branch of the application. I think this is a very natural pace of this level of change for most shops. This technique can also be adapted to apply to specific sections of code which need to be optimized, or can be applied incrementally across a code base over time.
Are social games evil?
Upgrading from the NT line to further along the NT line wasn't much of a problem IIRC. Upgrading from '95 to '98 to 2000 probably would be, if you'd actually used the machine. Registry rot from years of use would hinder this process.

The idea of a well-used registry from Win95 being still used in a 2000 or XP machine makes me shiver in horror.
Thank you for saying this. Sorry, but you don't need a rocket scientist to build your glorified CMS, no matter how neat and innovative you think it is. When you're building the fault-tolerant, highly optimized code to align a communications satellite with a ground station, or sharding code to handle a database dozens of terabytes in size, then you can make a case that you need the top 1%.

For the 99% of CRUD sites, mobile apps, and glorified accounting systems that most programmers will spend their careers on? Not so much.
Ask HN: Want to learn to program... how?
I took a basic programming class in high school about 7 years ago (C++). Our great teacher left about 3/4 through, and the new guy didn't know a lick about programming. In fact, he would take my and a friend's code to use for class demonstrations.

Anyway, the class stagnated, and we didn't learn much for the rest of the year. I tried taking a Java class the next year from the same teacher, and it turned into a 'Web Surfing' class.

I wanted to learn then, but didn't make myself do it. Years have passed, and I still want to learn. I'm interested in web development and iPhone development. So I think I want to learn PHP or Ruby and some variant of C (Objective C, C++, or C).

I'm not a great book-learner, because I don't understand enough of the basics to understand what the book is talking about. I think I would thrive in a tutoring type of atmosphere. I would love to find someone to teach me, but don't know if that's the best route. I have no hesitation from going to a tech college or community college to learn enough so I can start learning on my own.

If you were to start over, what would you recommend? Get over myself and hit the books? Try and find a small classroom environment hoping they teach what I want to learn (again, Ruby for web dev and Objective C for Mac/iPhone dev)? Are there good online courses?

Appreciate your feedback. Thanks!