skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A few points:

- Don't worry about scaling, like mixmax said.

- The main focus should be to get the killer-webapp up and running, not getting a CV or trying out new technology. However, you don't have to step far outside the PHP communities to see people shitting on PHP everywhere.

If PHP is the only thing you know, do yourself a favour and widen your horizons. Not necessarily for this particular project, but because when the time comes, and you are getting fed up with PHP's shortcomings, at least you know there is a way out.

Me, myself? I'm a heavily invested C#/.Net developer, but prior to that I have worked with Atmel AVR Assembly, Motorola 68k assembly, Basic, Pascal, Python, Arexx, C, VHDL, Verilog, LabView, Matlab, Java and god knows what. Oh, and yes, PHP.

I may stick to C#, but I know there is another world out there. So should you.
This sounds like a nice solution -- wave a magic wand called "changing the accounting rules", and suddenly everybody will have lots of assets against which to borrow money. Too bad it wouldn't work.

This is exactly what Japan tried: Banks held loans which everybody knew were never going to be paid back, and pretended that they were still worth something. Instead of having a wave of bankruptcies, Japan had a decade where banks weren't willing to loan money to each other because they knew that they couldn't trust each other's balance sheets.

Now, if Sarbanes-Oxley and mark-to-market had never been put into place, it's entirely possible that this financial crisis would have been avoided -- nobody would have ever realized just how bad the situation was. But now that everybody knows that the situation is bad, allowing companies to overvalue their assets won't do anything to help; and might even make the situation worse, since allowing insolvent banks to fudge their accounting would make it impossible to identify the banks which aren't insolvent.
It's OK to compare apples to oranges here, since as I understand it, he tries to decide whether to use "bare" language or a framework.
One of my deciders is how many people are blogging or writing to mailing lists with problems or tutorials or sample code, whatever. Django is really a nice framework, but when you start googling specific issues, e.g. working with an ajax lib or finding/deploying to a VPS/ shared host, ther'es a lot more blog entries on specific issues/techniques that people have used in PHP than in Django. Also true for PHP activity in delicious, subreddits, stackoverflow, and the wall of PHP books at Borders.

You might want to look at the recetn django articles

http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2008/jul/25/top-ten-things-suck-ab...

http://42topics.com/blog/2008/04/five-things-i-hate-about-dj...

http://justin.harmonize.fm/index.php/2008/09/django-round-2/
Is the mobile web, Web 3.0?
I know labels are just that and don't really mean anything else. Interested to hear if people think that mobile web is "Web 3.0"?
To be fair, I have two Computer Science degrees, I'm close to my third, and I had to look it up. Most people I work with right now (who have CS PhDs) would probably need to look it up since they do mostly systems and high performance work.
Is GTK really a benefit compared to Cocoa?
well how many servers do you think digg would need to be run effectively? 20? 50? 100?
I'm sorry, but I have to say that article made little sense to me.

First of all, was writing in that arrogant, insulting tone really necessary? Please. There's no need to insult your readers.

And also: "Unlike my friends at the Free Software Foundation, I believe in choice. At the end of the day though, I’ll keep my iPhone." Is that sarcasm? I found it hard to tell, but I hope it is. Because if anything, 'choice' doesn't come into play anywhere in the iPhone... And his mistrust of Google is completely irrational (well, given his trust of Apple or whatever other smartphone company; personally, I think I would avoid putting all my assets into one company anyway.)

So yeah. Either I failed to understand this article and it was supposed to be funny or a parody, or this is just slightly pointless and aggresive... (Although upon further investigation, if this is by you, unalone, I suppose that's just your writing style, given your profile.)
You guys are doing an outstanding job -- kudos on the steady stream of solid commits.

On a related note, I've actually documented a few of the steps I took in order to deploy . . . I'll send over a pull request for my README.
It is not selfishness nor altruism. It is their execution.

Anyone would be dumb not to see that Google through this project is trying to milk people for ideas for nothing in return.

We all want to help that is true (well besides the psychopaths and that's like 2% of the population) but if someone else is profiting from my help, the way Google most probably would, is just hurtfully cheating.
I think it should be noted that pius is an MIT alum (in EE & CS) so is obviously biased here.
Publictivity Looking for (Rockstar/Ninja Omitted for Overusage) Lead Hacker
wtf? Webminds looks like an unlikely acquirer. Maybe they have good software, but this is the lesson people can take from this:

Webminds: don't use templates from sites like TemplateBox. Your site looks like it distributes spyware.
Do a weekend project in Django and see how it works for you.

It's certainly a good skill to have from an employment point of view - the Django job market has exploded over the past year, see http://www.djangogigs.com/
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2088/2881/320/Herman,%20D... <---
Well,

* The tools to teach yourself are mostly free, for one. If you can invest a few hundred for a computer and have an internet connection (not entirely necessary), you're on board.

* Being so new, Computer Science and Software Engineering have nowhere near the academic clout of these other disciplines for which curricula have been refined for quite some time. Think of it this way: How much woud you have valued a doctor's certification in 1650, or even 1850, compared to today? I don't think that very many people really trust a CS degree in the same way that they do a law or medical one.

* There's a lot to learn, but you can begin to be productive wth very little knowledge of programming. The nature of programming lends the discipline to a master-apprentice style of training over the highly theoretical.
Nokia N96 16GB GPS Smartphone
Nokia’s N96 shell is painted a sleek black that gives it a very serious demeanor. But the exterior is just there to let users know that this phone gets down to business very quickly, offering them instant accessibility to its features. There are hints of color throughout the phone though, proving that the N96 knows proper style.
I'll give it another shot when it gets out of beta

Given Google's beta coughGmailcough record, I wouldn't hold your breath on this one.
"... Alan Kay: Is Computer Science an Oxymoron? ..."

andreyf, great read & thanks for submitting it. You should submit this article.
> You do realize you're comparing apples to oranges right?

They may be different, but the choice is not orthogonal: you can't choose to use django and php for the same piece of code.
In what way was y2k a public policy issue?

And was the "debacle" the bug itself or the over-reaction to it?
"one long main() nested 11 levels deep with if/else and case statements ??"
Come on that's way too easy ! I am currently doing an audit for a big bank, and I have seen a 59 page long method that has 22 nested levels !! No kidding !
I have my "once in a lifetime" DailyWTF nugget.
Note to everyone: USE STARTUPLY.

The interface was great, the questions were the right ones, and it's free. The other companies on there are great ones to be surrounded by. Congrats to them on a great product.
Rather than having the traffic lights sending invisible signals to special receivers, they could just have digital countdown timers, visible from a distance, on both red and green lights.

I've saw a bunch of these in China, but not yet in the USA. (The closest I've seen commonly in the USA are the countdown timers, instead of blinking lights, on more recent pedestrian crosswalk signals.)
A very incomplete summary of the public policy aspect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2K#Government_responses

You can find far more by Googling around. A large number of countries seemed to have mobilized resources, in many cases quite significant.

As to your second question, I was thinking about the over-reaction.
I don't think Carson got top dollar. A skeezy looking spam compan was probably the only one willing to buy with cash.
The Angry Drunk makes his name from that arrogant, insulting tone. He's absolutely at the core of the "Mac elitist" crowd, so people tend to take for granted WHAT his opinions are. They come from the level of rancor he spits at things. Similar to John Welsh, actually.

There was an incident with the FSF where they wrote an article bashing the iPhone for absurd reasons (lack of OGG support was one of the points). The Angry Drunk and Welsh both took a lot of offense to that and bashed them. A member of the FSF posted on Welsh's blog explaining and Welsh ripped him apart. Later, the FSF told people to make appointments with Apple Store Geniuses just to waste their time and raise dissatisfaction, and the Mac community was rather pissed off. The attitude since then has been that the FSF is an attention-whoring little sub-cult that doesn't tolerate dissenting opinions.

The idea of "I believe in choice" means "I'll let people pick whatever phone they want, but I'd never get a Google phone myself." The idea being that he chose the iPhone and he's happy with that choice, and he's fine if you're prefer Android.

Why the mistrusting Google? They are advertisers. And while they're honest advertisers, they're still determined to make as much money selling other people's products as possible. I use their stuff, I'm a big fan of Gmail, but I'd really not want an open system designed by an advertising company. It makes me feel fairly skeevy.

I write my own articles. I link to my blog here, actually, when I feel like people would care about my stuff. For this one, I just thought it was something that would provoke some debate, which it has. (I'd like to think that I'm a bit more sober when I write, but I doubt I'm anywhere near as fun to read.)
A hacker's loneliness
"The computer is more interesting than most people. I love to spend time with my computer. It is fun to write programs for it, play games on it, and to build new parts for it. It is fascinating to try to figure out what part of the program it is in by the way the lights flicker or the radio buzzes.

"...The computer has moved out of the den and into the rest of your life. It will consume all of your spare time, and even your vacation, if you let it. It will empty your wallet and tie up your thoughts. It will drive away your family. Your friends will start to think of you as a bore. And what for?"

Shaken by the break-up of his marriage, Tom Pittman decided to change his habits. And he did. He later described the transformation: "I take a day of rest now. I won't turn on the computer on Sunday.

"The other six days, I work like a dog."

- Hackers, Steven Levy.
I'm sure Windows Safari took a brief dip as well. But the majority of Safari users run OS X, and so there wasn't as large an impact.

There are people who like Safari, you know, for the fact that it's a good browser. And some of those people run Windows.
I wasn't sure if this is appropriate. However, it expresses the loneliness that I, and, I expect, some other hackers, sometimes feel.
Django v php is a strange comparison. Framework vs language.

Python is a nicer language than PHP, and Django is a nice framework. If you already have knowledge of php then you can probably get your app running faster with a php framework such as Symfony.
I can talk to girls just fine, and I can talk to strangers, but I've just ended up dating good friends or random girls from facebook/craigslist in the past. My last ex was a random chick I got into a philosophical argument with about nihilistic value on IRC.

I've just kind of had that sort thing "come to me" naturally. I don't know what the "typical" means of meeting people are.

As for stock lines, I've never needed them, I just strike up conversation. I had a job in sales a few years ago, it trained me to talk to complete strangers without needing pre-rehearsed lines.

Coffeeshop and bookstore are sounding promising. Actually, I'll go do the former now. Thanks for the advice.

P.S. I'm terrible at detecting cues, but face to face has generally been better for me.
Yeah, but their products do generally improve. I have high hopes for Chrome.
I've already noticed something along those lines. Jeeeesus.
"... tend to choose php because I know it, I know it is well supported, it scales without large problems, I can configure it and optimize it without a problem. ..."

Then stick with it.
my email is alnayyir at gmail dot com

Shoot me an email and we'll see how that works.
Yeah. You can't compare a browser coming out the doors for the first time to a major, dominant browser. Of course your results will be skewed.
Allowing fraud to continue is not an alternative.
Ask YC: SBIR, STTR?
Has anyone in the HN community taken money through the government's SBIR (small business innovation research) or STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs? In casually chatting with someone today and telling them what our startup's goals are, I was told, "Hey, you should look into SBIR and STTR." The person with whom I was chatting didn't really know much past passing a reference though so I'm wondering if anybody on HN can provide some enlightenment.
Good to see the article, but isn't this old news? I'm certain I've seen this on YC-funded sites before, and ReCaptcha is ancient at this point.
If you know it, stick with PHP...you can create your app rapidly instead of picking up the nuances of a new language/framework. While there are a lot of criticisms of the language, the fact is there are tons of resources available if(when?) you need it.

And, reiterating what some of the other posters have said, don't worry about the scaling. A well designed app in PHP or Django or Java or Rails (Twitter failed because of its flawed design...not because Rails sucks) or whatever else will scale.
10 years of google
Google launches Moderator on App Engine (ask Guido von Rossum or Ken Thompson a question)
No. I don't think there IS a Web 3.0, but if there is I think it's cloud computing to a degree that we can't imagine yet because there's nothing available to interpret such a thing in its pure form. Mobile web is something else entirely, though it certainly does have a bright future ahead of it.
My guess is that CS degrees are not valued because most of them are not particularly valuable.

The average CS department would flunk out most of their students, whither away, and die if they demanded the level of ability that MIT or Berkeley (for example) demand. It would be better for the industry as a whole if this were to happen, but not for the instructors teaching in those average CS departments.

Top schools can afford to be demanding because they have talented people trying to get in. Top schools can afford to teach theory and start with Scheme, because their students have some trust in them. If Unknown U's CS department started with SICP and Scheme, a bunch of their students would go "This is useless!" and leave, so they use Java.

As it stands, a motivated self learner who buys and reads the textbooks used by top schools is likely to end up knowing far more CS than the average person with a CS degree. Of course, this same motivated self learner, if they got a CS degree, would probably also end up knowing far more CS than the average person with a CS degree. Net result? You need to judge each individual on their own merits, and most CS degrees won't give you any shortcuts.
You are right about distinguishing between CS & SE. At least here in New Zealand there is a distinction between the two. I have a BE (software eng), which is internationally accredited, rather than a BSc (CS). The SE degree involves general engineering courses, and has a reasonable focus on reliabiliy, quality, safety etc. A degree like this makes you eligible for the professional engineering body IPENZ.

There is a mismatch between the education and what employers seem to look for. You see jobs titled "software engineer" that really only want an html/js coder or someone to set up a wiki, requesting CS degrees or equivalent experience. Jobs that really do demand rigourous software practices will hire anything they can get, but again mainly looking for CS degrees.

> Personally, I still think a CS degree is the best preparation right now to be a professional SE.
I have to disagree. The best prep for a professional SE career is a professional SE degree, and then joining a professional body. Sure you can get a CS degree and become a programmer, that's fine. But you aren't really a professional engineer are you?

I'd say that there are reliable methodologies to build software but a lot of times these are not executed in any meaningful fashion. For the price people are willing to pay, and the time they will wait, quality software is not what they want. They may say they want quality, but they don't really. They really want something delivered yesterday, for free or cheap, that works most of the time and does most of the things they want. And this is what cowboys (uh... I mean "software engineers") deliver.

I don't really like the bridges analogy. The complexity and environment are too different for it to be meaningful when compared to software. Thing is, bridges have a well defined function, the banks don't move, the load is generally known (vehicles, people, etc) and so a stable structure can be delivered. And besides, plenty of bridges collapse. If there is an earthquake, or they are overloaded, or they get old, they topple.
Parallels - virtualization means less machines, means less energy. PageSender - helping offices go paperless w/ digital faxing. I'm not sure about the other apps though.
Because time and time again people with a formal education in computer science have turned out to be useless in the commercial arena.

Let's face facts most programming is not rocket science and could easily be automated. The reason it has not been automated is that programmers by and large are Luddites. They can admire new gadgets but not seismic changes in their work environment.

Anybody who has had the where with all to study for a BSc/MSc/PhD then most work in a commercial setting is going to be far far beneath their intellectual capabilities.

In short Compu Sci is best for a research role and commercial dev experience is best for producing a product. The two are widely different beasts.

Personally, I have BSc in CompuSci and work in the commercial sector. I think both Academia and Commercial use of computers is abysmal. The last big step forward was in the 1960s for Academia and 1980s for business. Since then it's all been downhill.

I have recent compu sci grads who cannot design a simple 8 bit cpu, what's an ALU. This is just plain wrong. I also have witnessed commercial developers who don't know how to treat clients. In both cases why are these people even bothering to work in computing?

Most devs still think inheritance is more important than interface. Just how far forward can we move with these fools slowing us down.

I think what it will take to move forward is a company saying if we do IT better we can rule the market. Then finding some devs and ops with long experience and fresh ideas.

When a billion dollar company shows it can run it's IT with 20 people then we have progressed. Not when some dweeb says he has a new programming language that goes to 11.
Wait. Are you saying that your friends' being able to get away with not doing shit is a GOOD thing for larger companies?
"It has to do with how smart and how much practice the person has"

Well the person who didn't get a degree has 4+ years of practice on the person who spent that time at Univ.

And who's to say the smart ones tend to decide a degree isn't worth the time and expense?
Fair enough. Although still, I fail to see how Google being an advertising company makes it any better or worse than any other company?

The only possible Google-related complaint I can see towards Android (ignoring the usual, tech-wise complaints) is that since it's made by Google maybe it will have advertising... Or something along the lines of that? But I haven't seen or heard anyone saying anything about ads on Android, so I don't think Android being made by Google is any worse than Mac OSX for iPhone being made by Apple.

Quite the opposite, since at least Android gives you some sort of freedom in the source.

And speaking of the FSF - I have to agree, they do seem a bit like crazy cultists sometimes. Stallman, for instance.
My mom runs an sbir funded company and it has really worked out well for her. It takes a while to get up to speed as a business - you start out writing phase 1 proposals that will give you 100K for a project, and you might get funded ten percent of the time. But once you have the phase 1, you have maybe a one in two shot of making it to a phase 2 grant, which is funded at a much higher rate.

But keep in mind that you would be doing government contracting, and there are a lot of hoops that you have to go through, like doing accounting the government way, filing out reports and the like. So it is a big undertaking.

Anyway, you can drop me a line if you want to know more. And my mom is always looking for collaboraters, but her focus is in x-ray and neutron detectors...
"(Rockstar/Ninja Omitted for Overusage)" is not omitting Rockstar/Ninja. It is, in fact, using both.
How to help a computer user watch a long video while doing other things?
Any ideas?
A person that makes 1k/year will hardly be able to buy a PC.

That person will probably not know how to use a computer, read or understand English.
Drunkenness and ranting should not go together...if you want to put together sentences that contain a modicum of sense.

I give it a D for spelling, C for enlightened anger, and a B+ for trolling.
Fast food hits Mediterranean; a diet succumbs
"... Americans did not start out as deluded optimists. The original ethos, at least of white Protestant settlers and their descendants, was a grim Calvinism that offered wealth only through hard work and savings, and even then made no promises at all. You might work hard and still fail; ..."

Sounds familiar.
The problem I have is that not only I both love to spend time with it, but that I know that I should be spending time with it to get the product done faster. Sometimes it may be fun, exciting, etc. but sometimes it's just an obligation.
I think I speak for every UK limited company contractor when I say "Shit."

Thanks for the heads-up, I imagine this will have a lot of impact on a lot of UK people here.
I wouldn't say it pales. OK, this is kind of like comparing apples and oranges, but still:

Leopard:

port list | wc -l
5038

Tiger:

fink list | wc -l
8111

Ubuntu 8.04:

apt-cache pkgnames | wc -l
33720

So the number of packages is 5-6x smaller, but most common/useful packages are present. Also you should take into account that many packages present in ubuntu don't mean anything in OS X. And for example there are for example tons of python packages in Ubuntu, all/most of which can be easily installed through easy_install :-)

Let's compare how up to date the packages are:

port info cmake
cmake 2.6.1, devel/cmake (Variants: universal)
...

apt-cache show cmake
...
Version: 2.4.7-1build1
...

So based on sample of 1 package we can see that MacPorts is more up to date than Ubuntu. Joking aside, cmake really matters to me...
MYOB Interactive Manual
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