skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Find the edges and work your way in.

Find the core and work your way out.

The edges depend on what kind of application you're talking about. A web app will have different edges than a GUI app, and so forth.

Find the main method or equivalent, and follow the trail of instantiation. Usually you'll find that configuration takes place somewhere in this code path, which is another place to come back to later and start connecting the dots.

When all else fails, identify and follow a single trail of execution all the way through the code. Find another and follow it. Pretty soon you'll start to get a sense of where to find the core of the code.

Identify the presentation classes and work back from them to identify the business logic.

Identify the data access layer (either file or database) and
look at the app in terms of what it's pushing into and pulling out of the data.

There are some code analysis tools out there, though I've never managed to quite fully grasp them, using them to look at the code can sometimes help you get a sense of the structure. One that is tantalizing, for java, is SA4J aka Small Worlds:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=24255

There are others out there. There used to be a copy&paste detection tool in sourceforge... I might be thinking of this one:

http://pmd.sourceforge.net/cpd.html

Add comprehensive logging:

Add a log statement for all method/subroutine/function/procedures, and then run the app while watching the logs, to get a sense of what gets called, when.

You can try to go a step further, and log all returns (and the values returned) but that can be a more challenging task. On the other hand, figuring out where to insert those log statements will also force you to engage with the code, so it's worth it if you've already picked the other low-hanging fruit.

Speaking of engaging with the code; don't underestimate the value of refactoring the code as a way of learning your way around it. It's much more engaging and less likely to induce highway hypnosis if you're actively working the code instead of just skimming it.

Obviously you use good revision control, and ideally keep a pristine install of the code alongside your experimental working working set, to compare behaviors.

Don't be afraid to throw away the refactored code if you find you've bogged down (and keeping that clearly in mind can help you avoid analysis paralysis).

Good luck, Jim!
I have trouble with these sorts of arguments. Hopefully I'm not putting up a strawman, but this is what I read:

1. There's a massive opportunity for *X*.
2. Nobody is doing X, including business *Y*.
3. Y is well-positioned to transition (or "pivot") to X if it chooses.
4. ...
5. Profit.

Even though I might agree with points 1, 2, and 3, there are a lot of moving parts and uncertainties between steps 3 and 5, what the fictional Reginald Jeeves calls "imponderables." I think that investing in a company on the basis of what it might do if a new market pans out is sound reasoning when making a VC investment. If you make ten such investments, perhaps one or two of them will pan out and you will make enough of a killing on them to pay for the others.

However, I do not think this is sound reasoning when picking stocks in the public market. I think you have enough trouble just trying to figure out if a public company can succeed doing the business they're currently trying to do, much less a whole new business they haven't tried yet.
Oh come on apple now we have to do everything through your stores?
Look at it a different way.

The features that you are talking about are essential for carrying on extended, complex conversations in a high volume environment.

The high volume discussion forums that we have today are mostly geared towards providing and filtering discussions of topical items for short periods of time, while blocking spam. (Not a big problem on the classic Usenet.)

The result is that we have things like voting systems, but the implicit assumption that any old conversation is automatically dead. (An assumption that is implicitly guaranteed by the fact that the forum becomes unusable.) So that leads to lack of motivation to improve software for this use case.
Wouldn't that require it being in the kernel right now?
Tech stocks cheapest since ’98 amid IPO bubble fears
The extra bandwidth cost seems like it would be covered in the severely discounted OS price.
No lightweight threads, one has to resort to an evented approach (and lose the fault tolerance etc. afaik).
Not really related to WWDC, but isn't today a bad day to announce something like this?
"If you work at a large company you need to work for a longer time to have enough cash" <-- how long you need to work to have enough cash depends on two things:

A) your spending rate

B) your earning rate

And in general, your earning rate is faster at a company. Again, you have to compensate for selection bias here: not all startups are successful. Even if they are large enough to have employees.

Regarding your comments about little time, I think you are confusing "no free time" with "no free time at work to focus on something else". I'm definitely not arguing that people who work for startups dont have time for partying. Definitely not. All I am saying is that, because the nature and frequency of demands is different, you generally find yourself with more time to explore your own thing at a large firm. And yes, this is coming from a person in finance, so it must be true for other industries as well :)
Maybe something like this IS in the kernel right now.
My point is that piracy can be very good for small companies and is an indication that people like what you're doing.
Why Rosetta Stone is Missing the Spirit of App Culture
dsplittgerber seems to have a valid point, though one that is understood by anyone who has followed Apple for long. Still, unsure why the comment is [dead].

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625727

To respond, Apple has never had a problem re-implementing a 3rd party app and integrating it into the system, Dashboard is a classic example of this. It's a bit hostile towards 3rd party developers, but generally good for users (at least that's the argument).
Watch Out Facebook Connect, Apple Pushes Twitter Sign-Ins In iOS 5
I think it's very useful to actually see, in numeric format, a continuum of possibilities. I think it’s wrong to create a blanket rule of, “every great startup shall have >1 founder” as some projects simply won’t need more than one. That said, it’s also smart not to dilute unnecessarily.
If you actually need a larger team, I say get a larger team. If not, do it yourself. Either way, it’s a decision that should be made rationally, not because you read an article that said you’ll fail without a buddy.
Wikipedia in Tug-of-War Over Palin's Version of Revolutionary War
yeah I meant the public acknowledgement (although 1994 is earlier than I remember it).
It is an ugly step when you have to go through 3 or 4 updates in row that require reboots.
Poetry for Hackers: A crab canon for Douglas Hofstadter
Restore the Lion DMG to a USB drive using Disk Utility.

Edit: I think App Store will download the DMG to a known location so people can create backups.
technically none of the copies of Mac OS X running on Hackintoshes are "valid" -- Apple's Leopard/Snow Leopard boxes are technically upgrades only, not full installs, even though they work perfectly fine as full installs.
It's much easier.

(That's what the government hates the most: things that make it easy to subvert it. If you can subvert the government in some super difficult manner that requires a lot of effort, they don't care so much. If you can type in your paypal id and have anonymous money... that's too easy, and it makes them mad.)
Of course Wikipedia is limited for technical topics: it's limited by the quality and accessibility of primary and secondary sources. The way to improve WP's coverage of highly technical topics is to generate credible, reliable, accessible source material for it to incorporate.

This is the great thing about the Internet, and it's something WP management has been saying for years and years. Start your own wiki. Limit it to experts. Make it an amazing source. Wikipedia can then cite it, and use its content to resolve disputes and correct mistakes in its sourcing.
They have a list of some ~60,000 merchants, email addresses in the tens of millions, no patents or 'moat', and they're trying to sell a dollar for fifty cents and make a profit. Also, how do you scale when you have 8,000 employees? That's a huge fixed cost. And these aren't huge barriers to entry for your competition--Twitter/Facebook/any website with an audience can basically do this.

I don't see how their model is sustainable and the entire premise of their success seems wrested on Groupon succeeding at things they haven't demonstrated yet.

Also, I see Groupon as a sales company, not a tech company.
This is a bit like saying in the 19th century that slavery is inevitable and that slave owners will do anything to stay in control.
iCloud unveiled at WWDC, MobileMe DOA
I think limited bandwidth plans will limit a lot of the innovation that could have started with a free cloud api. Are there any numbers of subs on limited bandwidth plans?
Mysterious number 6174
Apple iOS 5 Twitter Integration Announced At WWDC 2011
It's nice to see Intel cares about their X support now.

I suspect some of this is a side effect of the popularity of GPGPU computing. If they don't want their lunch eaten by NVidia and ATI/AMD on certain computational benchmarks, they're going to have to provide a professional implementation of OpenCL on Linux. I suspect (am hoping) that the OpenGL acceleration and plain X11 improvements come as part of the package.

People don't use Windows-only hardware in their supercomputers. NVidia was the first to realize this and this is one reason they have much of the GPGPU mindshare.
Why Mac OS is Safer than Windows
This is a direct stab at a bunch of offerings out there: GenBook, BookFresh, Appointment-Plus, etc.

Of course this won't have enough features to compete with all the products, but for a SMB with relatively low number of employees it's quite possible than they go to Google first.
Not sure why below comment is dead. The account seems ok and not hell banned. Was it flagged to death? If so, anyone who flagged it,why?

dsplittgerber 24 minutes ago | link [dead]

Anyone else surprised by how many hugely popular apps Apple is going to kill with new Lion/iOS? Instapaper built-into Safari now, all kinds of messanger apps killed by iMessage, some of those photo apps going down the drain as well, Reminders app is a huge one as well. All targeting really popular app categories.

Sure, some people care about thing X being done supremely well and will still pay for some apps. But the huge majority will probably be really fine with Apples version.
Its tough separating the wheat from the chaff. Presumably, Silk Road merchants aren't the first to ship drugs: it's pretty tough to detect without slowing everything down.
You're absolutely right, but, like (I suspect) many people, I knew better, but hadn't taken the time to implement unique passwords before the Gawker security breach. It basically forced me to act - and now I'm better for it.
That the possible market for Groupon is big is without dispute. The reason people aren't sure about its prospects is that their reach still pales next to that of Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, etc., and they're still not doing anything that can't be copied.
Can't you just force outbound encryption and disable upload? You'd only be receiving the file, not redistributing it.
10.6.7 is supposed to be a "prepare for Lion" release
>I see government control over money as basically an immovable object

Fyi, governments don't control money, the international reserve banking system does, centered on the Bank for International Settlements (BIS.org). Governments' enforcement arms are just their proxy. They'll be even less likely to tolerate an upstart competitor like bitcoin.
What if someone under 18 uses the site to buy some pot? He might share it with his friends and they would all find bad movies to be hilarious for a few hours! Then they would be really sleepy!

Much better if the kids go to a real movie theater and pay $20 to eat artificial popcorn covered with artificial butter and wash it down with artificial sugar water.
This is all pretty exciting, but I want more exterior button shortcuts. Also, why can't I search text fields on my meager 3Gs?
I would have sworn that it was utf-16 (which is still Unicode enough btw) .
I seem to have had this choking feeling for a long time aswell, very often when singled out by an authority figure.
I don't know when, but somehow I learnt/realized that the only reasonable thing is to stop having fear, because nothing could be gained from acting fearfully. It sounds a little too easy to be real, but it was a headfirst approach to the problem with no real nor perceived downsides.

Over the years, this has resulted in an interesting kind of behaviour: My mind can be completely calm in pretty much any situation. You could say that I have utter control of my mind. But interestingly my body doesn't follow! (or the subconscious). It is actually quite annoying, sometimes I downright start to shiver, I need to go to the toilet multiple times in a short period of time...all the while wondering what the hell is going on, since in my mind I'm completely fine with the situation.
Last time this happened was at my final oral bachelor's exam.
I had text added, but it vanished on me. It seems like a interesting concept to give out a free cloud api, but how many people have 200mb plans that will make its practicality limited?
> It's a pleasure to see someone take the stand and go against the rash of blog posts and articles against Groupon.

Just because an argument is contrarian or counterintuitive doesn't make it right.
This is not true. read the release notes.
I don't think this will happen. My prediction is that the price of drugs in bitcoins will go up as the difficulty of converting bitcoins to dollars increases. But as long as it's easy to buy bitcoins (which will be hard to regulate, just as it's hard to regulate the sale of illegal drugs), then there will be a market for people that have them.
There's a Putty icon in the task bar.
Spaghetti code or not, osCommerce ran on any cheap web hosting plan you had. Magento will eat up half a gigabyte of memory just to show a storefront.
ICloud PhotoStream sends iPhone pictures to iPad/Macs/AppleTV automatically
Why would all references to TRUE be changed to sal_True

What is sal_True?
Australia requires a different version of many games because it has more stringent age ratings. This means that a separate distribution agreement is required for Oz (and thus for new Zealand because the Yanks can't tell us apart). This translated into higher prices because, well just because.

The short answer is a vpn into the US (or nearly anywhere). Prices become magically cheaper and hulu starts working.
Selling is the most important intended use case for copy right, just like using is the most important intended use case for property right.

If you copy and distribute a movie, then yes you are depriving Hollywood of some of its ability to sell the movie. Of course not all of it, just like I don't rid you of your use of your car if I steal it for one day and then put it back.
Ask HN: Running list of startups/companies that iOS5 went after
By my count so far:

Instapaper, Dropbox, Remember the Milk, WhatsApp, Facebook, RIM, Sparrow, ATT, Verizon
Apple's iCloud will automatically store, sync data for free
>Pretty horrible experience for a tiny minority and a great experience for the majority. Sounds like Apple.

How will having a shipped disk as an option ruin the experience of the majority? You analogy is flawed because floppy drives take up space and cost.
Of course it doesn't. But you must see the other end of the stick. With Bitcoin in operation ... all the bad of governments disappears ... and so does all the good. Just a few things truly anonymous money makes untouchable :

you're reintroducing slavery, including child and sexual slavery and making it much more intractable to fight
you're giving up the war on drugs. Not just soft drugs but every drug.
you're making fraud, not just tax fraud, impossible to detect (especially for purely financial firms where money is both the input and the output)

The control governments have is there for a reason. Do you think the freedom bitcoin provides (although bitcoin is not really anonymous enough I think) is worth causing the above mentioned problems ?
not a startup obviously, but all of the Google apps with iCloud
It is also the first day of pressers for E3, so they probably wanted to tie in with that.
They probably mean no additional reboots; in many OSes first you boot the installer/upgrader, then you install, then you boot the installed OS.
I fail to see how a bunch of cache headers is less fiddly or significantly different, really, than a manifest.
They said that the update is done in-place and apparently without a reboot.
Creating a 3 Node Riak Cluster on EC2
Perhaps I should change the wording to startup/companies Facebook, ATT, Verizon aren't either. Quite a nod to Twitter.
Probably because if you are in to that kind of thing you already know where to find it. Just in case:

http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/Live_from_WWDC_2011

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/06/liveblog-wwdc-2011...
That many successful startups have multiple founders does not mean that multiple founders are required for success, or a recipe for it.
Apple unveils iMessage, its BBM competitor, at WWDC
Curious for one of my favorite apps, can anyone comment on BetterTouchTool (http://www.boastr.de/) quality on the new build?
Yes, Groupon has potential value. My strong objection is to the fact that they are going public before proving that value. It used to be that you couldn't go public until you had at least 3 quarters of profitability. Sometimes our elders are indeed wise.
Hey justin.tv, stop punishing me for logging in by making me watch another ad. It just makes me not want to log in. Is that the intent?
Nice, YC could use this for booking office hours.
This is great. Now if only the newer Intel drivers didn't make X segfault!

This seems to be a common problem. I had to downgrade to 2.14.0; some bug introduced in 2.14.903 and still present in 2.15.0 break it thoroughly. Fast is nice, but stable is better.
No, some people used to skip versions to save money. But now that each update is only $30 they can afford to stay current.
I accidentally clicked twice and two identical comments were created. I deleted one. Alas, the other seems to have gone rougue as well.
AJAX in Django using jQuery: A Simple Demo
>This isn’t actually the first time Apple has offered an OS upgrade at a steep discount compared to its Windows rival (which typically runs over $100) — Snow Leopard made its debut at $29.

A pretty flawed apples to oranges comparison. OS X is more similar to bios updates... you buy the hardware, the vendor makes money off it and gives away the software. With Microsoft, you're paying the OEM money for the hardware(with razor thin margins usually but that's another story), so Microsoft doesn't make bank on expensive hardware and upgrades to RAM/HDD/CPU that Apple makes.

Edit: Not to mention that 10.5 to 10.7 is not upgradeable, you have to buy and install 10.6 first, install the App Store and then install 10.7. Windows 7 may not be upgradeable directly from XP without a format, but atleast you don't have to but and upgrade to Vista first!
That would be 'Guerilla'.
For non-X people (IOW, everybody except me and Josh):

This commit speeds up general desktop rendering, in both general and pathological cases, for nearly all Intel graphics chipsets, causing everything to feel snappier and more responsive. It's a universally Good Thing.
Great news.

Now if only they just did away with the optical drives on MBP's. I have used mine about... twice in three years since owning my current laptop.
ICloud announced at WWDC, OTA updates,Wireless Backup, Mobileme free
MSI P67A-GD80 LGA 1155 ATX Motherboard Review
Copyright is an exception, unfortunately.
True but I love reading and participating in the discussions here on HN.

Definitely a little odd wouldn't you say?
I think that locally owned stores where the typical transaction is less than $5 are an exception. (Does this even describe anything other than local coffee shops?) I pay cash for my coffee everywhere I go. People typically don't go to locally owned shops for the convenience, but for the charm. And if you're a regular, then you know to carry some cash.
I almost want to flag this: the article did not feature "gorillas", it featured fake buddhist monks.

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke confusion of "guerilla" and "gorilla". Does such a person envision the Taliban sending large, hairy, non-human primates into action in Afghanistan?
And while it's purely a semantic distinction, as a consumer, I feel far better about getting 10% off the menu price at restaurants for paying cash, than I would feel about a 10% surcharge for paying with my credit card.
this is exactly the idea: as a single founder you can cash the same amount as a small company
iMessage sends messages across iOS devices
I wonder if Palantir has a Bitcoin plugin yet.
(you can't send a D-Bus message to fire up the default "camera" application to take a picture, then fire up another message to the default "email" application sending the picture you just took as an attachment.)

Sure you can. Or at least you could, if you defined a well-known bus name and interface for the camera app and email app. DBus supports auto-activation, so it'll take care of starting the apps that register themselves as providing those bus names. That's all more or less what you have to do with intents, even.
Interesting analysis of MS politics. Just curious -- is your information firsthand or through careful analysis of third-party sources?
ITunes Match: $24.99/year for your non-iTunes songs
My favorite is when I pick a 20 character password (keypass, ahoy!), and register using that. Works great, until I try and log in, whereupon I realize they silently cut off n characters from the end of the password when saving it on the backend.

Heck, at one place, n was 12. Go figure.
I hope your right, but on most small releases 'tinkering' needs to be done to make it work. We will have to wait and see.
I am skeptical of this, for two reasons. First, the GPGPU thing really hasn't affected Intel, who still sells more units than either AMD or nVidia, and will probably continue to have a stranglehold on their current markets. GPGPU really doesn't matter to most people.

Second, the guy that wrote this code, Chris Wilson, is one of the big guys behind Cairo and had an experiment, cairo-drm, where he plugged Cairo directly to an Intel graphics chipset by talking directly to the kernel and bypassing the Intel X drivers. His results were probably the foundation of this new work, as far as I can guess.
For the life of me, I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't follow the same path, and offer a group policy for stone-age enterprise customers to turn it off.
Sorta like "how will having a model with a floppy as an option ruin the experience of the majority?"

Nic Cage's hair is a bird, my analogy was flawed.

Maybe they will have a disk or other back up option, who knows but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.
What Dale said is true.
The replicator database and the replicator itself are 2 different entities.
Java chars are 2 bytes, but the default String encoding when serializing to/from byte[] arrays and streams is UTF-8 (on unix at least, may vary on windows).