skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
a : abrupt in speech or manner
b : being straight to the point : direct

So yeah, that's exactly what blunt means.

Don't be confused by all the people who think bluntness is automatically rude. It's not. Those people just have really tender feelings and can't handle the truth. They need to have it sugar coated.
I think a lot of this is dependent on the company and what you are trying to do. Every other company out there needs programmers. But not all of them need software engineers.
This is like the software side of an idea I had maybe a decade ago. My idea would be to modify workout machines with sensors. Think of those Nautilus type pulley machines. You would swipe your card (magstripe, RFID, barcode, etc) when you sit down (start time recorded). Then you select the weight you want to lift (weight setting recorded). As you lift, various sensors would record the time per rep, range of motion, speed, etc. The idea would be that you don't have to waste time writing in a log, and the computer could capture data that you couldn't (like the fact that your last 4 reps only had 85% extension, vs your first 2 which had 98%). With sensors on all the machines in a typical gym (weight machines, treadmills, elliptical, etc.), you could get a full picture of how your workout went. Plus you could see how you progress over time. The challenge would be to get a big gym to allow you to wire up all of their machines, or work with a manufacturer to get them to include these sensors.
Now functional programming languages are scary to any student who sees them for the first time, but I admit, this kind of thing really scared me. Took a CS Introduction to Functional Programming course at university, taught using Clean, a pure and lazy functional language developed at the university. Most of their research currently is related to iTasks (see http://wiki.clean.cs.ru.nl/ITasks) which also does web apps, but focused on workflows. As a web dev however, it totally stripped the layers between model and browser, which is actually the harder part most of the time where the customization happens, and became this (all too simple) mess of models and functions. It was too early stage software too, various server bugs in the built-in HTTP server, and lacking JS/frontend implemantation. Only one of the 15 weeks needed iTasks, which was a good thing, for students and TA sanity.
Approximate estimation is what you need to multiply other two digit numbers quickly. It just happens that there's a trick for multiples of 11. There's actually probably less than 20 other "tricks" that help with rapid calculations.
Depends on what the meeting is about, and what was boring him. If it was something crucial that needed to be discussed, that's crap. But if the purpose of the meeting is to inform him about something, then of course - skip the parts that don't matter.
> A little known-fact Dhuey recalls is that Jobs has hearing loss.

> “When we did the iPod we had to make sure it would be loud enough for Steve to hear the music,” says Dhuey. “We had to balance his need for volume with a French law against things that were too loud."

Well, that explains a lot. It's a pity that Jobs needing to have music louder to be able to hear it has led to a generation of people who are getting hearing loss from having their music turned up too loudly.
Where is all the crowdsourcing investment money going?
I take it personally. We are supposed to be a group of smarter-than-average people; we should be able to put tribalism aside and discuss actual details.

People use any Apple article to bash Android. People use any Android article to bash Apple. If we could stay on topic, we could avoid a lot of discussion. An article about the iPhone 5 is not the time to complain about the App Store submission policies. An article about the new Samsung tablet is not the time to complain about some API detail in Android's ListBox control.

The reason I stopped reading Slashdot many years ago is because every discussion seemed the same as the last one. In terms of Apple vs. Software Freedom or whatever we want to call it; there's nothing more to add. Either you like Apple's tight control or you don't. It's been discussed and it's boring and emotional now. So there's no point in bringing it up anymore, right?

Anyway, we need to be more aggressive about staying on topic. Digressions are fine if new territory is being covered. But if you have to post the same comment in five different articles, You're Doing It Wrong.
Fully agreed that current web programming is complex and that was the driving force behind making Opa.
What might not be clear in the presentation of Opa is that it's not some new glue on top of existing components.
It's instead a whole new, clean, technology for writing and running web applications.

And given that the language is statically typed (with inference in most cases, so it's easy for the programmer) with first-class web values, the whole point of Opa is that the compiler knows quite a lot about your application when generating the binaries. The typing system determines wether part of the code will run on the client side, on the server side (or both) for instance. This mechanism is very different from Ruby on Rails for instance, although both approaches share the goal of making the programmer's life easy.

Building RESTful services is exactly where Opa excels. Have a look at http://doc.opalang.org/index.html#_hello_web_services and the following chapter.
Uh, no. That problem predates Apple's entry into the space by decades.

If you want to get down to the real root cause, the root problem is biological; the human ear's damage threshold is significantly lower than its pain threshold. That's not an easy problem to solve.
You also get far less bugs because of controlled effects and the strong polymorphic types (i.e: Haskell's strong type system).
I believe it does, it doesn't for you?
here is a blog post about the license:
http://blog.opalang.org/2011/08/opa-license-contributions.ht...
Mecanto aims to be the Dropbox of Music with streaming and storage
Facebook ends 'Places' feature
It's not a dig. I do think you're dumb if you don't like gdb. Naturally, my opinion comes out in my writing, which I think is my Creative License. You should realize that anything you read is biased. You should read the post for content, mix it with its credibility, and then reach a decision.

In the end, I think that my experience programming adds more credibility than my love for snide comments subtracts. That doesn't make me a toughguy, that makes my writing interesting to read.
Well, the general idea is to ensure that whoever is using Opa somehow contributes to the FOSS community, either by contributing source code or by funding the development of Opa itself.
Akio Morita: Sony's Guru Of Gadgets (1998)
For example, right now Libya's assets are frozen. Which proves that UK is capable to do the same with Venezuela, if the situation allowed. So bringing home the gold gives independence.
Knowing how to do a square root efficiently by hand is probably a bit overkill, although it can still be useful sometimes. I was rather arguing about addition, division etc., which come up much more often in back-of-the-envelope calculations; and which also provide a much easier and earlier introduction to the kind of algorithmic thinking that is required in algebra, programming etc.
He was a major inspiration to Steve Jobs and the rebirth of Apple. A great read.
What is the Most Effective Exercise To Lose Fat From Your Belly?
What this article means to me: absolutely nothing.
What the author's bitter, misguided opinion means to me: absolutely nothing.

Steve Jobs is easily the most extraordinary business leader of our time, by virtually any measure imaginable. He built a computer company that was declared thoroughly marginalized in the late 90s into the world's largest company of any kind. And that's not counting what he did at Pixar.

Some people can't handle that that kind of achievement garners a lot of admiration, so they characterize it as a "cult" and then attack it.
do whatever you want. for $20 an hour I'll do your thinking for you.
“Blunt” has different connotations for me, rudeness seems like a part of it. Saying “I don’t need to see this, let’s move on.” seems just honest to me, not blunt. “I’m bored by this, why do you tell me all this crap?” would be something I would be willing to call blunt.

But yeah, being honest (or blunt, if you will) is something I’m perfectly alright with. I want the people I’m working with or for to be like that. I’m not so crazy about rudeness, but if that quote is accurate Jobs wasn’t rude (at least in those situations).
How to create an application for the iPhone: an exploration
If Geckoboard had a small pre-configured display for sale for say $250, I would have bought it.
I like it yeah. it allows you to listen to whatever else you want instead of the you tube video , as an example
So Microsoft is being anti-competitive here. The question is, are they using monopoly power (illegal) to do so?
Ness Serves Up Their First Personal Search App Catering To Restaurant Discovery
If you're working on it because you don't want to have to thunk about it, that implies you currently have to think about it.
Mine disappeared too after I started using it extensively in the 'new' section for dupes & spammers, it came back briefly but it's been gone for weeks.
The sky is made of diamonds.
RandomBlogger's Site at Multiply
The whole resurgence of Apple and the amazing products they've been making are enough, but I'm truly impressed with Apple's early years. The Apple ][ was such a standard in schools, and the first Macs were so unique (admitedly, I like the C64 and Amiga a bit more...). Woz rocks, too.
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Do you know who built TCP/IP? Where is the suckuping for Linus Torvalds? Where is the love for Richard Stallman without wich the IT industry, and Apple would not have been the same.
Unfortunately a lot of the decision making comes from the interviewing part of it. I agree companies should look more at actual past projects (and I had plenty to boot), but I didn't find folks looking at that too much as I would have liked.

But if the projects have significant value and are well known, that's a different thing altogether, that comes off as a big plus IMO. They just need to presented well - just a code repository somewhere is less likely to get attention than working stuff people are using actively.

But apart from that, projects make you a better CS/hacker and it shows - it shouldn't be done for getting a job but just because you are passionate and want to contribute - and trust me it will show if you do try to leverage that for getting hired later.
Well, if you guys ever rethink this, I'll be interested. Until then, I'll just keep plugging along with what I have.
How to reveal the best new apps with SmartApps and the Smart10(TM)
I'm convinced a BA in CS is the perfect balance between what the article is espousing and those in favor of a more rigorous technical background, at least for those who veer towards the programmer side of the computer scientist <-----> programmer scale. Getting a BA gave me a solid foundation in comp sci while also letting me get a true liberal arts education. Studying music, literature, philosophy, etc helped me become a much more well-rounded person than had I gotten a BS, but still gave me what I felt to be proper exposure to CS as a field within a formal academic context.
Mozilla Labs - DemoParty 2011
Opa! ... lol
Tinypay.me raises 1 million dollars to change the world of e-commerce
it wouldn't surprise me

At the heart of the modern emperical scientific revolution is the idea that you should seek confirmation from the real world for everything, because the world is much, much more stranger than our intuitions lead us to believe. After all, for a long time it would have suprised people to hear that the earth went around the Sun, that the mountain actually move, that there a tiny germs you can't see that can kill you, etc.
Don't Ignore Tim Cook's Sexuality
How we split test our job listing titles with Optimizely
He was quoting the conversation, and there's only one way to "phrase" a quotation.
Ask HN: How much experience is required to write a book?
Recently I was asked to review an outline for a book on a relatively new programming language which I have been tinkering with since it was released. After reviewing the outline for the publisher I was asked whether I would be interested in co-authoring this book.

I feel kind of conflicted about this, because I always try to be fairly modest about my abilities. I am not a member of the core dev team for this language, and have not contributed to the standard library. However, I feel like at some point you have to give yourself some credit and say "yes, I do have the expertise to advise other people on this topic".

I know we have quite a few published authors floating around on HN who will have experience in this situation, and i'm sure would have faced something similar when writing their first book. When did you feel comfortable putting your experience on a page? When did you feel confident that your experience would be valuable to other people?

At this stage i'm looking to turn down the offer because I don't think I can honestly say that I am an authority on the topic for the proposed book. The way I see it, someone who is writing a book should be an active member of the community at the very least, but i'm more of a lurker. Aside from being active they should also have some recognition within the community, which generally comes with activity and contribution to such a community. For me, the other edge of this sword is that people often become authorities by publishing a well-written pieces of literature that the community feels are valuable.

Is there some critical balance between having valuable experience/knowledge, and simply believing in yourself enough to take up an opportunity like this?
They haven't retired/died yet. Everyone assumes Steve Jobs left because he's dying. That's why every article about Jobs reads like a eulogy.
Node.js Sentiment APIs GitHub Repository Released
Yes I would be very interested. The sessions look great and the one on Storm looks pretty rocking.
Payment wise I could not do more than twenty. I couldn't go to begin with because of the prices but if I get the ticket I am going to try on a shoe string budget. If you get a better offer than that no worries :)
Yeah, I do know that.

Regarding Linus, he actually gets a lot of hero-worship...and rightly so.

But did Linus (or Richard Stallman) have the overall impact of Jobs? Not by a longshot. So in my mind, the admiration for Jobs is deserved. Some disagree and I respect that, but calling it a "cult" is ludicrous.
Surprised to see that what appears to be the "feature launch committee" has about 30 people in the room... and another 15 or so patched in by video. (Perhaps most are just 'flies on the wall' to learn?)
I'm not really terribly concerned - MS's dominance over the gaming field is not nearly entrenched or large enough for them to muscle like this.

Remember, there is one direct equivalent platform for developers and publishers: PS3.

There is another that targets the same demographic, but smaller: PC.

There's also the wide open field of gaming in general, which is being dominated by Sony, Nintendo, casual game producers like PopCap, and increasingly social game makers.

MSFT has done extremely well with the Xbox, particularly Xbox Live, but they're far from the dominant player in this industry, much less a monopolist.
Ok. Fewer run time errors = fewer tests.
Also check out QuickCheck for automatically generating tests. It's very handy.
investors!=consumers

"The x of y" can be okay for consumers too, but only a select few brands are familiar to mainstream consumers. e.g. " Facebook for businesses" or "Google for real estate" work.

Penis aside, ChatRoulette too obscure for most people and especially a long time after its peak.
The fundamentals of mathematics are logical deduction, reason and abstraction. Not begin able to do 134 * 23.
It takes guts to end an ailing feature. Even with the feature struggling, it probably had more monthly active users than what success at a startup looks like to most of us.

On the scale of facebook, it was clear that they weren't getting the traction that foursquare has. It always felt like a me-too feature. I doubt that this is the last location play that facebook will make. Im looking forward to what's next.
A empty product is the multiplicative identity (1), just like an empty sum is the additive identity (0).
I've never in my life attended a meeting where someone has been willing to say this. It's just "not done".

My solution is to just not go to meetings. The recap at my desk later will contain as much information and will only take 30 seconds.
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cool stuff emma.
Lucy must be there :)
I hate it when mum and dad argue.

We all have our respective ecosystems wherein we do our business - iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, people who want you to know where they are right now, people who don't. So we suckle at the teat of our respective vendors, hoping they'll ruffle our hair and feature our app in their app store, or pat us on the back and whitelist us for their streaming API. Or buy us a pony, and buy us.

But right now, as at various points in the history of the computing industry, mum and dad have locked themselves in the car, turned the radio up, and started yelling at each other at the top of their voices. We might not understand why grown ups get angry about patents, or whatever else they argue about, but we love mum and dad, and we can't emotionally process what's happening between them. So we get angry too. And we lash out at our brothers and our sisters who grew up just trying to do the same things we did - be strong, happy, successful. Kids take after their parents, and right now the adults in the tech industry are fighting loudly and emotionally.

Let's hope for a reconciliation soon. At Macworld 1997, when Microsoft and Apple renewed their vows, and both emerged stronger than ever. It can happen again, we just need to try and not tear each other apart in the meantime.
While YUI is probably one of the best JS frameworks around the sloppy design of their webpage beats me. the yuilibrary.com looks so 90ish in its design.
FWIW: I think having a user create an account is kinda useless if you don't give access to all the features (specifically graphing). My recommendation would be to setup a demo account with seeded data so people can get a feel for the service.

Also I may take heat for this but for me personally that price point is too high. I'm not saying you should lower it but I wouldn't purchase the service based on that alone (at least not in it's current form).

There you go two cents from a random stranger. I hope it's helpful and wish you the best of luck.
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Except it's harder :) I tried doing stuff on the MIT site and always fell behind - and of course I would never do the assignments that add real value to understanding.
If it's your first book, then that's really the norm. The publishers always ask you to team up with a published author. I wouldn't worry at all about that.

Congrats on the book offer! I'm sure you'll do a wonderful job. I look forward to reading it.
I am not sure if you meant it sarcastically, but the two people you mentioned have obtained somewhat of a cult status.

And if you are wondering why Steve Jobs gets so much attention around here, it is probably because this is a forum for entrepreneurs, and he is arguably the best, taking Apple from the brink of collapse to the world's largest public company.
I wonder if NeXT was really that much of a failure, considering that ultimately today we use many of it's software technologies. I used to be a NeXT programmer and am always amazed how much of it is still there today in OS X..
I think that we have been contacted by the same publisher about the same book. And have the same feelings on the book and the offer to co-author it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2926505

I was also critical of the author and outline. An unknown author with a single book on ruby to his name. The outline was poorly organised, and there wasn't anything that you couldn't get from the publicly available documentation and tutorials on the language.
What's the spin here? Google is trying to project:

- Search is a hard, interesting problem - and we have really smart
people working on it (come work with us).
- Search is a competitive business (don't regulate us).
- We use a scientific process (don't investigate our practices
as a potential conflict of interest).

The video is interesting. But one thing NOT addressed is how much is the search experience improving? Yes, they've made "500 changes" to the algorithm last year. By what measure is search quality going up (or down)?

I sense an improvement over the last 6 months (seeing less low quality or spam links) - but I'd like to see this quantified.
Free Technology Academy courses start September 12th
If we could make a few discoveries like that a little closer and in slightly more hospitable environments, maybe we could get some enterprising capitalists to try to cash in, and thereby make our way through and beyond the solar system.

Well, I can dream, can't I?
The Steve Jobs Formula and Why It Works
My intro to calculus class forced us to memorize the standard values for sin and cos for the quarter-values of pi for the same reason. For those quizzes, we could not use a calculator, of course. But for the rest of the class we used a calculator.
Not all of it -- this is obviously a custom job from Magrathea.
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Netflix architecture & migration to AWS
I don’t really have a lot of work experience but this happened at meetings both when I was an intern (though not as often as I would have liked) and I have this professor who is really fond of asking people to leave details out and only present the big picture (and I appreciate that very much). We met regularly to present the progress of our thesis and he knows how to keep it tight and relevant for everyone.

Maybe this has something to do with culture? All that happened to me in Germany and it doesn’t seem extraordinary to me.
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Yep, it definitely sounds like the same book. If you put your email in your profile I'd be interested in emailing you, though I suspect I already know who you are.
>> What this article means to me: absolutely nothing. What the author's bitter, misguided opinion means to me: absolutely nothing.

Then why did you post that comment ?

BTW I have seen people struggle to get package management working cleanly on OS X and then claim with a straight face that OS X is the greatest OS ever so I am not too hesitant in calling Apple's user-base a cult. There just seems to be an underdog mentality there - a need to defend everything apple does.
Apple is like a cult and their fanboys are usually unbearably lame. Steve Jobs is a cool guy and he's done some awesome things. I don't see why 'Apple being a cult of lamers' and 'Steve Jobs is a brilliant man who accomplished many things' are mutually exclusive.

I feel really bad for Steve Jobs because he is good at what he does and he did some amazing things to the industry (and is now dying), but I would not at all feel bad if Apple fell back into irrelevance.

Edit: Wow, with so many votes after only 45 minutes this article should be in the top 3 and not #17+. You flaggers really shouldn't let yourselves get so upset over someone being negative towards a man who might as well be a mythical historical figure from your point of view.