skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think its a good analogy. Oil and bandwidth are intrinsically very similar with regards to the risk / regulation dynamic in a commercial enterprise that builds private infrastructure to the masses. Oil companies had to make large investments and take huge risks to explore, drill for oil, build a distribution system, etc. Similarly, ATT, Comcast and Vodafone had to take risks to lay down the pipes for a robust communication infrastructure. Bandwidth is not as scarce as, say, Oil, but still at any given time there is a limited amount, and an incremental cost associated with building infrastructure for more.

The problem in both scenarios is that there is an inherent conflict of interest when these bets pay off. At the point where every single member of a society relies on a particular infrastructure to maintain quality of life, it suddenly becomes more important to make certain this infrastructure is available than for the company to make a large profit.

I thought this context was implicit in the article. I think what the author is saying is, because of this dynamic, we the consumers need to be aware and take measures to protect our own self-interest as this dynamic plays out once again (so ATT does not become the cash machine that Exxon is.. at our expense). The "oil addiction" analogy sort of dumbs this down, but that's cool with me because as a result the author is reaching a larger audience that more cerebral arguments could not touch.
First Prototype Developer Day: Monday September 29, 2008
Wow, what a negative attitude - at the risk of getting modded down to hell, I figured I'd address some of your points. Please understand that while this might be a confrontational retort, it is in no way meant to be a flame.

A hobby is something you can actually get better at. Watching TV is not a hobby.

Actually, a hobby is defined as "an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation", so TV can be a hobby for some people. Also, people can get "better" at watching TV, by putting in more hours, watching multiple channels at once, larger screens etc...

A hobby is something to which you give sustained effort.

I dont believe that to be true, for example - I have one tabletop wargame on average every week, I'm a member of a club and it would take up maybe 3 hours of my total week? On the grand scale of things, its not an effort at all, yet in all sense of the word, is a hobby.

And photography: everybody has a digital camera now. Get real.

So? It doesn't mean that just because something is popular doesn't make it a hobby? By that reasoning, I would suggest that sport of all major forms are not hobbies, which we all know not to be the case. For the record, I don't own a camera either.

Please understand that I'm not condemning anyone, but I think a lot of us are deluding ourselves.

I actually think you're essentially condemning a lot of people in this thread, people are sharing parts of themselves so that others can learn a little about them, what their interests are - its an exercise in social networking of some kind.

You've essentially called a lot of people liars, which is never cool.
then you should go ahead and learn Ada (whatever that is)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)

In brief Ada is a safety and reliability oriented language popular in aerospace and the military. It is the official (computer) language of the US army.
You're both missing something important. It's who decides on how to define "value" and in most cases, it's management, and it's almost invariably short-term value that wins out.

The reason?

Most organizations believe that software engineering is easy, and therefore software engineers are as interchangable as cogs. Most corporations don't understand or value experience.
Digging Beyond User Preferences
Unless you have substantial leverage to deal with the labels, they will charge you collectively around $12million to just stream songs (imeem). That's a pretty high barrier to entry - something I've been wrestling with for my own startup.

Truthfully, the labels will always remain dubious of emerging technologies because they realize their industry will inevitably shrink.
As many as you need. I am not a full time programmer, but in recent months I have gone from 2 desktops (one for audio/video and one linux desktop) and a work laptop to one personal macbook pro with an Ubuntu VM, Slicehost (Ubuntu) and EC2. Works fine for me, at least till I get gear acquisition syndrome again.
Sounds like my development environment. Dell Small Business makes this easy, too, because they almost always have great deals on 'slightly older' server hardware; I picked up a PowerEdge box about a year ago, with a three-year on-site warranty, for $600.

You know, if Dell had OpenBoot, I don't think I'd ever need to look at another platform again...
No, build for profit, and worst case is: you make a profit for a while, and then spend the next couple of decades treading water, slowly going broke.
YC Alum: Help Me Get a YC Interview for winter 09
I am currently filling out a YC application. I trust my in person skills way more then my written communications. I believe in the power of written communication, and I try to get better at it everyday, but they are still weak. If I can just get in the room...

So do any YC alum have suggestions on how to get an interview? Do you think certain language works better. Do they appreciate sparse descriptions? Anything would be helpfull.
Collection of "Where We Do, What We Do"
Lomborg on TED http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global... [video] 15 min.
1. Programming
2. Playing computer games
3. Bowling
4. Playing Piano
5. French!
6. Cycling
7. Travel
8. Exercise
9. Watching Movies - they have to be good though
But testing also reduces ugliness: The act of making code unit testable makes it less ugly, because unit testing requires access to a portion of the code in isolation, thus making the code more modular. Modular code is less ugly (or so I claim).

That's an intriguing idea about DSLs enabling customers to see the ugliness. But why would customers look? (A parallel is non-lawyer customers looking at legal documents for beauty) Does anyone have experience with DSL's for non-developer customers? eg: SQL is a DSL for business analysts - but they develop in it, not just look at it.

This form of testing is called production. :)
This article doesn't make any sense. Lomborg says that cap-and-trade returns 90 cents on the dollar, but investing in clean energy would return 11 dollars on the dollar. But the whole case for cap-and-trade is that it's the most economically efficient way to invest in clean energy.
KDE 4.1 is pretty awesome, but there's just some nagging lack of refinements that bug me at parts. I've been spoiled by apple, even though i don't that they're that amazing interface looks wise.
In the real google killer, the results search for you. (It will be much like Soviet Russia, in that regard.)
I think this paragraph was very interesting:

> All through my life, I've always used the programming language that blended best with the debugging system and operating system that I'm using. If I had a better debugger for language X, and if X went well with the operating system, I would be using that.

I love Lisp, I love Python. But are their debugging tools and OS integration as good as .NET development or Java development?
Hehehe, that's awesome.

Not very use friendly though.
DevCentral Daily - July 30th, 2008
Humanity Will Record Apocalypse with Cellphones
It's official. Hacker News == Reddit.
Which is why I said "when submitted". Unless I am missing a bunch of XKCD submissions which aren't getting front paged...
I think you can be a marginally better mousetrap if the ones that already exist aren't quite "good enough". If there's a need for a better one, and you fill that need, there might be success if you play your cards right.

In an arena without a need for a better mousetrap though you are going up against already established competition, because they are already "good enough". People rarely go looking for better when they have good enough. :)
I think the feature is fantastic more because it signals what is going to come. This could be the layman's version of a REST API! Just email to posterous and done! For posting pretty much anything.
There's been an internal war of sorts within MS for years about this. They have had a long history of patching their own libraries and their own SO to fix bugs in software like SimCity... yes, they put special-case custom code in their own software to fix bugs in other companies' software. It was all in the interest of backward compatibility.

It was also short-sighted; that's not a sustainable way to go forward, because every one of those custom patches increases the maintenance overhead of your code, and it's not already stellar quality code, you're going to be in trouble... and MS was the epitome of the sweatshop, so there's no way that they had much if any good code floating around there.

Lately however, the other side has been gaining ground, leading to things like dotNET. They've willingly sacrificed backward compatibility in so far limited ways, which is a start in the right direction, IMO.

Since this project is in MS Research, it has a shot, but I suspect that if it were part of the standard development process at MS, it would take 90+ years, based on the story of the guy that wrote the start menu for Vista...

I think you're right; no matter what they do with the brand, I agree about windows. I don't think that they have as much time as they'd like, especially if Apple decides to get aggressive and teams up with Dell or PowerNotebooks or Boxx and starts expanding its OS marketing to take on Vista directly...
That's what I was about to say...

Still the answer might be 3: one slice of a server, one desktop, one portable.
It's probably more about your achievements (and your founding team's - you have a team, right?) and the understanding you show than how exactly you communicate these.

PS: And please help me get an interview too :)
He's your standard Microsoft stack developer.

Microsoft has historically done a very poor job of virtualization, so Microsoft focused developers generally have a poor opinion of virtualization.
I've seen a few on the "New" page with 2 or 3 votes and no comments.

Besides, if they're only occasionally submitted, then isn't that a good quality filter?
alexis ohanian Co-Founder of reddit Completes Proust Questionnaire
Y Combinator Challenge #8 - Dating
I'm not sure who he's talking to in the music business but this idea has been floating around since at least 1998. It isn't as simple as inserting some tables into a database - building this service will require collaboration between tech companies and music labels, something that happens slowly and dysfunctionally.

If you've ever worked in this space, you'll realize that everyone involved on both sides is either a coked out psychopath who is just at the meeting because his boss made him or a "cool guy" hacker who doesn't really believe in the service, since he already has a multi terabyte server in his closet filled with all the music he's ever liked leeched from oink or waffles. Neither really have any "skin in the game." Thus, the likelihood of the technology getting finished or the legal getting cleared is zero.

From a consumer standpoint, the internet and all your friends already serve as a giant distributed, fault tolerant, quasi-illegal version of this service. If you downloaded a song and then you lose your ipod, you can either just get it again from a file sharing network, or from a mp3 blog, or your cousin's ipod.
Your mistake is using the x64 version.
Isn't this a fearful bunch of speculation? He forgets to take into account that the systems that we had would change themselves and the rules that govern our current system would change the world dramatically from what it is today.
Scaling Python for High-Load Web Sites
But are their debugging tools and OS integration as good as .NET development or Java development?

Most Lisp programmers don't dig themselves into the holes that the .NET and Java debuggers are good at getting you out of.

Also, if Emacs is your OS, CL integrates quite well.
Solving Tic-Tac-Toe: Game Tree Basics
<sarcasm>
Hello, my name is Robert Mugabe. I am the Leader of Zimbabwe. My treasury has excess funds that we cannot currently use in Zimbabwe due to political circumstances. I would like to see this money put to good use and you seem like a good person. If you send me $50,000 in good faith, I will mail you 100 billion dollars within a month.
</sarcasm>

Hey, it's a scam that's honest! Maybe ;-)
I don't think OS X is any more polished than anything else. It looks polished because Apple users constantly tell themselves that it is perfect. When you tell yourself something all the time, it's easy to believe it's a fact.

But anyway, I gave up the whole desktop thing a year or so ago. Xmonad is the way to go. No stupidity to get in the way of work.
Paul,

I read this post with interest. I'm working with a company that has a new payment system that you may be interested in. Their technology can turn any mobile phone into a secure point of sale. In addition, we've found that their backbone allows us to send any type of content to any cell phone without the need for an agreement with the carrier.

I'm also working with a couple of other companies that have some of the ideas you mentioned you are interested in.

If you are interested talking, please contact me at jim@iBuyTechPatents.com.

Best regards,

Jim Malmberg
How well are they integrated into KDE desktop overall?

Not well. It's sort of like using X11 apps on OS X. Alone, they look great. When inside OS X, they look terrible. Gnome is like that on KDE.
Unfortunately for us, Microsoft had way better luck with that.
Maybe you're just avant-garde ;)
Right, but no engineer has the breadth and depth to do all these things.

If my interest is in consumer internet applications learning about compiler-level and hardware-level bugs is probably not the best use of my time.

Do you think the first version of Google took all this into consideration? I'm pretty sure they used NFS for distributed storage!
Hm... I look at this as a history lesson. I jumped on Linux wagon fairly late, in 2006. Since then I had to install it on 4 laptops and 3 desktops, with minor hiccups related to wireless and video: nothing that Google couldn't solve.

And I never had to recompile the kernel. In fact, the only software I ever had to compile on Linux was mine (I did compile my own builds of a few apps, but only because I wanted to enable some "experimental" features not available in standard repositories).

An isomorphic Windows comic would be about computer virus eating your cat or a pop-ups window bumping your grandma in the forehead.
What You Expect from Clients is What You Will Get
Perl Myths (slides from OSCON 2008)
"The strong guarantees of a language like Haskell mitigates the risk and so ensures a less dramatic drop."

Haskell's strong typing may help prevent some bugs, but Haskell's evaluation model means that even a slight change (literally one character) can change the performance characteristics of your program, in space and time, by orders of magnitude. Because of that, I've found that Haskell programs require more testing than Python programs, to ensure there are no edge cases that have space leaks.

I am a fan of Haskell for some classes of programs (like compilers and inference systems) where you can spend a lot of time perfecting a strongly-typed data model that is fairly unchanging--one where "Big Design Up Front" makes sense. But, I cannot say that Haskell's strong typing is always a net plus when the data model needs to be frequently updated. In Haskell you often have to write extra code, or code that is more abstract in order to get programs to typecheck. Then, you still have to write almost the same kinds of unit tests that you would have to write if you were using any other language. With Python or Ruby you can skip the type system workarounds, which often means you have less code to deploy. I am a big believer that less code == better code.

Dealing with ugly code is part of being a good developer. I believe you should leave ugly code around until you need to change it. When you need to change it, you can rewrite it to make it more beautiful, but only if that beautification facilitates the improvement you were originally tasked with making. But, it is usually a bad idea to go around tidying up code for the sake of tidiness.

Also, think about this: if the original code is really unclear, then what confidence do you have that you understand it well enough to rewrite it correctly; if the code is clear enough to be easily rewritten, then why does it need to be changed?
I posted something similar on my blog.
http://freememory.org/2008/07/28/lovin-touchin-squeeeezin-ea...

Very cool idea. :)
What you're saying is that Python & Lisp debugging tools and OS integration are as good as .NET and Java. I agree.

The problem is that it's hard to convince other people of that, without forcing them to try it for a while.
I think the idea of bootstrapping a dating site by encouraging matchmakers to come to the site might be on to something.
How to Make New Things
Exactly.

I've been confused about why anyone, especially in the (relatively enlightened) programmer crowd, would want Microsoft to succeed at just about anything anymore.

Haven't they tried their darndest to prove they really are evil quite a few times already?

They've basically held back the development of the Internet for many years now, and were most likely planning some kind of world-wide DRM-enslavement with Vista.

If Vista doesn't add much compared to XP, why would you suppose it took such a long time to develop?

OOXML? -Bribing countries/companies to let it pass, anyone?
So I could play Rise of The Triad.
Safari, Opera, and Firefox have supported the canvas tag for over 2 years. IE simply does not. It's a shame.
I'm not missing that. That's the gist of my comment...
So... what's the point of KDE then? I don't think I've ever seen KDE ports of vim or emacs (only GTK), and FireFox is also GTK... Then there is Gimp, how can you do without it...

The only KDE app that is worth using compared to GTK counterparts that comes to mind is probably Amarok [and I still prefer Rythmobx].

Am I missing something here?
Rapleaf milks the data and the media for all they're worth
The Solar Billionaires: Who’s Made Mad Money off of Solar Power?
You need to get your commas under control.
If only this applied to being paid on time.
I don't think that its that easy to actually "legislate" more bandwidth. Bandwidth will be much scarcer in the future as most communication will go over IP. The reason technologies like IPTV are not wide-spread is because there is not enough bandwidth to scale such bandwidth hogging technologies. So the bandwidth issue is a bigger problem which cannot be solved with just legislation. You need legislation combined with infrastructure to expand bandwidth.
This is not a very good comparison.

Oil is a finite resource. You can increase infrastructure to get more but in the end there is no more than a finite amount of oil on the planet.

'Bandwidth' on the other hand is infrastructure dependent. Increase the number and width of pipes (or tubes! :) and you increase data throughput.
No, not liars, but sometimes inattentive to this aspect of their lives? Wishful thinking?

If it's just me, I'll be happy to be wrong. But the irony here is that my day job involves helping people schedule their leisure activity. I've seen research on what people actually do with their time and it's freaking dismal. After college people fall into a rut of work/sleep/TV.

People say things like "dinner parties" because that's the last thing they remember doing, but if you probe a bit further, this event is usually months in the past.

By "sustained effort" I wanted to distinguish a hobby from mere pass-times like television watching. I think 3 hrs/week is plenty. And tabletop wargaming is an activity that at least exercises the imagination, so I wasn't really talking about people like yourself.

It could be argued that the idea of having a hobby is some outmoded bourgeois affectation, an imitation of the Victorian idle rich. So, neither do I want to impose the necessity of having a hobby on anyone else. But I do feel the lack of one in my own life.
I spent fifteen years using electronic mail on the ARPANET and the Internet. Then, in January 1990, I stopped, because it was taking up too much of my time to sift through garbage.
I totally agree. I'm also at odds with the fact that he's made some strange assumptions here. The vast majority of Microsoft customers, enterprises, will have help desks and IT support to help out new Vista users. And why is this labeled "mac community"? The only people to...never mind, I'll just write a blog post:
http://iamnirav.com/2008/07/bad-science-in-the-mojave-experi...
Perhaps the author should not abandon his critique so early by opting to be a "manager" (as if that will be more fulfilling or unique!)

His mediocre job has a direct correlation to the business model, practices and market with in which the companies he is working for operate. The mentality that needs to be escaped is that of being just an employee. You need to start directing your mental energy towards refactoring the economy itself. Entirely new structures need to be developed, so get cracking.
I have a good friend who is a (budding) rock star [her band has 2 CDs out, and she just joined a Johnny Cash cover band as their June Carter Cash sing-alike). She is impressive. (Also, she is an undefeated [3-0 (albeit retired due to training injury)] professional boxer, playwright, director, and actor, Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy, and probably started at least one new project since I saw her last).
Response: Bad Science in the Mojave Experiment?
1. Travel & Photography

2. Astronomy (I have a small telescope)

3. Birdwatching
What would happen if you paid matchmakers a percentage of the advertising revenues so they could work full-time like head hunters?
Scrabulous highlights the failure of American Copyright Law
FLOSS Manuals - Free Manuals for free softwares
CurdBee Billing, now supports Multiple Currencies (and still free)
Agreed. UNIX is the IDE for Lisp and Python. It's very functional and very customizable, but the learning curve is kind of high. So high, in fact, that most people never realize it's an IDE.
Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback! I didn't personally write any of the text, but me and my partner will look it over and fix any mistakes (and make it easier to understand).
My first thought reading this, of course, was "they should have written the ATM controllers in Lisp".
Yes, but men greatly outnumber women in regard to those who actually write the code for these applications.

In fact, if you get right down to who's really in control of the site (e.g. the developers) you will find that there are literally no women at all.

They are always way too busy yapping to ever have time to learn programming.
You'll be able to find the details (or the publications which contain them) here: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com
emacs and vim are so different from "desktop apps" that you won't notice the difference.

For everything else, most people use the KDE version of whatever app they are looking for. I haven't used any applications other than emacs, urxvt, firefox, and amarok for years, so I can't really tell you what those are.

Edit: actually, I can tell you some things. There are themes that make Firefox look like a KDE app, and of course there is Konqueror (I tried 4.0 for a while, it was much nicer than FF2.) There is also a GIMP equivalent for KDE, but the name escapes me. My advice is to install a KDE 4.1 version of Kubuntu, and click stuff in the menus.
Except that nickb posted it, and doesn't he have like infinite karma by now anyway?
TechCrunch UK - So where are London’s existing, organic TechHubs?
Try this:

Linux - http://tips.webdesign10.com/good-css-editor-for-linux-ubuntu

Win/Mac - http://www.westciv.com/style_master/