skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
W00t, congrats guys, and you're gonna make me regret that I didn't join back last February. :-)
Using closures really hides them.

Just think about this, I know a fellow programmer (A C fan), that used to pun another one (his best friend A C++ guru) - so the former used to have this:

#define private public
#define protected public

This just shows how fragile the protection of member variables in C++ is (side effect of the pre-processor).

After all, good C++ books recommend hiding data through other means (pointer that points to structure not published anywhere else (like in a library))
I'll add too that you don't need to credit all your ideas in general. There are three factors I can think of that play into this.

The first is the genre you're writing/idea-using within. Academic scholarship has pretty stringent standards for citation, Dave Barry's humor columns, not so much.

The second is the degree to which you depend on the idea. If some idea is at the heart of your work, you should acknowledge it gratefully (and possibly pay license fees for it, depending on the idea's status in your jurisdiction).

The third is the degree of obviousness in your genre. You don't have to cite anyone to prove that 1+1 is 2, unless your name is Peano or Russell and you're working on mathematical meta-logic. Nobody owns common knowledge.

Because karma has been floating around as an idea on moderated-discussion forums on the Internet for a long time (since the Bronze Age of the Internet, if you will), it's pretty obvious. There are also pretty low standards for citation in the webapp world.

And if you want to go further back, who's to say Slashdot didn't steal "karma" after hearing "Karma Police" one too many times, and Radiohead had "Instant Karma" in the back of their head? And John Lennon there is obviously referring to a Hindu system of beliefs that was thousands of years old and will probably outlast all of us.

My point is that there is no way to be completely original. We are all subjugated by the tyranny of profound ideas. You just have to learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.
> Well we almost agree don't we? :)

I am sure we can agree on something :)

My point (which is based on a relevant experience) is - don't release anything to the public unless you are certain it will get traction. If you want to validate the feature set or your market positioning, do a closed release.

A lot of people tend to underestimate the importance of the initial public release. It is a single, most important natural milestone in the lifetime of a product, so it needs to be handled with an utmost care.

Staying in a stealth mode and keeping your product and its idea confidential has multiple benefits. Most importantly, it allows you to build a competitive entry barrier, which in turn gives you time after the launch to scoop up users and establish yourself as a leader on your target market segment. Disclose your idea too early and you will tip off your competitors, so by the time you have it polished and working, it already gets replicated.

The "release-early, release-often" is an open source mantra, it rarely applies to the competitive start-up environment.
seems that the names Jobs and Gates are getting closer to being used interchangeably.
You can stick public functions onto your object while you're in the constructor, that makes any variables local to the constructor available only via said public method, effectively capturing them in the closure created by the inner function. After the constructor dies, its environment is kept alive by any of those functions and it acts exactly like private instance variables in your other common OO languages.
good to hear you guys are sticking around for a little bit.
he needs to pay the bills
Why would anyone make Joe Average use Textile anyway when there are plenty of rich text editors available? Many (most?) have button bars Joe would be familiar with if he's ever used MS Word (which most Joes have). And again, many are cheap, free, and/or Open Source.

A properly configured app that filters user input doesn't need to require users to know any markup languages at all. So why?

Stop thinking like geeks and think like users.
Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/70yy8/dropbox_gd...

Digg: http://digg.com/software/Dropbox_GDrive_Killer_finally_launc...

Already at the top of digg!
Global Warming to Cause More... Kidney Stones
Congrats. I envy you.

Someone may have asked this, and if so, could you point me to your response. Did you tell your corporate job that you were leaving to pursue your own startup when they asked why you were voluntarily leaving?

I wonder if it's better to be 100% honest about this when leaving your day job. Does anyone have any advice on handling this situation?
Because he loves bitching about how fucked up everybody else is.
This seems to imply that in 5 years (or less) time, we can expect the music industry in its current form to collapse in on itself?

Or am I reading too much into this? Otherwise it might not be too bad a time to start thinking about what Music Industry 2.0 might look like...
I think if you're actually interested in encryption, your best bet is actually not to wait on us to help you with it. If we're cooperating with you to encrypt your data, it's by definition not secure. A number of security-conscious users use us combined with TrueCrypt volumes.
I've found that many power users prefer the precise control that Textile (or bare HTML/CSS) provide. They really take advantage of the ability to specify floats, margins, and the like.

I've tried supporting both Textile and 3rd party wysiwyg, but it just gets to be a hassle when multiple users try to edit the same thing. They wysiwyg outputs some pretty gross HTML, which the Textile users then have to deal with.

Still, if all you offer is very basic formatting, then a wysiwyg rich text editor is an excellent choice.
Misleading absentee ballot application forms sent by McCain
I think the data from Microsoft's effort to get people to upgrade to ie7 over the last few years is pretty compelling. IE6 seems to be holding on-- presumably because most people don't really see it as broken or needing dramatic improvement.
Congrats! I'll pass the word around and see if I can't get some more people to sign up.
Why the LHC will see the Higgs: Peter Higgs vs Stephen Hawking
Heh-- Office does cost, tho I think MS does a stellar job of hiding it. Of course, they are trading one "suck" for another. Web based Office efforts are pretty freakin' painful, IMO.
Haha, you win. I'm signing up. Thanks for the reply!
I missed where "MobileMe" was an essential component of iTunes.

And this isn't a problem of "testing them all". It's not like there's 4 rogue configurations floating around in the Windows ecosystem. It's TENS of THOUSANDS of people, and the problem falls well within what should be standard pre-release testing.

And I think people would be far less upset if it weren't for the fact that Apple tries to pretend it doesn't do things like install bloatware.
.. any remember RealNetworks?

I still suffer nightmares from it.

Just the other day I really wanted to watch an online presentation, yet it insisted I installed realplayer. I was considering it, as I really wanted to watch this particular presentation, but unfortunately I just could not bring myself to going through that again.
You're hand waving, and there was no flaw in my thinking. C doesn't scare me and I use many languages, and that still has no bearing on the point of the conversation. C is a maintainability nightmare compared to lighter weight scripting languages. That fact stands on its own.

There are "C folk" who won't use anything else because they're stuck in the rut of only thinking of execution speed, pointing that out is not a flaw, it's a fact.
History of Graphic Design
You can do exactly the same thing in Lua, too.
Indeed.

I think this is a nice article - but it can be summed up by: why do (open source) project fork? For lots and lots of reasons.

I guess the lesson is, if you're heavily invested in an open source project, you might want to think about how you'd deal with a (perhaps inevitable) fork.
Going Beyond a Simple Thank You | ServiceLive Blog
Canonical to fund upstream Linux usability improvements
...And yet, you never address one of my counterpoints. Well played.
Congratulations! You have no idea how much I envy you right now. Even with the hardships that will come, you will be free. Free! I'm currently in the middle of saving up my own money and though I still have a ways to go, it feels even further away by the minute.

Make an appropriate mixtape for the occasion. It's time to rock.
> there is no actual evidence that reducing CO2 from man-made sources would in fact modify global temperature.

There is no evidence that such a modification in temperature would be a bad thing, either.

Basically, it's just a stack of assumptions. I'm not saying it's necessarily false or anything, but I find it strange to see supposedly intelligent, rational-minded, etc. people (= "hackers") step into this one as easily. Let's question all those assumptions first, would you?
Fantastic! Now if I could only get the Linux app to work with my Aspire One I'll be in heaven (libgio-2.0.so.0 is a missing dependency).
In terms of operation or in terms of updates? In terms of operation, everything continues to work fine (where everything is not literal, but nothing significant).
Here's an image I turned up: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarretmichael/2846819173/
This is interesting - For me what will be the fascinating to see is how they tackle this from technical, community and business perspectives.

At the very least will give some insights into the challenges on increasing usability in Linux (I find it hard to find two people who agree on how "usable" Linux is, let alone on the challenges) - and at the best introduce some significant improvements.
My favourite 419 eater story: http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm

You don't have to read it (although it is hilarious), just check the pictures :-)
This is awesome; exactly what I've been looking for.

Congrats on the launch!
Honda and Yamaha to Make Electric Motorcycles in 2010-2011
I work rearry hard and make up great prans

But nobody ristens, no one understands

Seems like no one takes me serirousry

And so I'm ronery

(I tried to resist...)
That's not much harder in C or Java, given appropriate enum declarations:

public int days_in_month(month) {
switch(month) {
case JAN:
case MAR:
case MAY:
case JUL:
case AUG:
case OCT:
case DEC:
return 31
case APR:
case JUN:
case SEPT:
case NOV:
return 30;
case FEB:
if(leap_year()) return 29; else return 28;
}
}

Pattern-matching really shines when you need to destructure the argument, then do something similar to the result regardless of which case resulted in the destructuring. For example, compare red-black trees written in Java:

http://www.docjar.com/html/api/java/util/TreeMap.java.html

vs. those written in Haskell:

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/data/RedBlackTree.html

The rebalancing code in Java is 80 lines long. The rebalancing code in Haskell is 6.
I like the term Karma, I always thought Mojo would have made a good phrase aswell.
I actually received a 419 scam in the post the other day; it was sent from the UK. I thought 419ers had entirely switched to the internet, but apparently not. I don't know how they got my address though, I can only assume it's because of my business being listed in the public directory.
It's nicely done!
I'm not sure that I like the fact that the text doesn't mean anything... I guess it's in purpose so that you have to look at the words and not type mechanically for words you know but at the same time, I spend a lot more time figuring out what is going on...
I have found that if you do your homework and use well targeted ads you will make much more using non-PPC advertising.
edit: I was avoiding introducing too many new acronyms, but I was suggesting CPA

Let's say you use some sort of program and get paid per lead - I would suggest CJ/Linkshare/Neverblueads[1]. Then track the ads well, see which work and fit in with your site. Look for a clickthrough rate of at least 0.10% (although depending on how you display/cycle the ads this could be off). Then from there look to have a conversion rate of definitely better than 1/10, aim for about 1/3.

If you work in those numbers (probably your first attempt will be about half that), you will make more than PPC. You will also completely control how you serve ads and not be bound by the conditions of something like adsense.

I used to work for a major website, and they tended to make more per click on their ad campaigns that were revenue sharing than PPC as well.

Because of how behind the times the ad industry is in terms of AJAX sites, I really doubt you will find someone who allows you to change the ads in the method you desire.

[1]http://www.neverblueads.com/signup?ref=aff_66639 if you want to signup (that would give me a referral). It is pretty highly rated.
I love Dropbox, but I've also used Foldershare across all my PCs (and friend's PCs) for years now and it's been great.

I prefer Dropbox now (it's superior), but I never felt like this wasn't something I didn't have access to beforehand.
Is there an API such that an automated service could detect that someone shared a folder with it? Failing that, is there a Linux command-line client?
Certificate Of Destruction
I have that book, and I am a big fan of Forth.

It's not unusual now for some of my source files to be more comments than code, the comments explain my intent and the assumptions I have made.

I'm gonna call a function french_onion_soup tomorrow just for larks :-)
Fire breaks out in Channel Tunnel
Data harvesting with MapReduce
> For a webapp where you don't have any page reloads, the exsting google adsense is pretty useless.

You could just auto-refresh the javascript using an iframe if necessary. That would solve that problem at least, although it may raise some additional ones.
Define rip Safari out of Mac. Safari is nothing but a shell for WebKit, the HTML renderer. (+ JS and a lot of other things.) You can probably delete Safari no problem, although it'll probably reinstall with system updates.

You can't pull WebKit out of Mac since it's used in all kinds of programs. The least of which is iTunes for their iTunes Store.
DropBox did release early, though, didn't they? Just not publicly. My understanding was they did iterate a lot with early testers.
“If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.” - Woody Allen
Congrats on the release! Just got an invite yesterday and believe this is a truly great product that provides end-users a beautiful experience.
On the other hand, a driver is supposed to be a low-level interface to hardware. iTunes is not adding a new CD/DVD burner, so why would it presume to know more about the operation of your CD/DVD burner than the manufacturer, who presumably wrote the driver already installed on the system?
The moment where "MobileMe" became part of iTunes was precisely when they decided to make iTunes the gatekeeper all iPod and iPhone content. Want to use an iPhone on Windows? Them's the breaks.

Also, your "TENS of THOUSANDS" of people are a frigging drop in the bucket compared to the TENS of MILLIONS (or possibly even HUNDREDS) of Windows systems currently in deployment in countries where Apple distributes their products.

Don't people constantly defend Microsoft with the same argument -- namely, that they have no way to test every possible interaction between bad drivers and hardware components simply due to the sheer number and variety of Windows systems in use at any given time?
Perhaps the bikes from Akira aren't that far off then:
http://www.burningart.com/meico/moto/akira/
Hey Ive been there too and from my experience big splash entries like Techcrunch articles and the likes don't do as much as people think.

"don't release anything to the public unless you are certain it will get traction."
This is a distribution issue which is in my opinion is a entirely different feature set than the "product". While off topic I agree the only thing you should be focusing on is getting traction. In fact I would say throw the product out of the equation and only worry about traction. But this is a different argument and admittedly I'm an extremist in this area :)

Essentially we are saying the same thing except you think discoveries should be made in private to increase your popularity at launch while I think (ONLY if you can keep up) going public is more efficient for the successful evolution of your product.

I guess it comes down to how much data you need to interpret what the market wants. Personally I need tons.Maybe you are a better interpreter than I am :)
Brilliant quote. I need to watch the movie again.
The long rant seems to be two parts:
1. A buggy device driver.
2. MobileMe getting installed.

The former isn't anything new on Windows side, and part of a continuing trend in lower software quality out of apple recently. Hopefully they'll tightening down their dev & testing processes soon.

The latter is the 2nd time they've used iTunes as a beachhead for pushing other software onto Windows.

Maybe it's just old payback for forcing IE on mac os for all those years? Shame how it's the user who has to pay.
Inflating impressions by doing something like an auto-refresh is definitely against the adsense TOS.
I'd also recommend Google Affiliate Network (formerly Performics) if you're going to start serving CPA ads. We did an analysis of which of the "big three" to use (CJ/LS/GAN) when planning for the 4th quarter for Dawdle, and I'm scarily impressed by the investments Google is making in the platform.
Good idea, but you're not allowed to use adsense in an iframe, additionally it would not pick up any keywords from the surrounding page so it would likely stay on public service ads etc.
Cilk++ alpha docs (for multithreading C++ apps)
What I don't understand is why the back catalog isn't more of a draw - in the music industry, but especially in the film industry.

Instead of trying to push new releases, you could be flogging (selling) a raft of your back catalog for almost zero marginal cost. Aside from some perennial classics, this catalog must be earning nigh on zero.

There is lots of obscure music and film that I'd happily buy/view/etc if the cost was low.
The key is to recommend the products you are advertising. Don't hide away the ads like they are something of which to be ashamed. Find a product or brand you like, and honestly recommend them. Have a header that says "Products we admire" and display products that hopefully relate closely to your demographic, if not your app.

You can't do this with Google PPC display ads. They will shut down your account because you're not allowed to encourage users to click on PPC ads.

But you can do this with affiliate ads.
I use an encrypted Mac OS X disk image on my Dropbox. It works well.
Science is rational; scientists are not
Panda - Open source solution for video uploading, encoding and streaming.
Probably for the same reason Daemon Tools doesn't add any hardware but still installs drivers? They're required for the software to function properly.
Setting up a New Blog - 3 Must Do Tasks
He's working through some things right now.
Italy is pretty nice too.
There is a lot of obscure music I'd happily buy even if the cost was the same as the new stuff; I'd just like to be able to acquire it!
I dub thee patent, "apples to apples".
If this was intentionally done it's all a bit disgusting. Why can't candidates try to win on merit any more? I'm tired of all the negative attacks and lies they pedal these days. I don't need someone to tell me why I shouldn't vote for the other guy, I need them to tell me why I should vote for them and then I'll make up my own mind.
That's is not true that NZ is the fastest. In Australia it is about 5 mins to get a 'business' and about 40 mins to complete tax registration.

1. You do not require ANYTHING to start a business in Australia

2. There are three main types of 'business structures' in Australia

a) Sole Trader - NO PAPERWORK IS REQUIRED but most people register a name so they can get a bank account in their business name eg Fred's Flowers

Time: 5 mins Cost: $142
About half of all businesses are sole traders.

b)Proprietary Limited company Fred's Flowers Pty Ltd (similar to a US Inc)

To create a Proprietary Limited requires at least 1 shareholder and 1 share and 1 director.

Pty Ltd are legal entities that account for about half of all business in Australia.

Time: 5 mins Cost: $400

3. Limited companies. Fred's Flowers Ltd
These are large companies, often listed on the stock exchange. I own and control an unlisted public company but we will be listed in a few months.

As much as I like our Kiwi cousins, it is not the 2nd best place to start a business in the world.

The methodology is deeply flawed to the point of nonsense.
Hackers Market Research: Screen Scraping + Visualization
That strikes me as highly unlikely.

First, it's extremely risky. It would expose Apple to class-action suits from users, as well as giving other companies fodder for an anti-competitive practices lawsuit.

Second, this particular error is more likely to hurt Apple's reputation than Microsoft's: The article says that the crashes were observed when plugging in an iPod or launching iTunes. Users will almost certainly associate new crash behavior on an otherwise stable Windows system with their last action: using an Apple product. If Apple really wanted to hurt Windows' reputation, they would have made the crashes random.
Physicists vs. biologists - cognitive smackdown
Cuil’s VP Product Bails Out A Month After Launch
Tens of thousands are tens of thousands. Don't try to skew the data, ten thousand people is a lot. There is no room to be relative there. People buy a product and expect it to work. Not just that, there are probably much fewer than "tens of millions" using the iTunes software. So ten thousand would be a big number, even in relative terms.

The issue presented here isn't microsoft, its Apple. its about apple's iTunes product being sub-standard quality. And thats that.
I should add, for anyone else who's seeing this, I found that if you hold down some combination of alt-command-ctrl (play around, it's not hard to find, and I can't remember exactly what it was) when you click on itunes to start it up, you'll get a "Starting iTunes in safe mode" dialog and that will get you past the crash I'm seeing. It seems to be related to processing cover art.
Why YouTube Videos Will Never Be Downloadable
Perhaps he includes occasional failure in his definition of success?
Microsoft's influence starting to show at Facebook
I guess you're not counting the European Union? Because functionally, it's one economic block.

There are other measures other than GDP. US National Debt and the current account balance is getting out of control:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current_ac...

(As an Australian I can't judge, in relative terms we're not doing so well by this measure either).

The current market downturn is a case in point. Whilst it's hurting globally, it's not hurting nearly as much as it would have in the past.

In modern history a recession in the US would have usually == recession worldwide. As it stands, you can't deny a slowdown in many key areas, but there are still parts of the global economy that are going strong.
Daemon Tools needs to install drivers because it is adding fake hardware -- a fake CD drive that needs to be indistinguishable from a real one so that it can circumvent physical copy protection. I'd be surprised if iTunes needs to do the same thing.
Please excuse my ignorance, but what does GAN stand for?

CJ = commission junction, LS = linkshare, GAN = ?
The Pop Vs Soda Map
Yup!

This is key. The Internet is a new distribution channel - the marginal cost is very low compared to traditional methods...

It's perfect for selling IP that can't beat the higher marginal cost for traditional distribution methods. There are probably orders of magnitude more people that would pay $1 to watch "They Live" than would fork out $10 to buy the DVD...