skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey, this is my latest project. Hope you like it. A few details for the hackers:

Built on:

- Google appengine

- Pyhton

APIs used:

- Topsy api (http://corp.topsy.com/developers/api/)

- Spotify metadata api (http://developer.spotify.com/en/metadata-api/overview/)

- Last.fm api (http://www.last.fm/api)

- Amazon api (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/deta...)

First, I pull the top shared links on spotify from the Topsy api which is dead easy, then process each spotify link with the spotify metadata api to get artist/album.

Unfortunately, the metadata api from spotify doesn't give you the artwork so I head over to last.fm and amazon to see if I can get the artwork. Between last.fm and amazon I'm getting 90% of the album art which is nice.

Any Q's - hit me up on twitter: @tomcritchlow or ask a question below.
> Bill Buxton is multiplatform the way Leonardo da Vinci was multiplatform.

I'm not a native speaker, but isn't polymath a better word to explain interest and expertise in multiple fields?
No. They would need to support Federated XMPP for that. Federated XMPP is why I can chat to people who are logged in to Google Talk, even though I'm using my own XMPP server and am not using a Google account of any sort.
went to the website. got confused by the design. came back to yn to see what's other people like me are saying. they say the like it. going back to get second opinion...
Googlers Buy More Junk Food Than Microsofties (And Why Rapleaf Is Creepy)
Twitter Tech and Rehab
Sure it does: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/04/24/ipad.has.nativ...
I also crack my Kindle books, again not for piracy, but as an insurance policy against the sort of behaviour that people are worried that Amazon could indulge in.

I'm happy to play fair so long as they do...

That said, if I think a book is something I'm likely to want to keep long term, I still tend to buy the paper version. My Kindle is for convenience.
No link to buy on amazon tom, I'm disappointed ;)
Maybe I am just defending myself here, because I am also working on a generic application which is about helping businesspeople to access/maintain/query their data intuitively. (Like Excel just with a bit more constraints (with relational db. server backing))

Have you looked at QlikView? Sounds similar.
Traits Of Stellar Managers, Defined By Googlers
At least in the Ruby community (where most developers are on Macs), it seems to be due to TextMate's lack of progress.

A few years ago, it seemed like most Ruby developers were using TextMate, but as TextMate 2 got pushed farther and farther back (and started to look like vaporware and/or bloatware), they started to look around for something with the power of TextMate but with more extensibility.

Some IDEs and a few TextMate extensions started to pop up, but I think it was a timely post by Jamis Buck that inspired a lot of Ruby developers to make the switch to Vim, then PeepCode came out with some stuff, then it snowballed from there: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2008/10/10/coming-home-to-vim
I started using it maybe three years ago, and so did a friend of mine. The only reason was "we should probably check it out". I'm guessing the real reason was that there was a lot of buzz about it back than, and there still is.

(It's funny, half the time I do something original, everyone else is doing the same thing)
Indians cry out for Apple's attention
Caustic Soda Suppliers
We have the best prices in Sydney for Industrial Cleaning Products and Commercial Cleaning Products, if you want to save money and time buy bulk cleaning products from us.
Streamfile lets you share files by streaming them to your friends.
I use this service from time to time and it works well. The whole thing is written in Erlang.
My recipe/plan to succeed as a generalist is to fully master the most fundamental building blocks; things that do not change so often. Practice algorithms, implement a lexer, write a web server, a compiler, build a computer, an i/o board, your own network cables etc. Your universe of discourse grows exponentially and it'll be a lot easier to pick up the things that change at a more rapid pace, as you need them.
Nice! I might have to mashup a similar app for my friends.

I had a few friends who would follow me on @mbesto where I would push a link to a new song everyday. It became a bit troublesome to have to search for the song on youtube, crete a bit.ly link and then post to Twitter. I'm wondering if I can make the whole process a lot easier. User clicks, youtube video opens in pop-up, if they like it they purchase it via Amazon. Until Spotify makes it to the US, youtube is the only option.
It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer", the guy who understands how all parts of the system interact -- because without a holistic view, you're lost at sea when it comes to scalability, reliability, performance and security.

I'd also say that more projects fail because of problems with "soft skills" and project management than from anything else. When your marketing division has no idea at all of what can be produced at what time and how much it will cost, you're doomed.

At some shops I've seen, you'd think that the "software manager" is an endangered species. "Management" is selected by a caste system which excludes software people. I think there is a great need for specialists in software management, but many places won't hire them because they don't want to spend the $ and don't want to deal with an assertive software person.

In these lean times (the last 20 years), many companies aren't interested in hiring specialists but would rather hire junior people and take their chances. If you really do need a specialist, it often makes sense to bring in an outside consultant... If you've got some piece that fits in a box and will really stay inside that box.

As for developing your skills it's something you always ought to be doing. I think the HN crowd fetishizes learning exotic new languages -- that's fine, but that's not the way I prefer to do it. Lately I've found that my C#, PHP and Javascript are looking more and more like LISP. Lately I've read about algorithms used in genomics, parsing, and about description logics. On the other hand, I'm also learning salesmanship, getting a ham radio license, and mapping trails in the forests near me.

Part of developing new skils is reading books, getting certifications and stuff like that, but there's no substitute for "going where no man has gone before" and trying to build some of your own systems that push the state of the art... Do that, and pretty soon you'll find there aren't any books or papers about what you're working on.
Hello kls! I have posted a question about VBox here, but it applies to VMWare too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2353818?
You are mistaking idea with implementation.

RDP is, ultimately, a bitmap transfer protocol, with some goodies like compression and transfer of only the changed parts.

X11, on the other hand, provides both bitmap and raster transfer. It's up to the application to decide which parts of widgets are drawn pixel by pixel and which are drawn as shapes. With raster transfer, you can get the smallest possible footprint. Also, X11 is asynchronous in default configuration, so round-trip times is not the problem in general case.

As far as anecdotal evidence is valid, I've been using X11 version of Acme [1] over Ethernet for about two years. It was pretty much undistinguishable from running it locally -- virtually no latencies. Granted, the server was just a few switches (perhaps also a router) away, but that's the business case for X11 use.

As for USB, sound etc. transport -- not in X11 itself. But it's available in NX [2], which is X11 with some extensions.

I'm worried X11 protocol could become a `second-class citizen' in POSIX GUI stack. As soon as just one serious application starts depending on screen being on the same machine as the process, others will follow soon and we'll be screwed.

EDIT:
you may also want to have a look at DXPC [3] -- it works surprisingly well over medium-latency, low-bandwidth links like ADSL (with <50kbps upstream). NX is said to be built on top of that.

----

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor)

[2] http://www.nomachine.com/

[3] http://www.vigor.nu/dxpc/
Sometimes you have the Boil The Ocean
You can, but the client has to support it... if the client is built with GTK+, it can already do it thanks to support built in to the toolkit itself! Try it with gtk-demo. :-)
You might want to keep your eyes out for the Human Planet blueray release. Wikipedia says region 1 comes out on April 26th[1].

I've just finished watching all 8 parts; it was mindblowing throughout for it's stories and exquisitely shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Planet#DVD_and_Blu-ray_re...
btw, xlib != X11 protocol. Try xcb some time. :-)
So simple and yet so nice.
The best thing you can hear as an entrepreneur: you’ve got it all wrong
What is the other backup solution you mention?
What's interesting from the article is the internal Google survey revealed "Technical skill" was the absolute least important trait that Googlers sought in a manager.

This is not unlike the brief failed experiment years ago where Google tried to get rid of managers entirely and have teams report directly to engineers. The lesson from that was engineers are best left to do engineering and managers are best left to manage.
(Thanks, Dude. I really need to get back and hang with the H&F NYC crew again. Does the weather still suck?)

re: Continuous Fund raising.

It is a pretty radical idea, and I really like it. It takes a bit of the pressure off the "One big round" model, and moves the focus to "Always be pitching" mode, which I think is probably healthier, and more productive for startups.

The only caveat I've heard of is when the startup runs out of money and is struggling. At that point, not having a lead investor who is keeping tabs on the company and who is willing to go the extra mile to raise additional capital for the company is going to be detrimental.
Not very useful as only 50MB is too close to what one can send via Gmail. Anything larger than that I've been using http://www.streamfile.com (150MB, which beats all of you. And it was created by an HN'er before it sold, I think).

I just miss my drop.io.
The Sendoid app doesn't seem to be working behind a proxy. Is this going to change anytime soon?
I spend most of my time going full-speed and the list of things I'd like to learn continues to grow despite my best efforts to get through it. "I'll learn it when I need it" isn't a cop-out, it's a hard reality in an industry that generates useful skills faster than anyone can possibly acquire them.
Yeah, besides the apps listed there you can integrate Facebook chat with Digsby as well (on Windows)
Interesting (broken) results on the live view[1], PHP has a single vote in the main one but lots of entries in "other".

[1]: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewanalytics?formkey=dHhwMm...
>> there's no reason that the US should have enabled a bankrupt AIG to pay off their counter parties

Who exactly do you think you are? The Rothschilds have decided to transfer some money around their properties. Have they asked for your advice? No? Then keep your mouth shut, sheeple ;-)
LinkedIn Surpasses 100 Million Users
Revolutions are caused by human agency; not telecommunications technologies
DVDs are OK, but Blu-Ray players and discs are finally getting affordable, and they are a real improvement.

I'm particularly interested in Blu-Ray disks for data because I do projects today that involve burning 10-30 DVDs and my life would be easier with fewer disks.

Someday I'm going to replace my old PPC Mac Mini, and once choice I'd consider is a new Mac Mini -- it's in a wonderful form factor that fits right under my HDTV. Although I live in an average sized house, I'm very sensitive to the volume that my possessions take up, so it would be sweet to have a Blu-Ray player inside a Mac Mini, rather than having to find a spot to stash a bulky Blu-Ray player next to the game system and other paraphernalia that's around the TV.
Also we can integrate it in yahoo messenger too
Haven't yet looked at the link for "learning javascript with object graphs" but it already sounds interesting. Also, I fully concur with your statement about learning other languages too; javascript is kind of it's own animal and it will either be hard to wrap your head around it's idiosyncracies otherwise, or you'll just be -too- used to them when you finally do try to use something else.

An actual compiled, non-dynamic language would be a good thing to tackle next.

-Terribly- curious as to why you believe javascript is the best language to specialize in, though.
Everything I've seen, they're calling it "Appstore" one word.
The Google excel sheet I have shared is a formatted one, which also includes PHP in the charting. The original excel sheet is one which you see in the "live view". Will fix it when I get some time.
For backend work I run virtualbox minimized with a mapped drive on the host where I run my IDE, etc.

For front-end testing I run various windows virtual boxen windowed on the second monitor while my IDE is up on the main monitor. In this case my work files are local on the mac and shared to the Vbox for previewing on Windows (including IE6 sadly).
This is done just for the love! :)
Am I right in thinking this is a subscription takeaway services ?

So existing takeaways get to mass produce a particular dish and do delivery, presumably at a lower-than-normal price in exchange for the reliable revenue streams that a subscription model provides?
Um....what?

Though I guess it is interesting to see smart people give anecdotal evidence as to why this works when it does...hahaha.
Wise words spoken by the wise are wise.

Wise words spoken by the foolish are foolish.

It's wise to learn by doing things that interest you and picking up the required skills as you go. It may be wise to avoid wasting time learning things you haven't encountered a need for that are on somebody's list of "stuff you should know" since there's legitimate disagreement over what people should know, and you only have one lifetime. A potential problem is that you may not know what it is you're missing until you learn it. A lot of CS fundamentals are like that; I recently saw somebody invent association lists in C# because he didn't know what a hashtable was. Just in time learning is a useful idea, but dangerous. Use it, but not to the exclusion of all other methods of deciding what to learn, and be careful with it.
Really? I use gvim on Windows all the time. It looks fine - a little 'unixy', but that's practically a feature with Vim.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
I think this is going to be wildly successful. The one free premiere app each day is going to have people coming back frequently. Once they get some carrier/handset agreements to have the Appstore preloaded, this is going to blow up.

And I think it's the way it should be. Google needs to concentrate on the platform, let Amazon and their expertise in ecommerce handle this part.
I don't right now...

There are issues [1] with running VirtualBox mac under the 64bit kernel. Disabling VT-x helps for some people but that precludes you from running a 64bit client.

It's a reported issue [2] but in the meantime you can boot your shiny new i7 MBP into the 32bit kernel.

[1] http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39368
[2] http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/8474
Inspiring Artworks Created with the Brushes App
The Brushes app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad provides a unique environment for artists to create works of art by finger painting on touchscreen displays. The app achieved notoriety in 2009 when artist, Jorge Colombo, created a cover for the New Yorker magazine with the tip of his finger. Since then, artists all over the world have been using the Brushes App to create paintings of different styles and genres.
Small companies are inherently fragile though; new small companies even more so. By all means keep an eye on the future to watch for possibly tying your hands, but if that is what it takes to get you the customer base to survive, let alone build market share, RIGHT NOW then the sane business decision is to optimise for survival and do the short-term thing. Sort the long-term problem when you can and it's a real win, not because you might benefit later if you make it that far.

Steve Jobs had it right on this: artists ship.
It syncs, but punts on conflict resolution.
Becoming a specialist is also a bit of a risk and sacrifice on the part of an individual. The better you become at something, the more narrow your focus. The more narrow your focus, the fewer career options you have. I suspect that's why people will list like 8 different languages on their resume (that and you have to know like 3 or 4 to build a web site... still).

Nothing can take the place of simple enthusiasm and curiosity. If you're in tech because you like building systems, programming, security, or what have you -- chances are you work on your own projects at work or on your own time that help you learn. The idea is that you become good at what you do instead of becoming the most knowledgeable person about one specific thing.
Because current X implementation is completely screwed up.

Instead of rendering on server and sending only high-level messages like "here be buttons", X's rendering everything on client — even rasterizing fonts, then sending bitmaps over network. Obviously, volumes are huge so is latency. And there isn't even a slight hope of look-and-feel consistency, too (how client on remote machine is supposed to know your GTK theme?)

Wayland may seem weird, but it could be a step in a right direction. Just throw in network transparency at widget toolkit level.
Lots of opportunity for analysis too.

I would have liked to see the most common combos (eg: which percentage said "Vim + Ruby" or "Java + Eclipse" or even "Emacs + Eclipse").
It's back up now:

• Amazon Appstore is only available to customers located in the United States

So I guess you're right :(
Jobs4hunt.com now has a forum
Not really an analysis, but interesting nonetheless. Note that this only tells us about the uses of (some) HN members, and remember that the use of a particular IDE may make the user more vocal about the fact they use it.
Webtalk with Peldi, CEO & founder of Balsamiq, March 23rd.
would love to see people contributing here..
Thanks for the link to Randall Munroe's chart, that was very interesting.
this is comment no. 1 . if i add 10 to this then it be 11.
Misunderstood SEO Concepts
Search engine optimization is not a straight forward approach and oftentimes requires experience and knowledge in order to get it right. Over the years some key important optimization techniques have been seriously misunderstood and completely butchered.
Ask HN: Solve this A/B Test?
A/B testing

Group A (New Design)
Users have invited (email) atleast 1 person: 381
Users have invited (email) atleast 3 person: 302
Users have invited (email) atleast 10 person: 39
Total email sent (users have invited): 3753
Subscribers who were influenced by Group A users: 1417

Group B (Old Design)
Users have invited (email) atleast 1 person: 725
Users have invited (email) atleast 3 person: 515
Users have invited (email) atleast 10 person: 33
Total email sent (users have invited): 2592
Subscribers who were influenced by Group B users: 1369
Don’t Over Optimize Your Site
A (non-programmer) friend of mine has been bugging me to do this for years.

So, one anecdotal data point in favor of your idea :)

(and one example of a missed startup opportunity for me, but I really don't find the time between the 8 to 6 job and 20 hrs/week university)
There's a dropdown category called "Amazon App Store" for US users next to the search bar on amazon.com
Any suggestions to make it more interesting? Also, renaming it to RESULTS then :)
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1494999
You can say that it;s just a sample set from high focus group (like HN members, who are tech savvy, use multiple languages and tools)
I agree, nytimes.com has been insanely frantic. I can't figure out if they are rabid anti-nuclear or they simply hate Japan. I recently stopped looking at the site. But where does one go for well-written, in-depth news?
Tim has it exactly right. Searching some of the mainstream media sites in my area of the world -- Fairfax (smh.com.au) and Fox (news.com.au) -- shows up no results for 'tsunami' in their front page and world news section aside from badly informed reports about the nuclear reactors.

That's a really sad indictment of the state of our media organisations and where their focus lies.
I've noticed that some large retailers put out new releases on blue-ray and hold DVDs for later release (two or three weeks later). A local Walmart close to me does that. So If I don't own a blue-ray player and I want to buy a new release, I have to wait longer to get the DVD or purchase a blue-ray player.
I for one can't ever trust anything reported by any Western 'news' outlet again, from Fox News to NPR. What's surprised me the most is the very poor quality of the BBC reporting which is apparently worse than most American companies.
There should be a help tag, where all features should be explained to attract candidates.....
I suppose this is why more and more people that I know (in the US) are turning to Der Spiegel and Al Jazeera for their news.
10 years of HP acquisitions. Could SAP be next?
One of the things that annoys me slightly is that while our news is loaded with the nuclear accidents, I haven't heard any mainstream media talk about this refinery fire caused by earthquake which had been raging for 10 days, putting who knows how much pollution in the air.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/21/japan-refinery-idU...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/enciclopediapt/5523005370/
Before we derail too hard on this article, I would like to take a moment to point out that there's an article ranked higher about how Apple's suing Amazon over the term "App Store"... not like they've sued Microsoft over the term, too. (Also on HN somewhere.)

So, it's not just MS who sues -- but lest we forget, TC needs to be provocative and incite us to be persnickity. That's some high-quality bloggin'.
I would like to contribute here but I would like to know what are we discussing here? Any ways this is pretty cool, lot of views and suggestions can be put here. Awesome! I like it. AHA!! I think I should stop drinking aerated drinks.
Cheers!
The most efficient way for a platform to cache many types of state is in the process itself, local to where that state is required. Database connection pooling, for example, is more efficient implemented within a single multithreaded process, where the entirety of the pool is immediately available to all concurrent connections, and cache locality exists between the data looked up (and cached) and the connections using that data.

I have a hard time with the notion that web apps should be "stateless." It seems to be an argument borne out of limitations of the frameworks/platforms being used, and repudiated by the fact that such platforms do share state, but are forced to use less efficient external mechanisms (such as network requests to memcached, the local database, etc), rather than leveraging the advantages of data locality as available in a non-multiprocess system.

We've often taken advantage of sticky sessions to allow individual servers to maintain and share state across requests while ensuring that the state could be reconstructed by another server should it become necessary. It is simply more efficient to do so, and efficiency in implementation directly translates to dollars spent on operational costs, as well as effects on human observable response times.
I've reviewed all of this options and find them all creative and well thought out ,
Thank you -- deleted.
The typical thing is to run the X server locally and the client remotely. There are lots of reasons to do this such as the server possessing special hardware, license managers, fast disks with the data you care about, more memory, more cores.