skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
NYC - Octopart

We build tools to help anybody find and source electronic parts and industrial controls components. Octopart is profitable and has half a million monthly users, but we are just beginning to modernize this industry and impact how "stuff" gets designed and made. Our users are engineers, scientists, industrial designers, big companies, little companies, hackers, and students.

Looking most urgently for a front ender, an analytics engineer, and a business person, but if you are excited about what we are doing drop us a line: http://octopart.com/jobs
Depending on the language you're using, there might be some tools to help you.

For example, MS recently released a library for Design by Contract (aka Contract Programming) in .NET 4.0. It allows you to specify constraints on your methods, such as things you expect to be true before the method is called, after, and between all method calls in a class. The library is capable of static verification, but it's partly an experimental feature and you need to pay for expensive version of VS. (Runtime checking is available for free.)

But, here is the cool part: MS also released an automatic test generator called PEX. It can do exactly what you've described - go into your code and automatically find edge cases, and generate tests that cover each of them. And it's free.

So, you can write contracts, run PEX, and if something goes wrong, you will see which inputs generated exceptions.

D also has DbC functionality. I don't think it runs any static verification on it yet, but you can use it to detect abnormalities during functional testing.
Everyone got caught up in the dot com boom. This includes founders, VCs, employee shareholders, public shareholders, and acquiring companies. To blame just founders and VCs as money-grubbers who screwed everyone else makes them sound much smarter than they actually were. Even the best VCs blew hundreds of millions of $ in bad bets, like how Sequoia plowed money into Webvan.

Public investors committed the largest valuation run-ups at the time. Remember how hot day trading was? In the end, they got left with the short end of the stick.

Your general sentiment is right. The people who are rich now are the ones who cashed out when times got frothy. Hard working employees should be given the same opportunity as the people who architect the deal.
I dunno - do the 3G and 3GS use identical-looking images? If so, is it actually the same file?
Pretty standard... except Chrome calls their alpha releases Canary.
Make Google eBooks easy on the eyes
I generally agree with the final sentence: "If you choose a methodology without comparing it against alternatives, if you claim that it works all the time without evaluating the results, than you're not doing engineering - you're practicing a religion."

I've definitely seen some negative effects when a team is forced to create a huge volume of low-level tests because they perceive that to be the only acceptable solution. They get bored with the work, and worse, think less about the larger integration issues.

I'm not arguing that TDD fails, but you'd better monitor the efficacy of whatever testing regimen you employ lest you suffer process and quality rot.

P.S. Dude needs to make friends with a spell checker... wow.
I guess it's time to upgrade...

Congrats on getting all the traffic though!
people will pay more for cul-de-sacs. they don't want to live on busy streets where their pets and kids are likely to wander into the street and get killed.
Agreed. I see why they did the 3GS so that the iPhone 4 was the fourth generation. However, they can't do that here because then the iPhone 5 would in fact be the sixth generation iPhone, and I think Apple would realize the customer support headache introduced with that.
I got as far as: Oh, and good luck mocking your database and HTTP request objects. and just stopped. If you don't have any experience with TDD, then don't write about it. Mocking HTTP request objects is incredibly trivial and tools are written in every language to do just that.

I don't know why these articles keep getting written. No one's forcing you to write your tests first, and if you can't wrap your head around the benefits (which the author clearly can't) then don't do it. It's fine. I'll still continue to utilize TDD, and continue to pump out significantly more code (with significantly less bugs) than the code I produced without TDD. Yes, there's definitely code I write where I don't write the tests first. It happens, sometimes it's just easier to bang something out because you aren't sure what you're building. That doesn't mean TDD is a failure, it's a tool, like anything else. Use it where it's appropriate, because the benefits are massive.
Kids are adaptable - I suspect any kid with a good home life is going to enjoy growing up wherever.
added some docs for nib (finally) http://visionmedia.github.com/nib/
Why am I not surprised that there are a bunch of typos in this article?
No one at my work place, including me, understand unit testing or TDD. I was recently asked to add a test suite to a service I wrote that is basically a simple wrapper that returns the result of a stored procedure call. The only test I could think of was to call it with all null parameters, in which case there should be no output. Other than that, the results depend on the state of the database. I'm familiar with the concept of dependency injection, but I couldn't add it to this very simple service in good conscience, since I knew that adding the necessary complexity would only increase the likelihood of a defect.
My wife taught at a 80% Hispanic majority high school in Dallas in the 90s. The gang violence on white kids thing just didn't happen there.

Gangs, yes. Gang violence, no.
Well there are a few questions here. First of all, how do you know the VC didn't just reject you because someone had brought him the idea first?

I have never heard of VCs taking an idea and convincing some programmers to develop it.

Perhaps you should speak to him about it. If they are failing, send a reasonably nice letter asking to work on the project as there are many similarities and you think you could really benefit the project. You would have to swallow your pride, but you might get funding...
Well i see a company with strong competitors, high costs, no competitive advantage and insurance risks.

Their product is an inferior version of hotel rooms.

There is a high possibility that they are bankrupt some day.

What the founders are doing makes perfect sense to me, maybe there will never be an IPO or Exit.

Maybe studying economics diseased my brain, but i can't see why competitiveness doesn't matter any more.
It's hard to fix "something." There's a lot that needs to be fixed, but as long as the public can't articulate what it wants, nothing will change.
That isn't a serious response.

1) Both industries are intimately tied to the government in a variety of ways and so aren't particular good examples of 'private organizations'.

2) The notion that these entire sectors have no value is preposterous.

Debating this sort of thing in the aggregate ('banking sector', 'defense sector') just doesn't make sense. Lots of banks fail and go out of business even outside the fiscal mess of the last few years. Same with defense contractors.

Still waiting for an example of a private firm that provides no value and consumes funds indefinitely.
Watch,Real Steel,online,megavideo
watch,Real Steel,online,megavideo
Max is a typical guy who plays boxing club video game of all time It is also a mechanic,
It should just mean browsing Gmail in a 'Private Mode' Chrome/Firefox window.

That's a good idea, though still not quite frictionless enough for lazy people like me.

It's a bigger issue when I'm just browsing around and click a link that takes me to YouTube.

What's needed (as someone else here suggested, more or less) is an add-on smart enough to recognize a set of domains and always follow these links by creating a private mode window.
Yes, and wordpress.com by default checks the user agent, and if the user is on an iPad it replaces the theme chosen by the blog author with the OnSwipe theme. (The blog author can disable this by going to their blog settings, and finding the setting laughably labeled something like "optimize for mobile devices" and turning that off).

There's no obvious warning when you set up a blog at wordpress.com that it will do this, and I expect it is contrary to what most blog owners expect--one of the whole points of iPad is that you do NOT need a special mobile site for it.

There is a link at the bottom of the OnSwipe theme to switch to the standard site. Unfortunately by that point the damage has been done. OnSwipe uses a lot of memory--enough that if you have any other pages open they are likely to be forced out of cache, which is annoying. Worse, there's a good chance that it will run iPad Safari out of memory completely and cause it to crash.

If it actually did something useful, there might be some excuse for this, but for most blogs the OnSwipe theme isn't more readable than the theme the blog author picked, and the OnSwipe them has horrible scrolling performance. (It apparently is handling scrolling itself via JavaScript, overriding the native scrolling in the browser, so the result is the scrolling is jerky and doesn't feel like any other scrolling on the iPad).

Hence, I have concluded it is malware, because it provides no benefit to the user, and often provides harm (such as browser crashing), and neither the user reading the page nor the blog author whose blog it is on consented specifically to it (any consent was buried in some wordpress terms and conditions saying they could mess with your blog if they wanted to).
There is always room for a new search engine. I think Paul Graham wrote an article that questioned "do you think 100 years from now we'll be using the same search engine? I don't even think Google believes that".

There is a lot of room for innovation - there always is. Also, a lot of niche search engines are popping up. I briefly perused TC this morning and saw an engine focusing on family heritage...
For some reason this link is forwarding to http://127.0.0.1/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-ho.... Any clue why, or how to fix it?
Discount Moncler
Hire a well skilled designer?
I've never met Sam, so I can't say anything about his personality or attitude, but I am not impressed. PG is in a whole other league compared to Sam A, I'm sorry.
Founder's can cash out without screwing employees. I had almost no stock as an employee in my first startup, but the founders took care of me post-acquisition.
Ron. Pretty awesome. Just playing with it on Chrome and am pleased with the effects. Adding more than one gradient would be a useful feature as others have noted. Keep up the good work
Well, on the recently upgraded lines, there is an up to date system (bi-directional automatic block with cab signalling, not ETCS, yet, only GSM-R on the main lines), but of course, modernization is very slow indeed. Traffic density is hard to manage not because the signalling is deficient, but because various cost cuts that creates stupid bottlenecks (like not using grade separation at crucial junctions, or, also quite popular, not using switches that allow higher speeds to the diverging track).

(And we even got our own FRA-like nonsense: noise limits that demand to build a kilometre long, three meters high noise barriers for a single farm nearby the line in the forest…)
that's why is said "especially".
To me, it seems that persistence alone isn't enough either; I'm sure there are plenty of determined but ultimately unsuccessful people. Persistence needs to be coupled with something else--be it "talent" or "genius" or just plain creativity--in order to be successful.

In my experience, a smart person can do well without much work; a hard worker can do well without being particularly smart; but only a combination of the two, and other qualities besides, leads to anything truly interesting.
It sounds like you might be better with something like QuickCheck for your testing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickCheck

This was featured recently in Bryan O'Sullivan's "Running a startup on Haskell" presentation: "[QuickCheck] generates random data, then tells me if all properties that I expect to be true of my functions and data hold. QuickCheck is shockingly more effective at finding bugs than unit tests."

There are ports of QuickCheck to tons of other languages...
And the thing is, Portland isn't even that dense of a city. As far as urban environments go, it's hardly Blade Runner. Plenty of detached homes with yards, parks, etc.

The idea that people have that we have to live like sardines in some anime-inspired megalopolis is simply inaccurate.

If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. Obviously, in terms of resources, it's more complicated than that, but it's clear that sprawling out is terrible for the environment, and that for true nature-lovers, it's much more advantageous to live in a city that has no suburbs, where the world of people truly ends at the city limits.
If your kid goes to the public school he will be beat up by black or hispanic gang members

That's a very alarmist statement that I'm afraid has no relationship with the experience of my friends who went to inner city schools with diverse populations (and yes, a number of gang members).

It's true that many inner city schools were defunded by capital flight to the suburbs. But the notion that they're all active warzones that only James Belushi or Michelle Pfeiffer can bring law and order to is a stereotype that needs to be put to rest.
To address a few of the myths:

Myth 1: Who is he to say how people feel about their neighborhood is nonsense? There are plenty where the neighbors know each other, their kids play, they have block parties and BBQs, and there's a strong fabric of trust. To pitch them all as "nonsense" is to sweep away all pretense of objectivity.

Myth 2: How much traffic someone gets varies widely with the street. In his red zone, I'd bet traffic is next-to-none on E. Radiom, Amona, E. Lemona, and Hallock; light on Nemo and Damson; medium on W. Radiom and W. Lemona; and "heavy" on the rest. But consider even Erie and Avila: no car would take both, and many will take neither; their realistic exposure is maybe 50-75 households? Compare that to a giant grid, where every street is a route to every other, and I don't think the outcome is clear at all. But it'd be dumb to get a house on N. Radio or N. Hale to avoid traffic, sure.

An added question is whether people speed more in a closed community or in a grid. Daily I see lots of people on main roads tear off onto residential streets to circumvent red lights, and the last thing they want to see when they meet back up with the artery is the people who waited, passing them by.

Myth 3: For the reasons above, less traffic traveling by my house -- which is clearly possible in these neighborhoods -- means less pollution in the form of noise, smoke, and gas fumes.

...

Not to say the grid system doesn't have its merits, and I agree on some of them. But I don't think I'd want to see either system entirely eliminated... much less with the presumption that there are just millions of closed-minded people out there who are dead wrong about where they want to live, because they're simply not as enlightened as your humble author.
This is a small side project of mine. Thx in advance for any feedback and suggestions.

Edit: Why was this post flagged?
The world would be better with this left unimplemented.
Palo Alto - Comprehend Systems (YC W11)

Hiring Java developers (both frontend and backend). Help us make next-generation, cross-datasource reporting and visualization software. You'll also be writing software to improve people's lives, since our first product helps bring new cures and treatments to market faster.

to learn more: http://www.comprehend.com/careers
Heh, one of my lecturers was ranting about the millions wasted on research grants for testing methodologies when it's proven that they can't formally confirm program correctness. Old Edsger had a lot of foresight in that respect. Still, he's gloriously ambiguous about what he considers a 'modest and elegant programming language'.
Yes. My ideal search engine would return answers rather than a list of links to answers.

Brain dump of ideas follows:

Search for: "Best cheesecake recipe?"
Result: Ingredients, step-by-step guide, perhaps a video too.

The search engine would adapt to my knowledge and, if I do not know much about baking, and/or cheesecakes, it would inform me that cheesecake's can be broadly categorised as baked or unbaked. It would recommend the recipe for one type to me based on which is easier for a beginner to bake, but with the option of overriding the default.

Search for: "Best steak"

Now this is a little ambiguous, so I would be prompted for further information such as "price range, distance, the time that I would like to eat at".

Result: x restaurant, which is y distance from you, serves the best steak at z pounds.

If applicable the search engine would inform me that if I am willing to travel half a mile further then I am able to get an even better steak for half the price!

It would also be great if I could make a reservation from the same page displaying the results.

----------

Now I realise that the above is pretty much impossible for a variety of reasons, but I would love to be able to pay for something like this.
If the only alternative being considered is for founders to sell their existing shares, yes.

But other approaches to limiting founder dilution and rewarding early shareholders could have included new offsetting stock awards to key staff, or selling even more shares to pay bonuses taxed at ordinary income rates. Those could have been more dilutive to smaller shareholders than this dividend approach.

Dividends are legal, tax-favored, and exist to reward actual shareholders-of-record (even though they're rarely used at this growth-needing-capital stage). Closing that alternative wouldn't necessarily benefit the employee-optionholder 'little guy'... but it might benefit the new-money sophisticated investors who would then have more control.
That would be fantastic if I didn't write everything in C++
A SearchEngine for Programmers
do you ever tried searchco.de - a spl instant search engine for programs and codes.
It's only in the last 3 months that I can really appreciate the argument that Jason is putting forward. I left Ireland and its risk-averse conservative culture behind and have tried to surround myself with entrepreneurial types ever since. The change in attitude and the drive for greatness is infectious. When you find yourself with people who are doing things that you thought out of reach your previously "crazy" dreams become so much more achievable.
You have to ooze enthusiasm and passion to REALLY get other people motivated to do things with you.

I spoke with a man 8 years my senior with far more experience than me and convinced him to drop everything to work on a project with me. Encourage them, be more than co-workers with them. You have to put as much (if not more) time into your partners as you do your startup if you are the head founder.

Also, there are a lot of flaky people who say "great idea, I'll help" and then do not do anything. That is neither your fault nor anything new. If you truly can't find anyone - just do it yourself. Saves the equity and frustration.
Google Cache at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#...
Since you brought it up, indirectly, what exactly IS the idea behind registering for HN and repeatedly just asking Paul Graham stuff?

There's a whole lot more to this site, but every submission I see on your (relatively new) profile is either asking HN or PG something.
This gets complicated in a graphics engine where the only place you can tell something has gone wrong is after the image shows up in the wrong place. It would help a lot for the majority of cases, though.
> An added question is whether people speed more in a closed community or in a grid.

I live on a cul de sac and not a day goes by that I don't see someone speeding through the stop sign a few houses down. The cul de sac is not what appealed to me about where I'm living, and I would gladly give it up so I could ride my bicycle unimpeded to the subway station that's nearby without being forced out to the major highway that runs through the area.
Thank you to Mike Shaver for 6 years at Mozilla
Is there anyway to view this on the iPad?
The way I avoid problems like this is:
1 - Always do new work in a branch off whatever branch you plan to commit to eventually.
2 - commit often
3 - Use rebase -i to squash commits when everything is looking good
4 - Use rebase parent-branch to replay your commits on top of whatever new stuff is in the parent and resolve any conflicts
5 - Only then go back and merge the working branch back into the parent-branch
If you have interactions between relatively few methods, then unit-testing those interactions shouldn't be too much of a problem. You wouldn't test all possible inputs, but focus on making sure that you have a test-case for each input that needs to be handled differently. Bugs will still creep through, but they will be substantially fewer.

If you really do need tens of thousands of tests because you have so much interaction with unique states going on in your engine then you will probably never ship a product with any reasonable quality.

And that floating point operations lacks precision is just the way things are, and you need to understand how to write stable code despite it if you want a stable graphics engine.
> annoyance to non-technical users

Indeed, I've had to make password systems case-insensitive for similar reasons.
With all of the focus on exits and pivots and runways and valuations, I love this view of entrepreneurship:

I quote him a lot when I talk with entrepreneurs of all stripes. I say this: “Figure out the world you want, and go make it that way.” That’s the essence of entrepreneurship, and I think it’s the essence of Mike.

And thanks to gkoberger for posting this link originally in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054326
That's what `git describe` is for.
Probably misconfigured web server. Looks like they are using a reverse proxy that isn't setup right.

Nothing we can do, the person who runs the server needs to fix it.
I can honestly say this is how I feel commuting on my bicycle. I've always been blessed with beautiful commutes, along the water or across a bridge, and it makes for an excellent way to wake up when going to work and an excellent wedge I could drive between work and not work on the way home. I could gauge the stress of the workday I just finished by how fast I rode home.
Philadelphia, PA

Vistar Media is company building some neat stuff in the "Digital Out Of Home" space. Right now, it's just us three founders -- two of which are coming from Invite Media, which was acquired by Google in 2010.

We're looking to make our first few engineering hires. Specifically, someone relatively experienced to work on our backend bidding and reporting infrastructure, and someone to focus on the webapp which customers interface with.

We have a recuriterbox page at http://vistarmedia.recuriterbox.com, but feel free to contact me directly if you have questions, or would just like to know more.
About 400 arrested in Wall Street protest
Fair enough. :)

I should see if I can get one of my posts to the top of reddit. So far all my best submissions were on the reddit blog.
They probably would rather sell you a Fire than a Kindle, but they would be fools to try and kill off the Kindle. The fact that they just released two new Kindles in parallel with the Fire suggests they understand this.

They would certainly like to sell more video and music, but eBooks are probably a huge part of their revenue and profits.
We already have examples, too. Colbie Caillat, I believe, started her rise to success via MySpace, which god knows is filled with mediocre music.