skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reality of the situation is that a party with 10, 100, 1000, 10000, and 100000 people feel completely different. With social dynamics being what they are it's difficult to invite everyone and still retain the atmosphere sought by the planner. I have no insight into the mindsets of the planners but I have a feeling the situation is probably the result of the realities of party planning rather than a desire to exclude certain individuals, or a class of individuals.

The situation with the B-list party could probably have been handled better with regard to musical talent and an obvious discrepancy between the talent invited.
Google+ invites have never been restricted to Gmail users.
This is the exact page I was trying to find for days! I thought Mr. Hipp posted this somewhere on sqlite.org... Thank you dchest so much!
FLOSS Weekly interview with Richard Hipp:

http://twit.cachefly.net/FLOSS-026.mp3

"SQLite, an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine."
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The last time the government tried that, we got the Telecom Deformation Act of 1996. Given the spectacular success that was, what exactly makes you think that trying to do the exact same thing now would lead to a better outcome? Is the idea that Comcast and Verizon will, out of the goodness of their hearts, abandon all lobbying efforts and fire all their lawyers instead of lobbying and suing like crazy? Do you think that large corporations LOVE competition?
I think you're close, but missing something: The companies who wouldn't do this are run by developers or other people who don't interact much with the actual users. Irreversible actions are horrible UX, and any irreversible action in a commonly used area of the app will make a large number of people steaming mad on a daily basis — guaranteed.

People who will blithely click "Delete" — and then click "Yes" even though they don't mean it on the confirmation dialog that comes up — vastly outnumber people who care that an invisible copy of their content might be buried in some Facebook database somewhere. Next to the unintentional deleters, the second group looks like a rounding error. And that's not even counting people who get their accounts hijacked.

So I would say people who know users are more likely to go with the delete flag, since that leaves you an avenue to help the user who emails support with "I got really drunk last night at the wake and thought it might be funny to delete everything on my Facebook and now all my photos of my dead Nanna are gone."
True, unless you only go to Facebook on Ingonito. In which case all of the Facebook cookies would be deleted once you close the window.
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there.the issue got resolved.are you good now?
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Small non-exclusive company rails against big companies who shield their developers / have become exclusive, news at 7.

I'm all for companies that can keep developers and engineers up at the front, being deeply technical involved and interacting with their communities. But that's not going to be all companies, and Facebook in particular is one of those companies that is by their nature a closed system that builds itself not out in public (ala, say Mozilla), but through the proxy of press releases and new features dropped onto users' and 3rd partys' laps.

The other big factor I'd pitch would be consistency: how much technical content is there, and what amount is appropriate for a developer to be showing off? If the event is not inherently a technical event, a fifteen or thirty minute segment from a developer might seem really out of place. Developers are to be respected, but Facebook isn't a technical company, it's a networking company.
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I can confirm it does run on a single binary. I used Fossil for weeks, and its internals are just plain beautiful -- so much actually it almost makes me write websites in C++. (I know Fossil is in C.)
This is awesome -- a wise man.

However he is only able to do this because he writes in C. Python and Ruby are not slow, but they have terrible startup time, which causes a huge amount of overhead for CGI. They probably do 1,000,000x the work of a C program before getting to main(). I bet he statically links his binaries (or at least has few dependencies on share objects) because that has a pretty big cost too.

I wonder if he writing the CGIs in Lua would have the same efficiency. In Lua you would pretty much have to fork because it doesn't have threads and the interpreter is not thread-safe (no global interpreter lock). Or maybe v8 would work too.
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Kinda weird that this extension requires more access to your data (e.g. history) than the previous one. Surely they do the same thing? Note that I'm not questioning the authors motives/integrity...it just strikes me as somewhat random & ironic.
This guy has obviously never worked for Facebook, and so has no idea how Facebook treats its engineers. Not getting invited to a particular f8 afterparty (which sounds like it was Spotify's deal and not Facebook's), is peanuts compared to the level of respect and power they are given within the company every day.
I skimmed the headline at first and thought it said "How The "IT Crowd" Hijacked Silicon Valley". Boy was I in for a disappointment.
I live in SV for two years now (moved from NY, and from Ukraine before that). You can send a cold e-mail to almost anyone here asking for advice, and if you're polite, sound intelligent, and have sensible expectations, nine times out of ten you'll get a meeting. I'm talking about people whose bank accounts are as large as budgets of some small countries. These folks do it because they genuinely love the startup world and want to help out. This sort of openness is unheard of in the finance world in NY, for example.

Some people are inaccessible (you likely won't get a meeting with Steve Jobs by sending a cold email), but it's an exception rather than the rule. I also suspect it has more to do with his schedule than his attitude (unlike other parts of the world).

That being said, people will be people, and there's plenty of VIP-type nonsense going on here. The thing is, you can't think of these things in absolutes - you have to compare with the rest of the world, and SV is by far the most open place I've ever seen. That being said, I'd really like the culture of disrespect for the respectable here to get even stronger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kirzr6lnSs&feature=playe...
@brockf - I'm putting together a list of Startup Success stories, and your story sounds like one people might be interested in. Would you be willing to write a quick summary of your experiences? You can reply here or email me at bryan.parker24@gmail.com.
Can I follow the advanced track at my own pace without being forced to participation? The advanced track of all of these classes seem to require participation, which I can't guarantee on their timeline right now.. (yay startup life!)
I've tried searching for a list of Stanford's online open enrollment courses and haven't found anything. Is there a website that details their course offerings and a list of planned courses?
Ultimately both parties weren't planned by the same people.
I followed the "Shen 1.7 available" link, which points to https://groups.google.com/group/qilang/browse_thread/thread/.... I have always been prompted to login when going to Google Groups threads; I don't know about others. I'd be very happy if there were a way around it.

(If I'd noticed QiLang in the URL, I guess I would have had a better idea about what I was seeing ….)
I completely agree with this, countless times it has been variables with the slightly wrong name, or forgetting to upload on filezila, or one of many small mistakes that afterwards seem obvious but cause a lot of frustration.

One comment that I saw on the original thread was talking to people. I wanted to highlight this because it has helped me more times than anything else. Even explaining step by step what my program should do to my girlfriend, who has very little computer expertise in general and usually gives me a blank stare, can help a lot.

I remember finding an image on reddit a while back of a programmer laboring over his code for hours only to find a greater than which was supposed to be a less than sign, my thought was 'a mistake we will all learn again and again'.
I agree that developers are given a lot of power. Trust me that I know of the company well as I covered it daily for four years. That doesn't mean community events should be divided.
How much of this kind of thing is a by-product of marketers as well? I've seen more then a few events where the people who actually did the development were excluded to accommodate business partners and clients. It's not that marketing necessarily wants to exclude developers, but space and resources are limited, and socializing is an important tool in the marketer tool kit. Not that I condone this (having been on both sides of this equation), but it does speak to the shifting sands of prioritizing the goals of these kinds of events (is it a company celebration to thank employees, or a marketing event?)
No worries; thanks. There isn't a multiple-choice section for changing the look of the site, but the CSS code that determines the look is pretty clearly laid-out. I'd advise two things: 1) only change one thing at a time, and 2) before you begin, make a copy of the CSS file so you can always reset if you need to.
Heck, most programmers don't use bash scripts.
patio11, your thoughts? I think you sell directly to teachers.
My mentor once said to me "Don't show me how clever you are by writing complex software. Show me how clever you are by making complex software simple"

Those words echo in my head daily
I don't know what the term for those sites is. Something like http://nopaste.info/.
How do you plan to implement file encryption in JS?
"Why All Employees Should Be VIPs At Your Company"

Been visiting Lake Wobegon recently I see.
Are there any tell tale signs that help you notice these types of bugs faster? I am learning Ruby on Rails but I assume there is some type of continuity with how this rears its head between languages.

I will definitely experiment with the tips posted above - I am learning Github which could be useful for this I think, but do you recommend any simple tools for showing someone who is remote your code? The issue with copy/pasting is figuring out which code is relevant to show someone.

Thanks for your insightful comment.
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To me it appears to be nothing more than a redesign of the traditional wall?

Yes, I understand the concerns about the "sharing" of information--something which I think people don't quite understand yet--but other than that I feel like people are up in arms over nothing.
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all of the major developer conferences (IO, f8, etc.) have been hijacked by marketing, PR and BD people.

they forgot what these conferences are supposed to be about
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I agree with the fact a hard delete may have unintended effects, even in the best design, but in my ideal world I'd rather make allowances for that than simply offer my users the illusion I'm deleting their data.

I think that may be a view shared between developers who care about ethical practices, where our personal ideals and how we think we should respect the user takes precedence over the data collection and profit motive.

I think it's important to remember websites are dealing with actual people, who aren't a new commodity to be exploited for capital gain. Who aren't little mines full of precious data ready to extract at any cost.

Of course, none of this really matters. Whether you delete something or not, it will be routinely stored, over and over again, on some backup server. It's there forever.
> doesn't mean the methodology isn't pseudo-scientific.

I didn't claim otherwise. I simply provided one data point that was different from the one expressed by the person I was replying to. I didn't claim the test was scientific or accurate. (Note: Precise != Accurate. And it was only precise in my case, not in general.)
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I want to know how the author of this blog with the VERY FIRST POST mocking (no pun intended) TDD (meanwhile the domain name suggests it SUPPORTS TDD) gets so much publicity. Who is you really Mister Peter Sergeant? http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?domain=writemoretests.com&...
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These thoughts are, of douse, why I've kept my distance. The alternative (playing in the rules) only sees to work if you've got 10+ digit incomes. I'm trying to find the third option.
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Is it clear whether these open courses will be repeated in the future or if they are mainly tests before starting to charge ?
It is wonderful that they are freely available but can it really be a permanent thing and what does Stanford gain ?
Thanks very much Philip - hope your son's website-building goes well, with or without a hangover!
Does anybody knows the efficacy of the pomodoro technique in a scientific context? It's one thing to proclaim that it help you overcome arisaka, it's another to have it proven in a rigorous scientific experiment.

Meanwhile, I am sticking to culling useful self improvement advice from self help books that have scientific grounding(citation, written by neuroscientist/psychologist, etc).

Also, don't forget to use a spaced repetition system software to learn useful content like scientific self-help books.
I highly doubt Facebook went with the delete flag because of the customer service perspective.
@brackin Thanks for the comment. Both fair points. I submitted it because I thought it might be helpful for experienced people who keep getting asked for help. The six hours refers to my (fairly leisurely - read non-specialist) pace; I didn't factor in propagation because I was just counting the time taken by the creator.

[Edit: reposted so it's threaded with the original comment.]
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You have to separate business events from community events. I never take offense to not being invited to a business event, even one held in-house, where management is looking to schmooze with potential investors, partners and clients. Management rehearses what type of interaction they're going to have, with whom, for how long and what the content of the conversation will be (or at least they should be rehearsing), and to be honest, those plans need not be shared with developers nor should developers/sales/support/operations be rubbing elbows in the same room with prospects.

It's a business, not an egalitarian democracy. We all know some numbnuts will get drunk and embarrass themselves and the company. It's easier to avoid the potential of that happening by restricting the invite list to only the strategically important people. As a developer, I never considered myself to be such. Also, I never invite my boss to any of my parties, so whatever.

As far as the marketing/biz dev/party planner people us concerned, they're a necessary evil who more often than not display asshole behavior of the kind described in the post, but as a developer you should ask yourself if your life is worth working with/for people who's great idea is a car-sharing service with the need for a VIP room.
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In the past ... the PR people used to actually communicate to us that the event was just as much a celebration to thank employees as promoting the company.
So let me get this straight, only white listed websites (not apps, websites) will have content shared from them?

If that is the case this whole thing is overblown. We were all thinking that BuddyApp would be able to publish your generalized browsing. Which is terrifying for a whole host of reasons.
So thing X about thing Y, organized initially by and for people of type Y, has over time been hijacked by people who are X experts.

If Marketing, PR and BD hijacked a programming competition, I'd be surprised. If they hijack a conference about anything, not so much.
Excuse me, there are a couple of entire continents getting tired of that! Or should I assume you talked out of the same frustration?
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This is also called the Worse is Better philosophy, and is something that grows more and more attractive to me over the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
It means Facebook lives on Facebook.com only.

If you need it to appear anywhere else temporarily then you use the AdBlock switch to temporarily whitelist a site or domain.
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I took this class from Prof. Widom at Stanford. It was...meh.

Are SQL triggers still relevant? How much relational algebra do you really need to know? I think I've used this stuff maybe once since then.
I agree. I've already just replied to another reply on this but dealt more with the ethics of the matter.

What I would actually implement is something akin to the recycle bin in an OS. Flag something as deleted, ensuring it's no longer published in whatever form on the website. Optionally, delete it properly after a set period of time, or otherwise allow the users to manually perform that action.

In addition to that, log the delete actions along with the IDs of the deleted items. So if after all that the user regrets it and files a complaint, you can trawl through your backups to restore it.

Irreversible actions in the UI are bad. Having no choice but to tell the customer tough luck is bad. Deceiving the user is also bad.

Of course I'll concede my ideals are more compatible with the concept of deleting an entire user account, for example, as opposed to removing individual items associated with. But I don't think everyone else's intents are as pure as yours.
thanks for the tips, those were very helpful :)
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It appears to me from afar that Facebook has forgotten one of the most important rules of the Valley. When you start ignoring the contributions of developers the better ones leave.

http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...
I am waiting for Go to get an implementation... Looks like it should happen http://groups.google.com/group/spdy-dev/browse_thread/thread...
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Sadly, Incognito Mode also doesn't work with extensions like 1Password (indispensable for me)
Your reply is spot on, but wasn't the time raise this issue 7 years ago when Rails was released? Or maybe earlier if Java frameworks were self-described as MVC? To try to push Model2 now seems like an impossible task with almost no reward. It's like complaining about common usage of the word "hacker". It serves no one to take up arms, just let it be and move forward. Maybe coin a new term.
When I was a college student I worked on the other end of this: a faculty member and I were technical consultants for the University as they were evaluating some software systems. Let me just say: colleges can be a pain in the neck. There is a TON of regulation on higher education (from student-related regulation, FERPA sort of stuff to financial regulations on grant money and such) which can be a big barrier to entry.

I don't know enough about your niche to say anything definitive (and I'm not really an expert, anyway) but I was working on selecting a research and export control system and there was a ton of regulatory policy we had to learn/consider. I'd say you should start by talking with faculty members who are directly involved with the process to see what you're getting into.

The one question that was pretty constant across the departments I worked with was "How long will this company be around, and what is our support commitment?" Universities usually avoid spending money on IT if they can, so they want a product that is going to be well-supported. Switching solutions is costly, so that makes them fairly risk-averse as well.

In addition, the procurement processes are usually bureaucratic nightmares, but that's the same with large companies :)
Thanks for the link to the licensing requirements. To comply with the law, I think we will call whatever we are selling artwork, so we do not need to get a permit. I like the poem store idea.
This is probably from somebody domain camping the url, and for some reason powering it with Google App Engine. Nevertheless, the irony is striking.
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Of all the things out there this is what I am supposed to be scared about?

Pluueeaase! I am far more concerned about governments operating in the dark and private enterprises supporting governments in hiding their actions.
Blaming your customers for failure is never a good idea.

I looked into doing a K12 school related startup and quickly concluded that it was a no go. The only money is in school budgets and the sales cycle is just too long and onerous.

The probability of success for an Edtech startup is inversely related to its proximity to schools.
In case somebody doesn't know D. Richard Hipp not only wrote SQLite, the SQL engine used in iPhone, Chrome browser and who knows where else, he also put that in public domain.

Moreover, SQLite increases the executable only around 260 KB. That was one of the design goals!
High-traffic websites ? He said quarter-million requests a day, so 3 requests per second (and inetd forks a process per connection, not per HTTP request).
Whether they do it now or not, but a few years ago they actually demanded that info (or some other form of valid ID such as your driving license) if you wanted to start a page and add music to it.

I was in a band back then. Set up the page, tried to add my own band's music, and was told I had to provide valid ID first.
The best designs have both clean abstractions and small/simple implementations.

If you have a clean abstraction but a complicated implementation, then there are probably lots of moving parts and sub-steps that can go wrong. No user is completely isolated from implementation: take shell completions for example. Shell completions are this nice simple interface -- push "TAB" and the shell will help you out if it can. But because there is so much machinery going on in the background, a slow or unavailable NFS volume (for example) can make your completion suddenly grind to a halt, even if you don't care about that NFS volume right now.

What Richard is talking about in this example is having as little extraneous stuff going on as possible. The fewer moving parts, configuration files, commands you have to run, etc. the less there is to understand, the fewer states the entire system can be in, and the fewer sub-steps there are that can go wrong.

The hallmark of a truly great abstraction is that it gives you the functionality you need without getting in your way, and that higher-level abstractions can be layered on top without the lower-level abstraction getting in the way.
Thanks for sharing the video. That guy is an amazing salesman. It reminds about the mantra: It's not about the idea, it's the execution that matters.
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I agree, they are sending more info than they need to, in the same way Apple didn't need to store these data for so long or back them up on a computer. In both cases I don't think there is malice, but it's good people actually check what is going on and force vendors to take privacy seriously.