skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Presumably, Cerf is talking about being able to use different cloud service providers as "parts" in assembling a larger whole.

Cerf's comments suggest an opportunity for someone to assemble a "meta cloud" cloud service which provides this type of interconnection and interoperability.

Such a service would have a limited lifespan, as eventually one of the major cloud operators would acquire it, or build the same functionality.
It's also a chiasm!
Unlikely, but let's just play with this...

For all we know, "they" engineered smallpox and are actually immune to it. It was sent to Earth as an engineered precursor to their arrival.
It's really difficult to make general statements about the wisdom of buying versus renting across an entire country with extremely diverse local real estate markets. We made an up-to-date heat map of US rent ratios here: http://hotpads.com/search/rent-ratio-heat-maps that demonstrates how some markets, even at the state level, are still tilted toward the buyer while others favor renters.
If the author changed the title to "Why C++ is vastly superior to C for application programming", than i would agree for the examples he given in the article.
No, I just see it taken for granted in most places that C++ was a mistake. The "general wisdom" is that C++ is too complicated for its own good and shouldn't be used for anything big (the C++ FQA is frequently cited). An article advocating the opposite position is nice.
Apart from "use the right tool for the job", I always did wonder how C programmers cope without the STL containers: std::vector, std::list, std::set, std::map etc.

Sometimes I need to map a string to a list of numbers. std::map<std::string, std::vector<int> >. Done. All memory allocation taken care of for you as well - nothing to leak. In C, how do you get by? You either have to reinvent a red-black tree each time you want that, or use some kind of type-unsafe macro horror, or just not use that data structure.

That seems to be a significant point of the article as well. Any C programmers care to enlighten me on this? Nowadays I couldn't code for long in C without thinking "screw this, I want a vector" and going back to C++.
Comments dead? What a load of crap.

Comments don't scale very well for popular sites, but a strong moderator presence is vital to creating a good commenting community.

The problem with this for sites like PBS is that the moderation alienates some users and feeds the confirmation bias of some people.

You have to decide for yourself what level of discussion you want and invest a proportional effort. The problem is that most people want good comment discussions without any effort, and that's not going to happen.
I think the point of the post is that, yes, often you are worse off than renting. There are extra costs and responsibilities that come with owning, plus the substantial financial risk in case your home does drop in value.

Check the NYT rent calculator (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...) and see what the situation is if it costs you 30 years rent to buy a place. If the value does not appreciate, you have to rent go up at a rate comparable to mortgage interest and property taxes to even have a chance of breaking even after 30 years.
What are some of these C++ features that interact in unpredictable ways? Just curious.
They turn down very few visas. They give out so few because there are so few applications.
This is how I use twitter!

Lists are very useful if you follow are large number of people. Create a few smaller lists of the things you really want to see or that are important.

I created a list for the services I use, I check it once a day to see who's tweeted about something new and improved.

I have another list for co-workers and friends and check that one as my default.
I've found that whenever someone argues "X is best", they've only worked in projects where "X" makes sense for them. At a start up a couple of years ago, we had an intern that was all hot and bothered over C++ and boost. After he expanded is horizons to web development and investigating scripting languages, he really enjoyed Ruby.

It depends on what you are working on, the libraries and tools available, and your comfort with what languages fit that paradigm.

I use C++ and Java on a regular basis now, but prefer C for systems programming, and Python for general web/scripting stuff.

Since we need to have a nit with C++ for this thread, can someone explain to me how debugging in C++ while using templates is superior?
I agree that owning a home limits your mobility and that is one reason why I put it off. In retrospect, I should have bought a home earlier, anyway. In fact, when I first moved to Denver, I started looking at homes and decided against it. After all, I didn't plan to live here forever. Only awhile. Next thing I knew, I had been here for five years and spent that whole time giving money to someone else.

The cities I listed as having lived in were actually three (I realize that I was unclear about California, where I worked in SF but actually lived in San Jose). I can break it down to under a year in one place and at least six years in each of the other two places. Even there, I actually could have probably found a way to not move, so it wouldn't even have been an issue. (I've had the same employer for almost fifteen years).

So, in my case, it was only a perceived need for mobility and unwillingness to say "I'm here, for a long time" that kept me from owning a home and it was probably not the best financial decision, looking back. I sacrificed a lot of income over the years for something I thought I needed, but never did.

It is definitely a bigger concern, now, than ever before. I absolutely concede that point. My grandfather built his home and lived there for more than fifty years. I will be happy if I keep my home for ten or fifteen. Our lives and careers change too often, now. Buying a home now requires the added consideration of whether you'll still be here in five or ten years and how many times (especially in technology) has taking a new job also required moving? (By the way, I think they say it tends to require about five years of ownership to compensate for the costs of buying and selling a house - and that was back when houses were increasing in prices, instead of decreasing).

Of course, if home prices reached a naturally lower point instead of being artificially kept up, then the affordability may trump all the other concerns. Hell, if I could own a nice home for $100k, I'd buy one in all three of my favorite cities and never have to worry about uncertainties of live and mobility again!
One data point, we just bought our house (Berkeley CA) in January for the exact same price the previous owners purchased it on 2003.

My sister closed 5 days ago on a house in a very desirable part of Mountain View CA. Through their process they had houses with up to 25 bids.

I'm seeing (anecdotally, in the SF Bay Area) a lot of people buying right now. These are generally savvy folks too, they're putting 20%+ down getting awesome fixed rates, and staying well within their means . We may still see a slight dip in prices but my feeling is that we've bottomed out a bit here and on the way up. We think we'll be able to sell our house in 5-10 years and make a profit. That may be wishful thinking, but I'm fairly confident in that position, especially as the tech sector heats up.

The tricky thing about the SF Bay Area however is its very resistent to outside pressures, it was one of the last places hit and will likely be on of the first to recover. Its very hard to time a bottom in the housing market here.
I agree. In my dreams, I keep grasping for the undo/revert command -- for life. I close in on my shot at redemption, then I wake up. The cycle turns.
Yes - it costs far too much in terms of mobility to own a home.

Only if you need mobility.
Sowing the Seeds - how we introduce "exotic" technologies to college students
http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&...

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643...
Is this an argument that would actually convince you, were you otherwise undecided? I don't consider the probability of that scenario happening (let alone succeeding) high enough to even blink at, I'm sure accidental / malicious release are far more probable, even if they're also not very likely. "Just in case" can be a valid reason to keep something, but the question is always "Just in case of what?" I think nagrom asks the right questions for this.

Edit: if you were being sarcastic, sorry, I'll go get an energy drink!
C++ gets a bad wrap from people who have never seriously used it. I'm glad to see someone slapping back. It's a fine language that is very useful and will be for decades to come.
http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html isn't strictly limited to answering that question, but it touches on it a lot.

I know I'm flinging links around a lot here, but, well, this is all well-covered ground.
Obama to open Alaska petroleum reserve to new drilling
Fair point, but in systems programming where C is used a lot, the 'system' often/usually has the abstract data types you need, or you're in a lower level enough environment that you want your own custom/hardware specific solution.

Crude example:
http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ/LinkedLists
The author of the OP also has a response to your second link:

http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html
They weren't taught with the correct method.
I thought everyone knew this, because it creates more and better jobs[1]!

[1] http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/I_did_it_for_you_all
> I am not sure all the C folks are as productive as they could've been if they switched to C++. Same people.

I'm pretty sure that C folks are much more productive using C than C++. Hating the tools you are using tends to lower productivity to a halt.
I think much language criticism miss the non-technical context which influences which language is the best tool for the job. We are good at providing technical arguments (Erlang is fun if you need concurrency, C is cool if you need to get close to the metal), but there are important non-technical issues.

Things like: How many people is on the team who have to work on the code? How big is the turnover among the developers? How experienced are they? How long is the code going to live? Will some people have to jump in and fix bugs in the code on short notice?

For example, I have noticed that I prefer a nice clean dynamic language like Python when I know I am only person on the project. But in cases where I had to work on and improve code of a dubious quality, I much prefer it to be in C#, since type analysis makes it a lot easier to figure things out and refactoring in a safer way.

To put it another way: I like to work with nice clean code in Python or Haskell, but when I have to work with bad code, I prefer to work with bad C# code.
Chalk up another dumb one here. Owning a home is the best thing I've ever done. I don't own it as an investment and it's value doesn't mean squat to me on a daily basis. It only matters when I want to refinance it to move to a lower interest rate and shorter term. Or when (if?) I eventually sell it in the LONG TERM.

Housing isn't a short term investment. If you need to be mobile, rent or surf couches. But when you are ready to settle down nothing beats having your own roof over your head and 20 years of fixed payments ahead of you.

The article must be comparing house vs. apartment rental prices to get their 30:1 ratio, even in Seattle. If you rent a house you're paying the mortgage for the owner + a bit more so there is no way you can rent a comparable home for that much less than buying.
On the other hand, servicing the interest on the mortgage can be more expensive than rent, and the amortization schedule is such that for the early part of the mortgage you are only paying interest, not paying down principal in any substantial amount. The money you save by renting can be invested elsewhere. But if you say in the house long enough, then yes it makes sense. It depends on what market you live in and how long you plan to be there.
They refer to the rent-ownership ratio and the maintenance work, but they also implicitly dismiss the longer-term argument for owning a house. They keep talking about the costs of home ownership with no talk of the benefits that can result from owning vs renting - painting a picture that home ownership is a really dumb thing to do.

To me, by not discussing the long-term benefits of home ownership they are looking at the issue all wrong. Their analysis is focused only on the short to medium term and the valuation of the house itself.

They are discussing homes in a similar way to how one would look at any investment - ignoring that a home should be considered differently because of the non-monetary values that come along with home ownership.

Of course, a home is an investment and it can provide capital gains, but there are other, not easily quantifiable, benefits to home ownership that make it attractive. To ignore these benefits is to miss the picture completely.
The comparison is never that simple. Even if you don't consider the simplicity of being able to pack up and move, or conveniences like garbage collection and maintenance staff (I haven't picked up a snow shovel in two years), you have to account for closing costs for buying and selling as well as the limited equity you will have after only 5 years. As little as 30% of early mortgage payments go towards principal, the rest is paid to interest.

My bank has a financial calculator "should I rent or buy" and if I plug in $1700/mo rent (+3%/yr), $350,000 home with 0% appreciation and %1.25 property tax, and leaving all defaults for closing costs on buying and selling, the calculator suggests I will actually save about $12,000 by renting.

A quick summary of the details suggests that mortgage payments will be lower than $1,700, but additional expenses make the average monthly expenditure closer to $2,100, but in the long run tax breaks will recover most of that. After 5 years without selling, considering only payments and tax breaks, you'll be ahead about $4,000 if you buy. BUT when you try to sell, and look at the big picture, it's actually going to cost you money, because you have to pay the remaining loan balance in addition to closing costs and related fees. You only get back $60,000 or so, which isn't even enough to recover the initial downpayment of $75,000 the renter never had to pay (and was able to invest in something else).

Obviously it's easy to tweak the numbers either way, but the point should be clear that the simple "renters have nothing to show for it" argument doesn't hold water.
The current software is bad, but you must realize that we don't want off-site "cloud" software for our office doors. What happens when your servers go down (or our internet goes down) and we ... what, send people home? Prop the doors open because our door unlocking service provider is down?

What we want is reliable software that we can own, run locally, integrate into our existing systems, and maintain in the event of failure.
If you rent a little townhome for $1700/month for just 5 years, that's over $100k gone with nothing tangible in return.

The basic idea is that you spend the same amount (X) every month, in scenario 1 (buying) you spend the whole X on a mortgage and hope to make things up in equity but lose some money in the form of interest.

In scenario 2 you rent (The same house/apt as scenario 1) but only spend Y and have X-Y = Z left over to re-invest in some other investment vehicle. The point of the article is that in some places (Manhattan) you can have the same standard of living but make a better investment because Z is so large.
Network Rail fined £3 million for Potters Bar crash
The firm, which took over the running of the rail network from Railtrack a few months after the crash, apologised after the hearing at St Albans Crown Court.
"A few of lines of C++ code would need hundreds, if not even thousands of lines of C code, but an experienced C programmer is used to that."

Yea right. This guy is full of it. This article is very biased...
about:blank

:)
My reason why C++ is vastly inferior to C:

It's just too goddamn easy to make a mess in C++ without noticing it. In C, if you make a mess, you will more likely notice it before it's unmanageable.
If you can't write your own linked lists or hash tables, you should not be programming in C. Glib is an abomination by people and for people that didn't understand C. Just like GNU is by people and for people that didn't understand UNIX.
This post boils down to "Take C, add support for OO, a crapload of new syntax, standard library that 10x as large and ta-da! you can find problems which have simpler solutions than in C."

There's a great post by Linus Torvalds about C vs. C++ in the kernel. Some excerpts:

"My point being, that C++ adds absolutely nothing interesting."

"C++ is a mess. There's no design. It's just "add crud on
top of C". And the crud isn't even meaningful, much less
does it have a design. It's totally and utterly random.

It started out random, now it's randomness that gets added
to by a committee."

Whole thing: http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&...
I think that it's not just an issue of region but also of price range. I am a life long renter and I've seen that rents tend to stay within a certain band - they only go so low or so high generally. So a small apartment might be still $1200 to rent vs. a mortgage of $1100 whereas for a high end home, rents might only get to say $5k or $6k vs. a mortgage of $12k on the same home. I rent a house for $4500 per month that would cost me a $7500 mortgage if I bought it.

Another issue is the fact that not everyone can buy a house that they're going to realistically want to live in for 30 years. Your family grows, you change cities due to job opportunities, etc.

So for the guy who knows he's going to be single and stay put, it may make sense for him to buy a $200k house instead of paying $1200 in rent for an apartment. But for many others, buying makes absolutely no sense.
Aside from obvious type safety arguments, you want to combine a 'long long' and a 'char' into a union, and for example have a byte matrix occupy 8GB of RAM instead of just 1GB?

If I were to defend C, I'd rather choose macros combined with plain typeless buffers. The choice between C and C++ in such cases is really a choice between the nightmare of wrong memory operations and total type unsafety on the one hand (C), and the nightmare of ineffective, bloated code on the other (C++). I believe the latter can be taken under control though.
Its Object oriented features !
ugh. you're using c? that's just an abomination for people that don't understand assembler.
I have an old friend I follow on twitter who tweets way to much garbage and I want to unfollow her, but I know for a fact she uses an unfollow tracker, and I KNOW it'll spite her. I wish there was a way to mute people right in Twitter.
I'd probably just rent my house out. Over the years I've purchased enough of the principle (by overpaying on the mortgage, the difference buys down the principle) that my monthly payment is about the same as the rental rate for a home this size in my area. Even if I lose a little bit every month, I'm just buying more of my own place with somebody else's money.

Something the parent mismentioned is not that he'll be paying $1000/mo 5 years from now while rental rates will simply go up, but you can actually reduce that rate now and free up more of your income for later. It's actually the sole reason I've been able to fund my co-founder to work on our startup full-time while I work a regular boring old day job, I've paid down so much of the principle the past few years that, along with pay raises from my day job, I have enough cash on hand to float another person for the foreseeable future.
The author of the OP has a pretty well written rebuttal to everything Torvalds has said about C++:

http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html
I learned Emacs last year from the O'Reilly book, "Learning GNU Emacs" - http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Emacs-Third-Debra-Cameron/dp/...

It's an excellent reference and introduction. I also blindly followed Steve Yegge's advice here too, which turned out to be great: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs
Five years ago, I thought about buying a home, and everyone around me was saying "You HAVE to buy a home. Don't THROW AWAY YOUR MONEY by renting. Houses NEVER lose value."

While it's obvious that this flawed logic existed five years ago before the bubble burst, I'm surprised at how much of it still remains. I'm surprised that consumers are still trying to play numbers games to justify purchasing homes, but perhaps as the OP suggests, the supply of buyers is less than before. If you want to buy a home for lifestyle reasons, great, but make sure that's clear; there are so many people who are stuck in their homes without a job because they thought they were clever at math.

When my wife and I were figuring out what to do with our lives, we decided to put my finding a good job above owning a home. Because of this, I was able to accept a job in NYC and move from the suburbs of Atlanta without worrying about selling a home in a horrible real estate market.

We'll consider buying a home after I feel more rooted in the tech industry, but for now, we appreciate the flexibility that renting affords.