skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That dynamic typing and Lisp-style macros are advantages is highly debatable. Most programmers I've worked with (some of whom are probably in the top 1% of coders in the world, these include the guys who developed PLT Scheme) would in fact consider both those features to be disadvantages.

Example counterarguments:

Static typing is far better than dynamic typing. There is nothing you can express in a dynamically typed language which you cannot express in a statically typed language, and most of those things can be expressed just as succinctly thanks to type inference. Further, to use your own words, static typing provides debugging "at compile time or link time, not at runtime."

Hygienic macros (i.e., macros which gracefully handle identifier collisions) provide all the same "language-building" features of Lisp-style macros without mysterious bugs caused by namespace clashes. Furthermore, the "customization" use case you point out is far better served by either higher-order modules (a.k.a. functors), which enforce provides-requires relationships at compile time; and by compile-time inlining of static code (also known as partial compilation), thus allowing the same language to be used for compile-time and run-time code.
The first person to buy a domain and get it in front of the founders = hired
The next 100 = annoying & stalker-ish

Some solid tidbits in there too though
He raised by my count over 4 million dollars back in the 80s (back when that was real money), and the company lasted 10 years. If that isn't getting a business "off the ground", I think your criteria is far too harsh!

But (if I understand the timeline) by the time he wrote that, the prior business had been dead and buried for 7 or 8 years. Reading between the lines, I think they attached themselves to a platform that looked good (symbolics) at the time, but which failed to capitalise on it's potential. Essentially they were in the accessories aftermarket... and if that market disappears you'll go down with it.
Title says "Morse code in javascript" in Morse code.
hackermom, I mean this with earnest sincerity - so please take it in that nature; In fifteen years of photography, photography classes, photography magazines, and photography books - I have never, ever, had anyone suggest that ƒ is synonymous with light transmission.

It is possible, that I, and every photographer, photography magazine, photography book, photography instructor, technical reference, manufacturer, and Wiki-Page, has been using the term incorrectly all this time - but could you stop for a second and possibly consider that perhaps you might be the one using it somewhat differently than everyone else?

At the very least - look at a camera, and note that when you set the "F-Stop" to, or read it to be, say, F/3.5, it does precisely the same thing to the camera if you are in a completely pitch-dark room or outside on a very sunny day.

That alone should suggest that F-Stop is not a measure of light, but instead of something else, and, perhaps also consider that it is, as I have suggested numerous times on this thread, the ratio of the focal length to aperture diameter.
The moderation on this whole thread has been incredibly entertaining to watch. I'm sort of surprised this joke post got beaten down and the sarcastic post got elevated.
Surprise our movie is on the Android Market
https://market.android.com/details?id=movie-fA1lMxxt8Qk&feature=search_result

Today's announcement suddenly makes anyone in the YouTube rentals program available on Android devices. If you are an indie producer you know what it's like trying to get your film in the iTunes store, this may turn out to be a big advantage for Android.
And faster doesn't always mean better or more desirable.
Whether he votes with his dollars or not is irrelevant to the fact that selectively presenting the truth to influence people is dishonest.
Only if you would have been a true stand-out application in the regular round. Definitely more slim.
I feel obligated to respond, since I was mentioned, though I'm not sure I have any great insight into the matter.

It's one of those situations in life in which where you end up makes sense only in retrospect, as all those steps led you to where you are. What would have happened if I didn't go the pre-med/medschool route? I'm not entirely sure. I was a computer science guy in college, so absent pursuing a medical career, I probably would have ended up as a programmer somewhere after college ('96). Maybe I would have gotten rich in the craziness or maybe I would have been a victim of the .com crash.

I do think that if I was in college in the past few years, the startup culture and iphone app opportunities would have infected me, and I probably would have had to make an earlier decision.

Though, if I hadn't gone down the path, I don't think MacRumors.com would exist, as there was a timing/luck element to it. Not that I think success is entirely dependent on luck but a matter of taking advantage of circumstances as they arrive. I got married and had kids during that med school diversion, so certainly have no regrets there.

As for parental pressure/expectations on kids, it's something I've thought about especially after becoming a parent. I think as a parent, in many ways, you try to right the wrongs, fulfill the desires, or fix the challenges when you grew up. For immigrant parents, financial stability is probably the #1 hurdle they had, so they want their kids to go to college, get a white color job. That's what they've been struggling with. As someone who grew up financially stable, and being well off now, my priority for my kids is more of a focus on happiness and doing what they want. But that's a luxury that you can afford once financial stability is a given.
Ask HN: How many of you built your app on top of a framework and which one
I'm just beginning to develop an idea I've had for a little while. There are lots of generic components to be implemented: MVC, authentication, secure REST API. It seems like it would be best to start with a framework but I can't seem to find one that has these components and yet still feels lightweight. Did you build your app on top of a framework? If so which one if not why not?
Not wrong, just backwards and ineffective. It's often when you stop caring that the object of your desire arrives at your door.
Build a business on Meego? Are you trolling?

People in these parts honestly believe Android is a hospitable business environment, but if your business involves selling things, you have to content yourself with a tiny fraction of iOS's revenue potential. That's why these guys aren't pivoting. Their business wouldn't have existed in 2011 without iOS.
So is this just for GAE4B or GAE? The post isn't really clear on this point.

If it's GAE...it's a pretty big bait and switch. I wonder what the average markup is going to be? 1000% 2000%?

sigh time to start looking for another platform and rewriting six months of work.

edit

considering the potential magnitude of this announcement, did anybody using GAE today get at least an email from Google? Or were we all just expected to keep abreast of random pricing fluctuations?
It's a learning tool, and so I would like it to teach that almost all lenses made of mortal glass are less sharp at either end of their aperture range; and that taking a picture of a landscape on a sunny day at f2.8 is a bad idea.
New - Custom Metrics for Amazon CloudWatch
The reason that Wordpress and Drupal took off like wildfire is that PHP is basically a lowest-common-denominator language. Many PHP developers couldn't handle Erlang. Perhaps there's a use-case for this, but I'd much rather see a compelling CMS written in server-side Javascript.
Changing the ISO at time of exposure actually increase the amplification at the sensor level. Changing the exposure in post processing just shifts bits around (the advantage of RAW is that, depending on the camera, it captures between 12-16 bits vs. 8bits for jpeg images and it's not compressed so shifting the bits around doesn't have quite as noticeable an effect).
[mike, if you're the author, you've got a grammatical/cut+paste mixup: "The first of this letter part"]
Because it makes no sense ... Programmers for dead/dying ususally languages cost more
I'd be curious to see a bit more detail on the physiological basis of this.

My reply to your remark was placed under the wrong comment (that's what I get for posting at some ungodly hour while suffering insomnia):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531927
"As an alternative to server-side sniffing, you can use the CFInstall.js script to detect GCF and prompt users to install the plug-in without restarting their browsers"

http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-gett...
This is a nice, but I think it's a step in the wrong direction.

It would be much better if Google had simply mandated that starting with, say, Android 3.1, all devices had to support USB OTG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go) without needing to be rooted.

What I'd really like to see is host mode being supported by Google from the get go. Sven Killig managed to get that running on his Nexus One to great effect. http://sven.killig.de/android/N1/2.2/usb_host/

Instead, we've running TCP, on top of ADB, running on top of USB.
Neovella: 100% crowdsourced book, the sales figures and aftermath
I'm going to agree with you about dynamic typing. I spend most of my time programming in dynamic languages, but I spend a lot of that time pretending I have static types. I waste a lot of CPU cycles making up for the safety difference between static and dynamic typing. Then I waste even more to be able to store "hello world" and 42 in the same variable, even though I never need to do this.

Fortunately, if I care about CPU time, I just use Haskell, which gives me the syntactic sugar and expressiveness of Lisp with the type safety of ... well ... Haskell.
Not too sure whether this is the right way to attract talents; most talents can have their pick of work and they don't need to beg a startup founder to hire them. Only those who are desperate enough need to resort to this kind of tricks.
I just don't think Skype is a 8.5 billion dollar feature, especially any MS implementation. It's not like Skype was a closed platform- they have an API and their policy is to let the market decide which UX will win. I'm sure MS could have built all the features they want without buying the company. Apple already used the video conference marketing gimmick anyway and it's not exciting anymore. Who uses Facetime? Video conferencing solutions are good enough.
hashes, ID3 tags, and distribution patterns?
I started working with Django about 6 months ago and have loved it. I had been a long time anti-framework guy, but can't say I have had any huge complaints with Django so far.

I particularly have enjoyed the ORM, although you need to be careful not to get carried away with it. Its easy to create slow queries with it and don't assume it will always get indexes correct.

I have also enjoyed the community around Django. I enjoy being able to search a particular problem and find that someone already has created a Django app to solve it. In my PHP days (RIP) this was possible, but usually ended up being a lot more ugly.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
(not that I follow that advice myself)

I've actually received quiet a few interviews through cold calls to start ups, probably because there is someone on the other side listening.
I really wish Google would set up all its presentations as one or more podcasts. I know it's unlikely, but one can dream.
Also not to pick a fight, especially since your post has a lot of merit if this were 2009, but point and shoots and bridge cameras have come a long way. You can essentially get all the benefits of an SLR in the higher end point and shoots for several hundred dollars less than even entry level SLR kits. There are a number of point and shoots with the same size sensors as entry level DSLRs, same instant on, equivalent lack of shutter lag, equivalent metering, etc. etc.

For most people, the upsell to the DSLR probably isn't worth it at this point.
Youtube down.
right, but it has everything do do with the profitability of honesty.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't they do what Amazon does and just redirect the user to Safari for purchasing books? I suppose that's a very small inconvenience compared to iBooks' direct purchase, but I find it worth the tradeoff to have my purchases available on more devices.
Is Node.js the new Python (2004)?
I'm curious about that too. What limitations does Android have that make pivoting hard to do? Why weren't they working on both an Android and iOS app, no to mention WebOS and WP7. It does seem there are a lot of options out there, so there must be a very good reason not to have utilized those platforms. Does iOS provide some APIs that make this type of online purchasing model so much easier than other platforms that it's not even worth investing in something else?
Graphene-Powered Optical Networks Could Lead to Exabit TX Speeds
5 innovative tech companies that got it wrong in the end
So what exactly do you propose?

That every developer simultaneously develops for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, WebOS, Blackberry, Meego?

Developers aren't so cavalier as you about suggesting that you port your code to multiple platforms because we do know how much time, effort and platform-specific knowledge it takes to build a decent app.

Many iPhone, Android, Windows Phone apps are written by single developers that can't take 6 months per platform to learn how to code for it.

For most of us making a bet on single platform is the only viable strategy.

Bad strategy? Maybe. The only one possible? Unfortunately.

You would be pissed off too if your business failed not because the owner of the platform you bet on built a better product than you (and with their money, teams of programmers, marketing and ability to advertise to users of that platform they do have a huge advantage) but because they just used their monopolistic control over their platform to set business terms that are unheard of on other similar platforms and kill your business without them needing to lift a competitive finger.

I'm sure you'll tell me that Apple has the right to screw everyone on their platform and if I don't like it, I should just use another platform.

And that's exactly what I'm hoping people will do once they realize that Apple not only has the power to screw their developers and their users but is actually screwing them, as this on-going saga of 30% monopoly tax on content sales shows.
Sure sounds like something a company that's still trying to make deals with record labels might say, but not necessarily do.
This "loophole" was closed by Apple during the last round if App Store approval rule changes back in December of last year. The Kindle app seemingly gets a pass, but a number of other applications have been rejected since then.
Go has generics, but only for the built-in chan, map, and slice types (and the associated operators). Since the majority of uses of generics (at least in my code) are from containers, this results in me not really feeling the lack too much. Interfaces and reflection cover most of the rest, though not ideally. After using Go for a while, I'm not yet sure if the lack of user-defined generics are a bug or a feature. It limits your expressive power a bit, yes, but it also makes the world so much simpler.
Definitely the future of HTML/CSS tools.
Are you saying that Android is not a hospitable business environment? I'm curious on your take because I'm working on an Android app.
Can you give some examples of pricing comparison? Currently GAE is ridiculously cheap for us, but we wouldn't mind paying a little bit a month to keep it up and running with a pay-for-usage in case it needs to scale.
This is an awesome tool. Thanks!
HyperLaw
Yea, I have considered "legacy" PR fundamentally flawed for a while now.
I would think the music industry isn't past seeding P2P networks with watermarked files and then suing Google to get a court order to scan people's collections en masse.
Online Art Boutique Shot
Graphical programming environment for Arduino, aimed at primary school students
We're all losers. Even the best programmers in the world have difficulty writing bug-free code.

Good point.

Whatever tools we can leverage to make us lose less should be welcomed with open arms.

That's true in the abstract. In reality, though, there are often tradeoffs that come with these safeguards.

http://paulgraham.com/power.html
This seems like a pretty big step to me: so far Go has seemed like a kind of geeky side project of Google's. But here they are promoting it into one of their production services.

Makes me wonder if they are preparing to slowly edge Java out the door and replace it with something equally performant but not burdened by a hostile owner.
There are two components to this company: an eBook reading app, and a bookstore. They clearly took much more pride in the app, and that's where they have true value. With the store they are just middlemen, and though perhaps they could add value by helping people find they books they'd most enjoy, they don't seem to be innovating there. In the end their eBooks are just Adobe DRM protected ePubs.

So monetizing the middlemen part won't work, but aren't there any number of ways to monetize the reading app part? I, for one, wouldn't mind a flow-based reader. I've bought eBooks from a few places now, but also hate the page-turning interface.

This comes across as a stunt to try to change the agency model for book selling. Good luck on that, though, because now you need to convince both Apple and all the publishers to give them 20% again. But why would they do that? Extra middlemen are not going to offer 20% of value in a digital distribution chain.
I Spent 42 Hours Last Month on the Activity Most Critical to My Success
They can't tell if your copy is legal or not, but if your copy of an album hashes to the same as the copy found via TPB, they'd consider it suspect.

I think there's enough variation in CD ripping software and various encoder profiles that different rips of the same album using different software is not bit-for-bit the same. That would also be trivially defeatable, so I'm not sure what it'd get Google to do that.
Heh, I guess with Nokia's pivot, I should have said WinMo7, but I had actually forgotten about its existence. The point was that there are other phones out there, with app stores that people (apparently) use. I can't imagine any environment (even Meego's) being less business friendly than Apple's, at this point.
This thing stores saved passwords in plain text. Like everything else in IT, it has security vulnerabilities which will need to be managed. This will bypass group policy restrictions preventing the use of plugins, downloading of files/web-fonts, etc and has no central management functionaltiy. Google is likely to enable it for accessing GMail, Google Enterprise Apps, etc - which means large companies and governments are not going to be happy about this at all. They may have just killed off quite a bit of their enterprise credibility here...
Amazon is too big to fail/be kicked out of the market.
I think Android users are just less likely to spend money on apps/content vs iOS users.
Ah, that stinks. That kind of inconsistency is very annoying. So you can't even have a link to your web based store (that's all that the kindle app really has now) in the application any more?
Google prepares for possible $500 million settlement with US DOJ
Lisp style is usually contrasted with C-style.

Not CL vs. Scheme.
PAYSTUB 1099-MISC & W2 MAKING SOFTWARE
There aren't many better ways to ID people who've downloaded music illegally than to have them upload copies of those music files to a central location where they can be easily analyzed. Hell, I'd love a chance to run stats on that dataset and I don't even have any skin in the game. Some things you could look for:

- Files with the names of known release crews hidden away in an ID3V1 comment somewhere;

- Files uploaded by multiple people with identical incorrect (misspelled arists/titles) or unique (rip logs, comments, ratings) metadata;

- Files with timestamps earlier than the title's official street date (assuming the dedicated upload client preserves those dates);

- Multiple uploads of files with bit-for-bit identical audio content that doesn't correspond exactly to any official digital release (like identical MP3 encodes of a non-perfect CD rip, or identical versions of anything sourced from vinyl or cassette -- like a lot of the stuff on boutigue MP3 blogs);

- Files with audio data identical to anything ever subject to an official takedown notice, or downloaded by the RIAA from BitTorrent, Usenet or a Megaupload-type file sharing site.

Any given release will only have been distributed in a handful of legitimate digital versions -- basically the CD release(s) and any licensed digital download services. Any file uploaded to an online music locker that doesn't match those legit sources will be suspect, and any of those files what are uploaded to Google in bit-for-bit identical versions by multiple people will be a huge red STOLEN flag.

I have very little illegally-downloaded music relative to the size of my entire collection, but I still wouldn't go anywhere near a service like this. The data extractable from the audio files people upload would significantly reduce the effort needed for the record companies to go after even small-time downloaders. That's never really been feasible before.
f2.8 at 200mm is a crazy expensive lens, fwiw.

i should update lensdb.
>> Kindle app seemingly gets a pass

Where can I read more about this?
What ground can't move at any time? Being completely independent of anybody else is mind-bendingly hard. I bet you aren't either. Very few are — most are just lucky enough not to have had their dependencies fail so catastrophically.
Can't you avoid this by just always buying content via Amazon.com and then downloading it to your device, and avoiding actually shopping on the device? That's what I do.
Initial cost should correlate negatively with independent developer participation.
Risk and trust are inherent in entrepreneurship. We all count on any number of providers to behave fairly, from technology service providers, to API services, to retailers, distributors, and other partners.

Sure, it's best to have many legs to stand on, but that is simply not the case for most early startups.
1 (408) 996-1010, ask for developer relations.
Confirmed: Qik will become part of Microsoft, too
By extra middlemen are you referring to anyone who sells something on an Apple platform which Apple also sells?
Look at this as an enterprise VOIP play. Skype + Exchange + Dynamics CRM + OCS/LYNC + SharePoint is a pretty strong platform. Plug that all into Windows Phone and you've got a strong corporate platform generally.
That is the longest assassination piece I've ever seen. The gist of it is probably true -- that the Ladders copies postings from other sites and does not verify whether all its jobs pay >$100K, despite advertising to the contrary. But that whole point could've been made, verbosely, in two paragraphs. This post is literally 8,000 words.
BMI: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance
This is awesome. But please left align the toolbar and right align the element being edited. Can't wait to see this progress.
We've got a nice post which outlines how to push Loggly data into Amazon if anyone is interested:

http://www.loggly.com/2011/05/send-custom-metrics-to-cloudwa....

There's also some simple code over on Github which provides a simple way to send metrics to your account:

https://github.com/loggly/loggly-watch/blob/master/cloudwatc...
Google seems to be playing catch-up on too many fronts lately. It's as if they feel they have to have their fingers in every pie just to stay competitive but then they roll out these lackluster, me-too implementations of their competitors' existing products. From the outside there doesn't seem to be a coherent strategy.