skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Too bad this language argument is covering a more interesting point made by one of the two critical articles linked ( http://www.drama20show.com/2008/09/02/chrome-hype-when-non-t... ):

Lots of incremental revenue to Google?

Like Google Docs, which Arrington last year wrote was “tearing the Office wall down”?

Or Google Checkout, which Arrington called “Google’s roundhouse punch to PayPal”?

The fact that Google gets 97% of their revenue from advertisement really puts the impact of all their releases back into perspective. Their browser is a welcome improvement on the browser market, but this might not be such a game-changing event.

And to put my comment into perspective now, I'm not better qualified than all these people blogging about Chrome and Google web applications in general; just noticing that desktop (compiled) software still sells. I would be very interested to see a global comparison between the revenues brought by the sale of software as (web) services and the sale of desktop software. I have a feeling Microsoft Office alone might bring more money than all web companies, though I would be glad to be proved wrong by actual facts :)
craigslist has many startup jobs listed.
To paraphrase Dan Savage - how many monogamous relationships "work"?
Python and Ruby are just a bit more difficult for fast VM implementors because every Object is like a little dictionary. The ordering of the instance values in each Object's collection is dependent on runtime events. In languages where the instance variables are declared ahead of time, the VM implementor can just access each instance variable as an offset of the Object pointer. (Which is what happens in many Smalltalk and Java VMs.)

This is certainly not impossible to overcome. It's just an added difficulty.
It's not that you can't build it, it's not that it's not Open Source, but it's still PR, here's why.

I'll use the comparison of Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise, or openSuse and Suse. These are truly open source.
If you are going to base your proprietary technology on an Open Source project, please build the Open Source version and distribute it if you are building the Proprietary one, otherwise, you don't want people to actually use the Open Source version, it just means you have a good PR consultant and you don't mind "free help".

I bet you $100 they got the idea from a focus group, and Google Chrome has things that Chromium doesn't.
interesting thread of thought.

I particularly like the proposal for tree like structure for history.

>> Opening and closing of tabs should be seamless to the user - new ones opening up when required and older ones just fading away.
This kind of reminds me of how apple folder view - Cover view functions. I love it esp to view images.
Perhaps most people reading HN would be able to recognize a good programmer. But there are still challenges when you need to hire someone with area of expertise that is outside of your own - if you're hiring someone to do your own job or your clone, it's straightforward.

For the last two start-ups in which I was involved (as a graphic designer), a co-worker and I were placed in the position of choosing developers to build our application. We were the most technologically savvy people on our start-up team of businessmen, attorney's, accountants, etc. (in many ways those startups followed the inverted timeline of most startups).

At first the only questions we could ask the applicants were... what languages do you know? what projects have you worked on? how would you solve this problem?... as if their answers would inspire some confidence regarding their abilities as a programmer - their answers inspired nothing because WE knew nothing. What I'm saying is that if you are going to hire people, you have to educate yourself to a conversational level+ in their area of expertise.

Nowadays my said co-worker and I both know RoR and are building our own startup apart from that original group. And when we decided to hire another developer we were in a MUCH better position not only to recognize a strong programmer but to leverage our own abilities.

Be wary of his point regarding PASSION. We met with some programmers who were passionate, but were obviously charlatans.
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For more info on the background of V8 -

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=293869
If its all about personal relationships (and I agree it is), maybe this dynamic is missing speed-dating and eHarmony types of services?
Technically, your example has nothing to do with the operating system itself, and is just the desktop environment. I know, I'm being pedantic, but I have a real point to make.

All nontrivial systems programs converge on an operating system. By which I mean the kernel, not the desktop environment. Google's Chrome is, I think, the closest a browser has gotten to being an OS kernel. This is an interesting development because if browsers have to replicate much of the same behavior as an OS kernel, then functionality can move from the actual OS kernel up into the browser. OS kernels may then become leaner as more applications are run inside the browser instead of natively on the OS kernel.

Which is close to a micro-kernel architecture, except in a form I don't think anyone anticipated 10 years ago.

Where the desktop environment lies may change, too. Will browsers start co-opting that as well, or is it still best to run that directly on top of the OS kernel? I think so, but I'm going on intuition, not experiment or practice.
> to me there's only one problem for Chrome, that I haven't figured out how Google is going to solve: distribution

A link on www.google.com might reach a few people.
The list of qualities here would indicate a good person in any profession, not just programming. I think these challenges only exist because we (as a society) have learned to accept schooling as the indicator of qualification.
I have found this to be creeping up on me as well. I think that particular work environments make it more likely to become a habit.

To combat it, I try to find time to squeeze in little unorthodox projects with my work, as long as they can be justified as valuable. Of course, I think my sanity and skills are probably valuable to the company too.
Nice.
The simplicity is OK, I never use the menu bar anyway.
Still, I love my FireBug, the EULA sucks and there's noticeable difference with Firefox on my machine, honestly.
Back to Firefox.
A Boost For Bayes: Cross-validation And Bootstrapping Worthless For Small Sample Data
Actually, I know some people who have tried to do that here in London. Seedcamp even labelled their event "speed dating for entrepreneurs"... That's a huge flop with most technical people, though, as they are allergic to the commercialism of it (and too cynical about it to turn up).
Nice.
The simplicity is OK, I never use the menu bar anyway.
Still, I love my FireBug, the EULA sucks and there's no noticeable speed difference with Firefox on my machine, honestly.
Back to Firefox.
Hia,

I wrote this article a long time ago, long before the whole hyperbrain thing. It was actually published here, although with "www" in the URL, which explains why it can be reposted :-/

This was actually the article via which I found HackerNews, since HN showed up as a large referrer in my logs so I came here to investigate and, finding it to my taste, stayed.

And to answer your question, no, I don't think these characteristics are in any way related to hyperbrains.

(initial post of this article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97121 )
Why shouldn't any developer be able to make almost any app, then make money on it?

If this app made 30k, build a truly great app and retire.
So you are saying, work hard at getting good press?
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(1) Picasa data is almost a best case for face recognition. The "population" for a given user is fairly small (is a new person or one of the 1-20 people who you always take pictures of) and the images tend to be good (well lit, lots of pixels, face-on, complete).

(2) Errors will be amusing. Folks have been saying how Aunt Emma looks like cousin Fred for years, now we have a computer confusing them.
Do those clauses hold any legal water?
And when it comes to someone's credit card numbers or say your Business Plans, or blueprints, does it still hold?

Any lawyers here?
yourfavoritestartup.com/jobs
TheSUBWAY on URRE - Uranium Resources Inc. - SocialPicks
Unfortunately, there are programmers that you could recognize using these criteria who produce highly idiosyncratic code that's nearly impossible for someone else to maintain for the months it takes for them to come up to speed. There are also programmers who would be recognized by this criteria who are just as insightful and productive who produce beautiful intention revealing code.

How would we recognize the latter group?
So true. Like seeing beyond the obvious.
In the comments, John says:

"It sounds like you're using the "regular" Dromaeo tests (which only test a subset of the SunSpider tests). The second version that I linked to includes a number of DOM and JavaScript library tests - which drastically normalize the field."

( http://v2.dromaeo.com/ )
The trouble is not bringing the zip tie -- that's easy to hide and hard to detect. The trouble is onboarding a tool to remove the zip tie, discretely, at the end of the flight. Otherwise, it may be fairly easy to determine who tampered with the customer experience -- and airlines do not appreciate the competition.
Or, they simply look over their seat, notice what you've done, and escalate the situation.

You're usually better off talking to the person before engaging in technical fixes.
Apparently there's a secret v2 test, did you use that?
http://v2.dromaeo.com/

He also says he used Safari without Squirrelfish in these tests, due to compilation issues on Windows.
Firefox Fights Back. To launch a browser faster than Chrome.
When competitors fight consumers win.
No, that's not relevant. He created the type of product that is interesting enough to be mentioned in the 'wierd' section of a big magazine. He did not work for the press, he did not do any clever marketing, it was his product that was clever. He could just as well have never gotten mentioned, and his product would have made a hundred a month or so from the few people who like the quirky idea.

What he did right was create a simple and fun product. There is hardly any lesson to be learnt from the guys experience, apart from the obvious lesson that more eyeballs brings more sales, and that people will willingly pay for iphone apps.
You are right. The article doesn't make any sense.The article author is trying to imply that ,as Google Chrome comes with Gears,Gears could get more popular than AIR one day and thus be a treat to Adobe. I disagree with the author completely.

Unlike Gears,Adobe AIR doesn't require a browser to exists. Adobe AIR can do everything Gears can do and more. Air is not just about building offline/online apps ("occasionaly connected apps") . Air is about building desktop apps. You can build apps that never connects to the internet in AIR.

Google gears is not a runtime. It requires a browser to survive. AIR is a runtime own its own (almost like Java runtime, if you need anything to compare to). Air apps can be built just using html/javascript. Flash is not required. If you want, you can use flash too .

AIR allows traditional web developers to migrate to desktop development without learning C or Java or VB or whatever. In short AIR allows web developers to build complete desktop apps like Winamp,iCal,Paint etc.that doesnt require a browser/internet connection to exist.

In short, comparing Adobe AIR and Google gears (and hence Google chrome's threat to AIR's existence) doesn't make any sense at all.
Why not just join a rails irc channel and ask there? People are usually friendly and will help you free of charge.
I believe when people call the Browser the new Operating System, and the web a Platform, it's all about perception.

"Operating System" means something totally different to a lay person than it does to a Computer Scientist. Business will normally follow the lay person's perception if it helps marketing campaigns.

Here's what I believe, since business drives I.T., eventually the scientists may have to change their definition of the Operating System to agree with the perception of the public.
Alternatively, the phase may be given different meanings with one being it's technical definition.
Polymorphism :)

It should be acceptable to have the phrase bare both meanings, this is how language evolves, and develops.
Should software developers fear Facebook, Apple?
Some good points, but the reality is that flash is still the most painless RIA platform, due to a mature IDE, the complete lack of cross-browser issues to deal with, and cross-platform market penetration greater than any single browser.

Chrome benefits flash as much as js/ajax, as well. In my tests, flash executes faster in chrome than firefox. And flash can take advantage of the possibility of a larger installed based of gears as well.

It's sort of a win/win for everyone.
Perhaps the YouOS folks were a couple years too early?
The best way to get a startup job is to network into it. If you're in SF, this is very easy - just go to all the web2.0 parties/meetups and you'll meet people hiring in no time.
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I don't think it's necessarily a "sad reflection" of the AppStore, it's just what happens when a brand new (and hot) marketplace opens. Some people make a killing for little reason or effort whatsoever.

As time goes on the marketplace will evolve, and an application like that would never be able to be priced at $2.99 or get the kind of attention that it did in the very early days. Apple could have potentially prevented this with a little more visibility and/or less heavy-handed control over Apps going public, but probably not by much.

It'll probably happen with the Android store, too, but now that people haven't learned it won't be quite so dramatic.
Is Y Combinator the University of Internet Startups?
most navigation and simple animation can be done in javascript+canvas now, so as soon as there's an open, reliable, bandwidth-efficient, cross-platform video solution that browsers can support, i think flash will go the way of java applets. the iphone will probably help push this along as there's now a large group of people (besides me on my openbsd laptop) that can't navigate websites that require flash.
"Craigslist Furnished My Office"

Hilarious. Surely there's some startup furniture that comes pre-soaked with all the tears and sadness of the previous owner.
Is this the same strategy used in Ikarus Scheme?

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~aghuloum/ikarus/#about

I don't see any comparisons to existing interpreter/compiler implementations in the V8 docs.

(edit: Oh. Strongtalk. So is that "incremental optimizing compilation" as well?)
Hi, thanks for answering. I relate this to hyperbrains because it talks about programmers that: a) are intelligent, b) work in a lot of different projects, possibly unrelated, that are usually hidden, c) are passionate, and self-taught. Maybe not(hyperbrains<->your good programmers), but I'm sure a stable hyperbrain programmer would have all characteristics on your list.

Anyway, I don't like the hyperbrain word (sounds too powerful, as if being better than the other brains and I don't like it), though I really like your articles on the subject btw.
Chrome's EULA ridiculous - grants Google license to all the content you submit
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I think the way to go for a most startups, save the likes of Amazon and Ebay, is a small quiet and private launch during which their product can be refined and tested.

It's easier to handle feedback from small number of, mostly, tech savvy users than from tens of thousands of, mostly, non-tech savvy users. And the feedback would be of greater quality.

Launch PR can always be done afterward, say when the site moved from private Beta, when the product is worth hyping up, by then the tech savvy won't give too much criticism.
We already see TraceMonkey (under development for about 2 months) performing better than V8 (under development for about 2 years).

Zinger.

On the other hand, it's impressive that people at Google saw JS VM's coming two years ago and already shipped it with Chrome, while Mozilla still has it as an about:config use-at-your-own-risk feature in an unreleased version of FF ;)

But I like that people are taking this personally :) browser wars rock on!
If Kernighan were a network architect he would say...
"We met with some programmers who were passionate, but were obviously charlatans."

And how did you tell the difference? (when it wasn't obvious... or was it always obvious?)
I'm tired with people putting elite programmers on pedestals. I used to almost worship this one code guru at my company but I eventually moved on to just working on myself, taking up avocations outside of programming. I'm fortunate to be able to code/problem solve for a profession.
Also, from times of yore:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192977
Freud was once asked what he though a normal person should be able to do well. The questioner probably expected a complicated, a "deep" answer. But Freud simply said, "Lieben und arbeiten" ("to love and to work"). It pays to ponder on this simple formula; it gets deeper as you think about it. For when Freud said "love", he meant the expansiveness of generosity as well as sexual love; when he said "love and work," he meant a general work productiveness which would not preoccupy the individual to the extent that his right or capacity to be a sexual or loving being would be lost.

(From "Identity and the Life Cycle", by Erik H. Erikson)

Yes, this is a repost of a comment but it is relevant. Work can cut into life and life can cut into work...
I'm sure a stable hyperbrain programmer would have all characteristics on your list.

That's quite possible, actually. Someone with a hyperbrain who also happens to be a programmer will probably fit most of these criteria - but then, I would say that this is more an indication of hyperbrains being well adapted to programming than of good programmers being hyperbrains.

Anyway, I don't like the hyperbrain word (sounds too powerful, as if being better than the other brains and I don't like it), though I really like your articles on the subject btw.

Thanks. I came up with "hyperbrain" because I felt I had to call it something for it to stick out. Hyperbrain seems like a reasonable term because: a) it's not in use, b) it transmits the idea that this kind of person is "hyper", in the sense of being more extreme in their behaviour. Certainly it's not perfect, but oh well. If it sticks around, it'll stick around, if not, it won't ;-)
I like the one about distributing the team across different time zones, definitely one to be xeroxed.
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V8 implements ECMAScript as specified in ECMA-262, 3rd edition, and runs on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and Linux systems that use IA-32 or ARM processors.
Wow: V8 is built by people who worked on the legendary Strongtalk VM. That's huge.

Edit: the linked-to comments by Dave Griswold, originator of Strongtalk, are worth reading. "The release of the V8 VM is the beginning of a whole new era for
dynamic languages":

http://groups.google.com/group/strongtalk-general/browse_thr...

This is exciting. One interesting loop is that Strongtalk was heavily influenced by Self... as of course was Javascript.

http://www.strongtalk.org/history.html
I didn't complain :-)
On the other hand, someone said: "You can't be normal and expect abnormal results".
The official line right now is that the legal team at Google is aware of the situation and is taking a look.

Yay legal!
But IE won't support HTML 5 any time soon.
That's why it's open-source, BSD license. They're speeding up the arms race for fast JavaScript implementations in other browsers; with the BSD license Microsoft could even conceivably just silently swap V8 for JScript in IE8/9 (hey, it's been done). Offline support is making its way into standards, and the more existing browsers have already implemented a feature, the easier it is to write that feature into the standard.

Since Firefox, WebKit, Opera and W3C seem interested enough in taking down Flash, there's no single distribution channel Adobe can even take on directly.
I'd actually say its easier to run 64-bit Vista than Linux due to the fact that people often ship binaries for Windows that seem to work whereas the SOs in Linux leave you with a mixed-mode install. Sigh.
Google Owns Your Copyrighted Material When You Sumbit Using Chrome | SlashBe
My greatest surprise in all this is that people actually read EULAs.
Chrome is neither a browser nor meant for the pc
Objects in JavaScript are also dictionaries.. hence the use of "object literals" for dictionaries. The hidden class system in v8 is the technique which allows offsets to be used instead of having to do dict lookups all the time.
Once, I found a chair for sale that had been imbued with the cursed soul of a failed serial entrepreneur. It had a +2 bonus to wisdom and the ability to cast 'detect swindlers' twice a day.
You're reading it wrong. He used 10 requests to illustrate that they would be handled in parallel (vs sequentially as in stock rails). His actual benchmarks show many thousands of requests being processed.

* This was originally in response to a comment asking if the benchmark only consisted of 10 requests.
Thanks noodle! I run nPost (http://www.npost.com) and definitely appreciate the good feedback.

There are lots of job boards out there, but only a few that are solely focused on the tech startup community, such as nPost and Startuply. Both only make the community stronger.

Startuply has a great site and we wish them the best.

Nathan Kaiser
nathan [at] npost [.] com
For open source software the clause I found most odd was "10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing."

The incompatibility of this is covered by clause 1.2, ". . . Open source software licences for Google Chrome source code constitute separate written agreements. To the limited extent that the open source software licences expressly supersede these Universal Terms, the open source licences govern your agreement with Google . . ."

It's still odd though.
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Iteration in FP: Dependent, Accumulative or Independent loops
Taking a look at what? All this lovely new data they can use to make money? :p
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