skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you don't understand what "first" means in this context. It doesn't mean literally first. Here, read this description of first-mover advantage from Wikipedia:

"In marketing, first-mover advantage or FMA is the advantage gained by the initial ("first-moving") significant occupant of a market segment."

Notice the term "significant occupant". Second, notice the term "market segment".

Just because you know it to be first doesn't mean it was the first to market.

The fact that you know it to be first (assuming you know the market somewhat), implies that it was quite likely first-mover. In that if someone else was previously a significant occupant, you would have known of them. My friend who did New Haven Clique in 1994 and got 20 Yale friends to join wasn't first-mover.

So you're saying AltaVista was first? (technically it wasn't) scratches head

In the search space I think it probably was AV (and of course they abandoned to go portal -- which brings up the discontinuity argument that plagues first-mover discussions). The only other one I could think of was OT, but they were more of an engine and less of a search page destination. Almost everyone else was portals (although Yahoo/InfoSeek portals from the past would only barely resemble what we call portals today).
That is why in the "old days" C was used as a language for advanced courses in CS programs. It teaches you to think straight about your code. Nowadays people think it is easier just to write anything and catch exceptions later.
Right, cause no one ever uses an underscore in parameter identifiers.
Don't try this at home. How credit card arbitrage funded my first company.
Don't feel pressured to, but I think you would make your page much more pleasing to the eye if you placed your ads on the side rather than embedded into your posts.

They will still give you some advertising exposure for AdSense, but they won't get in the way of people trying to read your blog post, and your product promotions in your post won't get lost in the noise.

Just a suggestion, you're kicking ass and taking names either way!
That sounds incredibly arrogant. And unless a google search of you turns up some amazing accomplishments you will end up looking like a fraud.
You are missing 95B, 98SE, NT, and 2000.

Also, Vista wasn't crap. Microsoft lowered the system requirements to appease intel and their OEMs. So no surprise it runs like crap on a 4 year old laptop. 2 years later when 7 came out everyone had 2 year newer laptops 7 looks great.
Schmidt: I can assure you we're not cooking anything
It all boils down to what you prefer. They're both relatively mature software packages that are being used by tons in production.

Whichever you choose, you may find that http://socket.io/ saves you some time by inventing various wheels you may have needed to reinvent (for use with tornado, see the tornadio project).
Very true. When you have managers shouting "get it out" and over-promising to clients, then any language is a bad choice, but particularly powerful languages that require more careful thought and testing. I love C++ and use it regularly, but when I need to "get stuff out quickly" I'll use something like Python as I can be more reckless with it.
Show HN: My (tongue-in-cheek) Proposed JavaScript Mascot
This is all for Windows Logo certification... you'll be able to build your own PC like always.
This is fantastic - making all my students read this. English is a third language for most of them so I'm always trying to decipher the most cryptic method and variable names.
It went to Facebook for permission and pressed "Don't Allow", it returned me back to your website with this message:

"Okay. The Gushbot will be gathering your Facebook photos while we prepare your invite."

I don't have many pictures on Facebook, more on trekearth and flickr. It would be good to bring support to old not so well maintained sites like trekearth. More value, at least for me.
Guest Post: Healthy Living Tips
StrangeLoop 2011 Slides
I like the snazzy pull-to-refresh animation in their new iPhone app!

Interesting to see their take on mobile+social+local travel guides, but Yelp reviews give me a lot more opinionated information than Gowalla checkins. Not sure if their new stories are supposed to be reviews.
Eclipse Node.js Debugger/Google Chrome Developer Tools 0.3.0 released
Spotify Surpasses 2 Million Paying Subscribers
If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you can turn off the onswipe theme. I thought I had heard a rumor that you could globally disable it, but I haven't found the way to do it yet. I tried going to the linked onswipe page, but it doesn't render on my iPad :(.

I'm with you though; it makes attempting to read technical posts a real chore.
I might be interested: asd1234throw@gmail.com (throwaway address as well).
Software Testing Startup's Autistic Workforce Seeks to Change Business Culture |
Sword of Omens and Lakitu saved my life!
One of the devs here, Flickr is high up on our priority list - most of us have used flickr pretty heavily and want this feature for ourselves.
Before my university transformed into a Java school it was an Ada school. From what I heard the compilers for Ada in the early 90s were extremely slow.
Who really cares if his PC has a Windows logo on it, as long as it works?
The one class per action pattern helps with async calls and callbacks. The handler class has methods for each HTTP method plus the callbacks it needs.

That would get really messy in a controller-with-multiple-actions pattern as the controller classe now has a lot more methods in a single class: all the HTTP methods it handles plus the callbacks for all of them.
It's a relatively common pattern to have a "collection" data structure (like a list or hash table) use link structs embedded inside other structs to simplify memory management. When you append to a linked list in Java, you always allocate a new Link object and then update the various pointers. Using this pattern in C, the object you want to put in a list contains a list_link_t structure, and the list library takes as arguments pointers to these structures. This may sound like an argument about convenience, but the implications of this are very significant: if you have to allocate memory, the operation can fail. So in the C version (unlike the Java one) you can control exactly in which contexts something can fail.

For example, if you want to trigger some operation after some number of second elapses, you can preallocate some structure and then just populate it and fill it in when the timeout fires. Timeouts are usually just signals or other contexts where you have no way to return failure, so it's important that it be possible to always handle that case correctly without the possibility of failing.
And what's the Internet without the rick-roll?
I think it's more like this:

http://xkcd.com/927/
The economics of Nissan Leaf ownership
Not if your employer is trying to screen hundreds of candidates a day (as attractive big companies are). Anything that requires extra work just gets thrown out.
> I've seen code where I was like "WTF was this guy thinking?".

You can write obfuscated code in any language. The point about C is that the mental model is very simple. There's no magic happening anywhere, so if you can parse the language, you can figure out what's happening line-by-line pretty easily.
I'll probably be in Colombia around then, message sent!
You can script and automate IIS and MSSQL using powershell. I'm willing to bet dollars against pesos that if MS hasn't made everything in Windows scriptable via Powershell, they are currently working towards it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh245198(v=SQL.110)....
Profile: Boko Haram
At the same time this ad didn't pass you by and go unnoticed it fulfilled its purpose. Which is the entire purpose of the ad to you know get you to look at it and garner your attention.

If the ad were off to the side would it be as effective? @ OP I am sure you could play with this and find which is more effective thus increasing or maintaining your bottom line.
NHS told to abandon delayed IT project
It is one thing to think everyone has an agenda, but expecting everyone to deceive with every word is really wrong. I knew some of the staffers in the 90's who wrote the bills for a certain senator and they always wrote the intro text to explain what they intended the bill to do. The titles were mush (they would admit that) and sometimes very funky so they could get a good acronym. They believed what they wrote.

I believe the incompetence comes from not actually having run a small business and pulling the levers of the economy in an attempt to fix things. Chaos will damage an economy in pretty short order.
This is indeed the coolest thing:

The first English word in pi is... wait for it... PI, coming in at position 18. Now isn't that cute?
Precisely. These days, with the advent of easy to integrate Javascript/Python/Ruby/Lua scripting languages, there is very little reason to write an entire application in C. My last two projects, I wrote the business logic in a scripting language, and all of the performance bound stuff in C. There are a few gotchas the first time you do this - your bindings code needs to fit with the object model that you're using in C, you need to force all calls into the VM onto the same thread etc. I ended up just writing my own IDL parser/bindigs generator, but once you've done that once, you can use it for all of your future projects, and it really isn't that much work. The pay-off is huge - you can arbitrarily move a module of code between C and your scripting language depending on the optimal split for performance/ease of programming.
You want to keep your customers informed about the status of your project.

However, you did hit the nail on the head; it's better to have a viable product to show or something to offer to potential customers/users in exchange of their email addresses.
SEO for Facebook Fan Pages
gdb: where
This is absolutely untrue. Look at how libpng handles exceptions. It uses setjmp. Look at how FreeTDS handles errors. It allows you to define a function pointer to handle error cases. Yes you can throw return codes down through each layer but there are lots of other ways to build in exception like handling as well.
Is [Windows|OSX|web|...] development still profitable, this late?

In other words, it depends on if you're developing something people want or not. But I'd guess that the fart app market is saturated by now...
Your doc is a cool idea to keep up with all the new technologies. When making a decision, you need to know what's out there.
A slight mod can make it easier to read/parse. First the rules: everything is a string unless specified like num# date% bool! list* and objects are delimited by : and ;

Here is an example:

user:name=Bob,age#=47,sex=M,dob%=5-12-1956;pastimes*:golf,opera,poker,rap;children:bobby:age#=12,sex=M;sally:age#=8,sex=F
I file as an S corp and deduct all of those expenses, as well. Except the money I pay myself as a salary is not counted as income on my business tax return... my understanding is that for a C corp, it would be.
3 Geniales Ideas para Pequeños Negocios Rentables
Ask HN: What university to apply to? (CS)
Hi, HN.

As the title suggests I'm in the process of choosing a university (UK, US) and an undergraduate program for me to apply, and, honestly, I have no clue how to make the right decision. I've browsed university websites, read guides and asked for advice from people I know, but I'm yet to find the proper answer.

The thing I want from a university is a solid theoretical background in CS. I'm not a programmer yet, but I care deeply about the ways people approach computing, and my goal in the long run is to be able to build programs even on the lowest levels of abstraction. I probably need CS for that. I don't care about employment opportunities as long as I can support myself and code the way I feel is right. I would be incredibly disappointed to see Java, C☂ or anything corporate in my curriculum. I need theory, not a job at MS.

I've got my BS in Management and (if you forgive a lame pun) I've come to realize what a total BS it is. I know Ruby reasonably well; although I'm a total '() in Lisp (Scheme) and Smalltalk, I feel like these two language are gems in their respective domains, and for this reason I'm now making my way through the famous SICP lectures and a Smalltalk-80 book.

I really hope to get some response, because I know you are all smart and have a lot valuable experience to share. Sorry for the rant.
Reading the images perceived by us in the brain.
At least with the latest jenkins and its git plugin, it builds/tests all branches by default.

Its not overly hard to setup, I just added git repos to the list. I'm still "testing" it locally on my workstation before we start using it in all of our environments.
It's like finding an old circus tightrope walker who has performed for 30 years without a net and saying:

My goodness look at that, how can those tightropes be so reliable?
Chris Brogan (and patio11 for that matter) is a pretty vocal champion of this concept. Puff up your (personal) brand wherever you go, but always link back to and maintain control of your stronghold. A company/personal blog on your own domain is the natural spot for that.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/using-outposts-in-your-media-stra...
tl;dr: "And, so I raised my money through credit card arbitrage: $22k across 14 different cards. So, yeah. That's about it... For me, it worked out both terribly and perfectly. The terribly part is that our startup failed, and I never paid myself enough to pay the cards back. At the end of Openvote, I was saddled with all this credit card debt, plus opportunity cost loss from no salary, plus no job. It was a tough time."

It's a lesson in what not to do, as the author acknowledges. Though he seems sanguine enough and has got back up on his feet.

Then again, I think there are easier ways to learn it's not a good idea to rack up five figures of credit card debt on top of existing debt and no savings... but whatevs.
WAN Optimization Grows in Importance: Riverbed Displaces Cisco
Two things:

1. This confused me: "Choose a username: (use your real name)". My username is typically different from my real name. Thus, if I should use my real name, just make the field: "What is your name?" Perhaps add ability in settings to change the username/name.

2. Ability to upload photos from the web.

I think the concept is excellent.
Same here except I've "upgraded" to FastCGI.
Sprint confirms it will cap mobile hotspot data for smartphones October 2nd
Well, it is a pivot, I'll give them that. And as always their design is superior but if they insist on listing locales like "Cheers" in Boston as a destination in their guide, they're going to find themselves pivoting to something else in the near future.
Btw, people complain about the usability or applicability of such a format, well it is more about the mental challenge to solve a problem in a clean way and the steps to get to the best solution, even if the problem is non-existent or silly or retarded, the neural exercise is worth it.
Scraping web data with R
Wow... that takes balls. Getting 0% introductory rate credit cards, and taking a cash advance... and then putting the cash in a bank account that pays interest.
Of course, if the business fails - as it did in the author's case - then you're stuck with all of the debt and a broken credit record, but it's all about taking risks right?
"Free with no limits"

That right there is why I won't go anywhere near your site. Sorry, but why would I invest my time and energy, and photos, and inviting friends etc if you've got no visible means of supporting yourself? There's a reason I pay good money to Smugmug.

That aside, I have no idea why I would want all my photos on the one site. Is this the "one ring to rule them all"? Do you expect me to point friends, family, clients etc to your site? Is there realtime sync'ing from my computer? I don't understand who this is aimed at and what pain you're solving.

I also find the name a little odd (Gush?!) and the url particularly so. "Gush", in the traditional sense, suggests flow, water, emotional outpouring (ok, good) but you might want to watch out for the colloquial definition: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gush
The name also says nothing about photography, nothing about the app and the "get" is awkward (yes, I know other startups have used it but that only makes sense if I'm visiting the site to sign-up. Could you direct your grandmother to "Get Gush"?)

Sorry to be cruel -- I'm not being deliberately mean but you asked for criticism.
the purpose of offsetof/CONTAINING_RECORD is so that you don't "see" the pointer arithmetic, it's safely ensconced in a macro ;)

one advantage is it produces a generic linked list API. you can write routines to traverse, add, and remove elements from the list without caring about the structure of data stored in the list. if you use offsetof, you can also have the list data for a structure at any position inside of the structure instead of the beginning. some systems do that so they can store header information at the beginning.

you can also have elements enqueued on multiple lists. you might say that if you're doing that, you have bigger problems, but sometimes shakespere got to get paid.
Hard-to-define jobs are more secure
Large hardware, large software, large bugs
Php website development company
IIRC Josh Williams said that only a small small percentage of people actually used them.
Work From Home
The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To See
At Flickr, I always have our system graphs in one tab and our help forum in another tab.
Interesting, that seems like a lot of work :) I've seen a simpler hack that rewrites the EFI firmware to emulate a normal BIOS and then installs vanilla Ubuntu or even Windows on it. http://corey.degrandchamp.com/2011/04/10/flash-google-cr-48-...
My understanding is the Guides are essentially auto-generated by bubbling up top check-in places. Cheers, while corny, is definitely one of those places most tourists go to see when in Boston.
> If you look up the cost of individual medical coverage and the amount of money provided by unemployment insurance.

I've not only looked up the cost, I've paid it while being unemployed (and "old"). What's your relevant experience?

Yes, it cost money, but so does housing and other essentials. My "not healthcare" expenses are very low and yet healthcare wasn't what would push me over the edge. I didn't even bother to shop.
I find the new app much more interesting and useful than the old one. I can now create a "story" for a location and indicate who I'm there with, share pictures together, etc.
The other thing I like is the new "highlights" tagging feature where you can tag locations with various indicators like: watering hole, or GTD, or "Sketchy" to give folks indicators of what's nice (or not so nice) at a location.
When You Want A Level Paper but Have no Experience of Research Writing
Who has never dreamt of getting A level paper? Everybody has but everybody has had situations when he/she failed to write flawless essays or research papers which deserved A.
I believe they are saying that you would have bought the chainsaw, ladder, etc tax-free already, as a business. A tax break would have absolutely no effect on the ability to afford these things in the scenario you described. The "found" money is therefore more analogous to a loan than a tax break.
One of the most common pitfalls is to customize to that first customers business processes without noticing that everybody else does things differently.
Here's the place for longer stronger hair
It may not appeal to everyone, but I've personally never met someone not interested in visiting the cheers bar.

Travel guides are inherently for tourists looking to see these little kitschy places.
> We’re building a social atlas for the world. And we need your help to do it.

This makes me think of Dopplr. As somebody who was using Gowalla purely for the check-in-to-see-where-I've-been aspect, I think I'm going to end up a Foursquare user before long. I guess you have to do what you have to do in order to stay alive and hopefully end up profitable.
Platinum Air Hockey Pro (v0.7) ~ Mobers.ORG | Your Daily Source For Mobile FUN
Dijkstra's Shunting-yard algorithm
You shouldn't. You should at least put some relevant content up to get Googlebot's attention. A simple "We're launching soon" is pretty weak unless you've got some sort of angle (hype, pr, etc) that makes people want to sign up for it.
Wow, a very pleasant read! For someone who was seriously considering doing this I have to admit your perspective is quite admirable.

The only question I am left with is how much did you end up settling for or how long did it take to eventually pay it all off?
I really like this idea:
http://www.chrononsystems.com/post-execution-logging/
What you say about error handling is true enough, but it's just not the whole story.

One problem with C-style error handling is that having error handling at all levels makes it impossible to reuse code without tweaking it. Say you handle an error by printing a warning message to stderr, now you can't reuse that code in anything that doesn't want error messages printed there (maybe it doesn't want errors printed, or it needs to localize them, or it's using stderr for something else like in strace). So error handling in C kill reusability.

Another problem with C-style error handling is that the number of error types increases as you pass the buck up levels, but C doesn't have any good way to express more than one type at a time. Say one function returns true or false and another returns an error constant like errno. When one function calls the other, what do you return at the top level? You could map one to the other, but you've lost maybe important information about the error. So error handling in C kills composability.

And a third problem is documentation. With no standard error types that are known to the compiler it is rarely possible to tell the caller they forgot some error handling.

Exceptions address the first two problems, and checked exceptions the third one. A common misunderstanding of Java checked exceptions is that they force the caller to handle the error, when what they really do is force to caller to document the errors it can generate.
Reversing the latest Facebook changes
> I'm reasonably sure that this is not in fact universally true: that there are plenty of places

I know that you believe that, which is why I posted a link to a description of some relevant (US) federal legislation. (I know that there is other relevant legislation but ....)

As I mentioned, I've paid for individual coverage out of pocket while unemployed (and old). My experience does not match the common stories and I'm pretty sure that I'm not a special snowflake.
For a software startup it is perfectly possible to get off the ground with an outlay <$100 and some of your time. I really don't see the need for dramatic and totally silly strategies like these.

Using one hole to plug another never was a really good idea.
The problem with virtually all technologies that utilize existing copper infrastructure that was built to deliver analog phone service is that it degrades severely over distance and is heavily dependent on the quality of the cabling. Analog voice quality degrades linearly. It doesn't suffer significantly from splicing, repairs, or bridge taps. For data services delivered over these lines, these factors can be catastrophic.
i'm not really well versed in funding or business operations, but this just sounds stupid.
The strength and the weakness of Java is the huge amount of open source code that's out there. Logging is the worst example, but you can find it anywhere. It's not unusual for a modern web application in Java to have five or more JSON codecs built in. PHP might have a stupid API, but PHP programs regularly use json_encode() and json_decode() and you never need to think about different behaviors in corner cases and different ways to deal with the impedance mismatch between static Java and dynamic JSON.