skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My first thought upon getting into an actual spreadsheet was "I'd use it if it supported Ruby or Javascript". Any plans to support languages other than python?

Also, any plans to import spreadsheets from excel/gdocs?
Q&A: Wendy Tan-White, Moonfruit, on bootstrapping, investment and the US
Backbone.js beginners and underscore.js micro templating
Yup, that's right. Resolver One is a desktop app, we're now focussing much more on the web (though we'll obviously not abandon Resolver One)
The Future of the Tablet, and It Isn’t the iPad 2
Funniest thing I found this morning. In all seriousness I can't see the EU actually being able to enforce these new rules at all.

Under what sort of jurisdiction would it function? On websites visited from the EU? On websites hosted in the EU? More probable websites with EU domain names? On companies registered within the EU?

Just seems like a system that will be impossible to enforce and will drive businesses out of different domain spaces or hosting geographies. The companies will merely go around these rules, making them a waste of time, sanity and money.

Then comes the real argument: are storing cookies on a website a privacy risk? Don't we consent to it by default by using a modern (circa 1995) web browser?
Nice. I sometimes wonder why I have to write my formulae as one line into one tiny window when I have a full-HD screen on my desk.

The simplest example on your examples page consists of a Python program with a function and a for-loop. Perhaps you could add even simpler examples to pick up spreadsheet users (e.g. just add A1 and B1, giving C1)?
I never went beyond Hello World-ish on python, no chance yet, however, my point is Ruby is adequate enough for my needs and no plan to migrate to another lang. If you prefer Python over Ruby for some reason, go ahead, because, as DHH says, it's you developing with it everyday.
Appeals Court: Buying Keyword Ads Based On a Competitor’s Name Is OK
As mentioned by others, Learn Python the Hard Way is a great place to start. I suggest supplementing it with:

The Google tutorial on Python. [1]
Python by Osmosis screencasts [2]
Django Book online. [3]
ProudN00b is a great blog on a similar path from little coding experience to Python + Django [4]

[1] http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/int...
[2] http://www.youtube.com/user/ryanmshea
[3] http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/
[4] http://www.proudn00b.com/archive
Facebook as the Adjustment Bureau
This is simply not true.
"This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service", taken from the directive, states that most uses of cookies will not force to explicit consent!
We started out to produce a similar desktop tool (see comments about Resolver One). That was working out OK but hasn't been the breakout success we'd always hoped for. In addition, people kept asking us (quite reasonably) about a cross-platform version.

So we thought about that and decided that a rewrite for the web would solve the cross-platform bit (JavaScript being the ultimate cross-platform language ;-) and also allow us to support parallel execution of spreadsheets so that people could scale their compute resources up and down.
Congratulations Jon and Ryan!
"Stop executing scripts on this page"
Of course, phrasing new regulations to cover only that specific application of cookies while allowing any other legitimate or future uses is going to be interesting. And by interesting I mean pretty much impossible.
Can I upload my companies proprietary modules? And restrict access to the api?
Fleece fabric baby - fleece prints panels - cotton flannel fabric
Anything regarding recursion, like this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2304657
I wonder, should this terrible idea actually move forward, if console.log() would be a viable replacement for using alert().

This would kill two birds with one stone: the first being the annoyance of constant alerts and the second being a faster death to (older versions) of IE since they can't handle console.log without using extra JavaScript.

Hilarious implementation in the link though :)
I, personally, would rather not have children being raised by the type of person willing to drive from Florida to Nebraska to dump them at a fire station.
It's worth noting that unless you get siphon, any "coffee" you can find for $6 is much more than just coffee.
You mention Mixergy and 37Signals, but http://beyondthepedway.com/ seems to hardly ever be mentioned. Great stuff there as well in my opinion.
Ikarus Scheme: a free optimizing compiler for R6RS Scheme
Startup/hacker meetup Brighton,UK
Any hackers or writers in Brighton? I'm visiting from Paris while attending a Derren Brown show. If anyone wants to meetup to talk about startups and/or hacker culture, let me know. I'm here till Sunday morning. Cheers.
I wish I could up vote this more than once. Thank you for cutting through the bull and actually RTFA.
Even if you aren't "on a budget," it's always a good idea to spend some time benchmarking and tuning your setup. You never know if you'll receive a spike of traffic or what the limits of your setup are. Most of the time, between the OS, Web Server, Application Stack, and Database, there are a few knobs that can be adjusted with minimal effort that will yield big gains in headroom. The author's suggestion of Munin is a great first step is a nice way to keep from getting caught with your pants down, and can usually be installed and configured in a few minutes.

This is sort of the systems side of always making sure HTTP compression is working, minifying your JavaScript, crushing your PNGs, and keeping an eye on the aggregate size of web pages. Even if it loads fast for YOU, someone might be on a slow DSL line (or, gasp, DIALUP) or a mobile connection.
[New Song] Selena Gomez & The Scene – Who Says
Harvard computer scientist Leslie Valiant wins Turing Award
So, has anyone actually read the actual document. From his tone it doesn't appear this blogger has done so..

Here's the specific piece of text that covers this new legislation:

Third parties may wish to store information on the equip­ment of a user, or gain access to information already stored, for a number of purposes, ranging from the legiti­mate (such as certain types of cookies) to those involving unwarranted intrusion into the private sphere (such as spy­ware or viruses). It is therefore of paramount importance that users be provided with clear and comprehensive infor­mation when engaging in any activity which could result in such storage or gaining of access. The methods of pro­viding information and offering the right to refuse should be as user-friendly as possible. Exceptions to the obligation to provide information and offer the right to refuse should be limited to those situations where the technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user. Where it is technically possible and effective, in accordance with the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46/EC, the user’s consent to processing may be expressed by using the appropriate settings of a browser or other application. The enforcement of these require­ments should be made more effective by way of enhanced powers granted to the relevant national authorities

There is a very clear exception in there when the service is explicitly requested by
the subscriber or user; so that covers login cookies, perference cookies etc.

It also talks about making the process user friendly; so popup boxes don't seem to comply with that specific suggestion (ironically meaning that the attempt here to stick to "the letter of the law" actually goes dead against it :P).

My feeling here is "meh", this doesn't strike me as an attempt to deal a crushing blow to the use of cookies. It looks to me like some specific piece of legislation that can be used to hit the more evil users of tracking cookies and those circumventing the "I don't want any cookies pls" settings of browsers (i.e. Flash Cookies). A piece that has been badly worded.

On the other hand it does seem to cover the use of 3rd party analytics software that use tracking cookies. Which is unfortunate and potentially a problem in places like Germany where the lawyers will just love to make merry hell with such legislation :) (privacy laws are a favourite of their legal eagles for some reason!).

Either way; they really need to iron out the ambiguity just to stop this firestorm of moaning.

But at this stage, as an EU based web host/developer etc, my state of being is "not worried yet".
Great read, it's nice to see non-founders that are so enthralled with their jobs. Off-topic, though:

All of our early press had evaporated, it turned out nobody actually wanted to broadcast their lives, and we really had no idea what to do.

How did you solve this? I look into Justin.tv every few months and there's nothing compelling there for me, but it must be aimed at a different demographic.
The article does NOT describe the situation. The situation is different and is explained by this part of the Directive:
"This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service"
And by the further comments to the text, clearly reducing the so claimed 'stupidity'.

Pascal Van Hecke wrote a useful comment explaining the situation and clearing the misunderstandings.
The comment can be read here: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/stupid-eu-cookie-law-wil...

The real problem about this Directive (it's not a law, European Union does not make laws!), is how it will be converted in law by the single Countries; this could be the real source of confusion.

The real purpose of this directive is forcing to ask explicit consent for behavioral targeting purposes, not for simple analytics' cookies.
We can't create buzz based on a misunderstanding!
Show HN: Graffitly - Anonymous Public Messages
Hi HN,
About two months ago, I was inspired by the events that began to unfold in Tunisia, Egypt, and then elsewhere, as everyday people started using the internet to organize revolutions against despots. I was amazed at their courage, using sites like Facebook which forces them to use their real name, or twitter which uses an account that can be easily tracked back to them. I thought that if there was a way they could use a site to communicate with a large audience, anonymously, they might be a bit safer.

Graffitly is my attempt at that site. It's my first ruby on rails app, and there is still a bunch left to do (and redo). While it doesn't offer true anonymity on the internet, it would make it much harder for someone to figure out who posted and sent a message. I've been very encouraged by the fact that the vast majority of messages are coming from outside the US. I'd really like to get some feedback from this community, especially about:

- Should I focus on improving the "anonymousness" of the site, by removing all the 3rd part features (like Disqus) that put a cookie on the users's computer - or move the site more towards a fmylife.com-type site where anonymity isn't really important, but spreading the word to a vast audience is?

- I'm not great at design, I know this, and would appreciate any helpful tips.
I was getting(IIRC) ext4_orphan_cleanup:deleting unreferenced inode XXXXXX messages, one after another after another, and always after a suspend. I waited a few minutes, which made me very nervous. No inputs would take actions besides MagicSysKey->Sync+Umount+Boot.
I had this like 4-5 Times.
http://www.graffitly.com
Without storing UUIDs (unique user ids) in cookies you're severely limited in gathering metrics for scaling up your business. For example:

- you cannot determine if the user that just made a sale today by coming directly to your website is the same user that saw your Google Ads 3 days ago and clicked on it. You have no idea if paying 1 USD per click is worthy since you can no longer track that 1-to-10 conversion rate for your $20 product.

- you cannot determine in A/B user testing if the increased metrics are for the users seeing the homepage layout for the first time or for the users that are at a returning visit.

- you cannot get visibility into your acquisition costs (except for users buying something or logging in on their first visit) which prevents you from increasing budget on good-performing marketing channels and killing the rest, which in turns prevents you from scaling your business (while your competitors have free reigns in doing so).
I appreciate your opinion :) I just thought that subjects like an elevator pitch came to short in typical presentation books / pages.
iPad Smart Cover video (uncut)
The current notification system in iOS is lacking to say the least. Only one notification is shown at a time so its not very useful—especially on the lock screen.

The unveiling of the iPad 2 along with Shawn Hickens wonderful redesign sparked our interest in the current system. I had some fun over the weekend and came up with a new look for when the Smart Cover is in place.
Regarding Intellectual Ventures's business model, ultimately, seeking to license patents out loses steam unless you eventually bring litigation against unwilling parties, which Intellectual Ventures did in December, when it filed three different patent infringement suits against a total of nine companies for infringing a total of 16 different patents.
I did, but I thought that many may ask "who are you, to tell me how to present?" that's why I put that line in.
So what you're basically saying is with a modern kernel, if you pull the plug on XFS or EXT3/EXT4, to the end user, they are equivalent?
We definitely could support other languages, Python is the first one we went for because of modules like NumPy and SciPy, which are a great fit for spreadsheets that do serious number-crunching.

If we were to support Ruby or JS, the one question would be what to do with the formula language. Right now we recognise a language that is kind of a superset of both "traditional" spreadsheet formula syntax and Python expressions. (We actually started with the BNF for the Python grammar and then extended it.) Once we've parsed formulae using that grammer, we compile down to Python and run it. Now, obviously we could compile down to Ruby or JavaScript equally well, but I suspect we'd need to use a more Rubyesque or JavaScript-like formula language too, which might be... interesting.

We currently can import values from Excel, but not formulae -- we've definitely got to improve that. Gdocs import is something we'll get sorted too.
The design of the site needs a revamp. Here it is: http://lolinator.com/lol/jobs.cheezburger.com/
> Rails does not (cannot) add indexes to your database.

Am I missing something in this sentence? You can add indexes in migrations.
Ask HN:PSD to HTML/CSS
Good Morning HN.

This is my second post on the site. My first post, I started to learn to code, and its going well. But now my question is, are psd to html/css services really worth it? or the money?
Coming from Germany, where these kinds of things have become law, I can say that this is intended against European website owners (both private and corporate). It's a money-making scheme that allows lawyers to send out what would accurately translate as "Admonishments", one step up from the US-style "Cease and Desist", allowing them to legally rip people off to the tune of 1000 € or more. It's already commonplace in Germany. To profit from this scheme, you just have to be a certified attorney, then you can send out as many of these costly and legally-binding letters as you want. No recourse, no appeal, no trial.
Is there any app or start-up which delegates work to my social connections? Like a Mechanical Turk for my social sphere. Would be a nice solution.
I have about 60% ready, but I just put up the content list for you to make suggestions if you think something's missing.

"Prove it with video rather than with text" - point taken, I can't come up with a stage that quickly though :)
ASK HN: Optimum App Price
On slashdot appeared a story about Joe Konrath who has the top #! spot for selling books on Amazon at $0.99.(url: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-post-by-john-locke.html). He earns $500,000 yearly.

I am wondering what the tipping point might be as far as iphone/android app prices? Is it $0.99? Has anyone done some A/B testing on such price points?
You mean, like little Bobby Tables? http://xkcd.com/327/
I was quoting the article, and it's disconcertingly vague summary of the sample group.
I'm pretty sure the point (which was not quite adeptly-made) is that calling Spacetime a "well-known game developer" is overselling the company by a bit.

I'd never heard of them before either. They're clearly doing a great job in the mobile space, but when I read "well-known game developer", I think of companies a few orders of magnitude larger than Spacetime.

For a company with wider brand recognition - whether it's Rovio (Angry Birds) or Blizzard or Harmonix (Rock Band) or whomever to do better on Android than iOS, that'd signal something a bit larger. Which is what I was expecting this article to be about.
You are right. That's a pretty glaring hole.
I'll be blown away if HP is actually the first company to put their mobile os on a full desktop computer. I always imagined I would love running something like Android on a desktop; easy to use for everyone, no worries about viruses or software updates, nice modern UI design...really, it's a wonder that these machines don't work like that already.

I can't believe I'm rooting for HP on this one, but I sure hope this works and I hope it kicks ass.
Additionally XFS was built for what (in 1994) were big files, in the order of megabytes upwards.
This is a very good point: are they useful?

I think it's fair to say that integration tests (make sure that the functionality works) are useful; period. Not knowing whether your app is going to work when you push it is not fun.

From a maintenance perspective and assuming that a problem will show up in integration testing or via a bug report, further testing is only really useful to the extent that it lets you debug a failure faster. However that acceleration is a tradeoff against the time taken to write the tests in the first place - ergo: is it really worth it?

I personally don't think the real win from tests is in saving debugging time. I have found it's in making it quicker to write code. I know that sounds crazy as most people view tests as overhead but I view them as development tools.

The key to them being useful though is writing them before you write the code. If you write them afterwards you will have already verified the code in an ad-hoc fashion and the tests are pure overhead. If you write them before they do the verification for you.

I'm coding in Rails and I've found the outside-in approach to development: write the six line Cucumber integration test and then write the RSpec expectations for the object; act as a verified to-do list and make my development far more efficient and robust.

I'm sure that other developers with better focus than I might not get the same benefit but I find it tremendously useful to immediately list down all of the edge cases and general behaviour that a piece of code should exhibit and then keep coding till growl glows green. I trade the time that I'd otherwise spend faffing around in a browser or a debugger for writing tests instead.

It's a bonus that all of those tests then ensure ongoing integrity, the real win is that tests stop me from wandering around the trail and keep me knocking things off in the order that they need to be done. [Caveat: it has taken me months and months to come up to speed on how to write tests well] (great article btw Bill)
Ask HN : Is there an HN for graphic designers (web but mostly print)?
I have a friend who would like to keep herself up-to-date but she doesn't know anything that could look like HN for graphic designers (mostly print). In fact, anything could go : a blog, a forum or whatever.
The Thank You Economy: Gary Vee's New Book
What if I am a presenter aswell? Would you say it might be useful to me too?
love the web interface, it's quite clean.

i didn't rtf-faq, but can you do things like import xls and google doc spreadsheets? that would be pretty cool to translate xls macros into python.

it would also be cool to have like a side by side comparison of say a common problem that's done in an xls spreadsheet versus this and how much easier it would be to use this.

nice work!
Ugh, there is nothing wrong with JavaScript, please let's all just forget that CoffeeScript even exists. Thank you.
Care to explain why a huge swath of corporate IT departments are still running XP and IE6 (or 7) then?
Lets just say ... it happened. I saw it too.
Thanks, that's great feedback. We kind of expect that our users will know how to do the spreadsheet basics, but I think you're right that the for loop should move out of the first tutorial, and maybe the function too. Best not to scare people off :-)
Behind the Project: Pic A Fight
I'm another developer on Dirigible. We already have module upload on our roadmap. We know what we need to do to implement is and all the hard work to prevent cross-sharing of modules between users is already done.

The API is secured with a key that is unique to each spreadsheet and it can be easily regenerated if necessary. Do you have other restrictions that would be interesting to you?
We charged money for a good or service

I know this one is controversial

How unfortunate that this should be the case.
Ah, but you can delete your Yammer data. You just can't do it in batch.

It's not a priority anywhere to implement batch features, even if it were the opposite---batch additions.
Interesting times we live in..
At any rate, whatever people might tell you about your lack of credentials, you've already set your pitching skills apart by putting this out here in front of everyone. It's surprising just how much of presentation skill is about taking one's own ideas seriously.

So congratulations on that!
Camera performance compared: iPad 2 vs iPhone 4
There is actual hacking involved.

Per the definition:
"Hacking (English verb to hack, singular noun a hack) refers to the re-configuring or re-programming of a system to function in ways not facilitated by the owner, administrator, or designer"

The owner (or in n out burger corporate) would like you to enjoy from a very limited menu. The article writer was attempting to circumvent that and use the underlying system in a different manner to produce other results.
About Student aid
Student aid is something which many high school students should consider when they lack the funds to go on to college. There are many varieties of student aid available and students will be benefited by knowing all these types in order to select the most suitable one.
MathOverflow is very successful and useful. Of course, there are so few mathematicians, even counting all graduate students, that being a huge success in that community doesn't mean it's very a big site.