skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Last year I purchased a new tractor for my farm to replace an aging machine. I ended up with one from the same company, only thirteen years newer. The new tractor is definitely much more comfortable to operate and has a nicer appearance to onlookers, but when you start to look at the details, the thing is not all that much different than the one it replaced.

For example, the old tractor had a couple of problems that would crop up when it was cold. Nothing serious, but definitely annoying. The new tractor exhibits the exact same problems in an identical fashion. Thirteen solid years of engineering and the only thing that really changed was some improvements to the user experience.

And that sounds a lot like the software industry – a new interface on top of the same old technology. With that, I imagine you are right that virtually all industries have the same problem.
Sky remote
Sky remote is used for operate and manage the basic function of TV which is connected to the sky satellite or dishes.
5 Key Takeaways from Vinod Khosla
By the way, you can get a prepaid Softbank mobile on a 90-day entry permit if you look in the right places. I had luck at the Don Quixote in Roppongi (no surprise there). It probably didn't hurt that I had my Japanese address written out in kanji and folded in a piece of paper inside my passport.

Data service, though, is still unavailable prepaid, I think.
It's more than that. Burroughs was the mind-blowing innovator of the mainframe era. Look up the Burroughs B5000, which Alan Kay has been raving about for years as still in some ways more advanced than anything that has come since (or at least, anything popular). We had a few threads about it on HN a month or two ago; one of them was the article the GP is linking to. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
Hey everyone thanks for your comments, I have learned a lot today.

For all I complain about the state of technology, it's remarkable that I am using it to communicate with some of the most amazing people in the world. You just can't make this stuff up.

I think that maybe it's time to stop taking the pain and do something about it. The only part I've never been able to figure out is how to earn enough income and maintain the independence required to work on the really big problems. Heck, maybe that IS the problem.

This morning I was going to get up and fix another computer to sell on eBay because I am living month to month since quitting my job in November to make the leap into living the dream. I've called in almost every favor and in all honesty am within a few weeks of applying for jobs. Maybe I should have blogged about the process earlier!

I feel like if I can't hack it, then there must be others out there just like me. I just didn't expect this post to resonate quite like it did. I wonder how many of us feel like that friend we all know whose band hasn't quite made it yet so they couch surf. The waste of talent is staggering, and all around us.

If you are interested in this issue, I set up a google doc here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oe0X0ML0LuS6rPNLLH9s_wCq...

I'm totally open to any suggestions and you can also contact me on twitter at @zackarymorris or any of the sites in my profile.
Using Dropbox to Share (most of) Your Home Directory Across Multiple Computers
Bamboo has greater tensile strength than steel, and it withstands compression better than concrete.[1]

Not that I'm trying to imply anything by that.

[1] (Bamboo's tensile strength is roughly 28k/psi versus steel's 23k.)
I hope that British spellings weren't the basis of the UK search. A fair portion of the English speaking world use British spellings. Not that I'm claiming bitcoin for New Zealand.
Basic Logic Gates and Buffers
Likely something like http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/, I'd guess.
> PL/pgSQL is not a great programming language.

Its main feature is that it resembles PL/SQL.

Otherwise, you can choose to write stored procedures in Ruby, Perl, Python, Lua, C, R ...

> There's nothing wrong with stored procedures per se, but the architecture where every database call is a stored procedure matched to a use case from a higher tier is error-prone.

Agreed in general; I prefer to use stored procs tactically. The worst stored proc architecture I've seen is the idea that every table should be wrapped in a stored proc API. It's hideous.
You beat me to this point and made it better. Kudos.
Well it is very possible these gentlemen socialize in the same circles. Interesting read indeed.
If you have 10,000 hours of practice in a particular software package or platform, congratulations, you are an expert at something that was obsolete five years ago. This is something that makes software development both a frustrating field and an interesting one. I always feel like I'm learning, but never feel I've really mastered anything.
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To be perfectly honest I'm just quoting Steve McConnell there and I have no idea what those terms mean. I would appreciate it if someone could provide some insight.
MySQL Bug #8523 - A bug we all would love to see fixed
Please be aware of the dangers when you do this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3024460
I don't think they are similar in spirit. These other projects are missing the radical vision that is by far the most important and guiding thing behind Kay's group: to recreate all of personal computing in 20,000 lines of code. Operating system and applications. That is so profound that, if they succeed (a big if) it can't help but change the world. Simonyi and the Jetbrains people aren't in the same galaxy.

(I agree with you about it being kind of hard to follow what they're doing, though.)
i'd like to think a guy that has been at the center of the technology beat with some of the best opinions in the biz is a good person to have on the VC side.
I refer to this as the database making you eat your vegetables.

"I just want to change this tiny thing, what could possibly go wrong?"

"Nein!" shouts the database. "It will violate this and that and the other rule you told me to enforce!"

"Stupid database, always getting in my way. I'm going to install MongoDB/Redis/Couch ..."

12 months later: "Hang on ... which version of the code were these 40,000 records entered under? Does that integer field refer to the protocol 2 or protocol 3 headers? Why is there some XML in the email field?"
My company is currently debating between Github and Bitbucket. And the funny thing is git vs hg wasn't really an issue. We've decided that either is so much better than svn that we'd take either.

We have 2 large road blocks for Bitbucket. First is a real nice review system with inline comments during a pull request. Is this coming soon? It's an absolute deal breaker for us.

Also the performance/usability seems to be lacking compared to Github. I hope that changes. Although we also use JiraStudio and it's performance is dreadful. And the usability is quite frustrating. So the Atlassian track record is a little worrying for us.
Response to Mark Suster's women in tech: Maybe I should care more
No it's not a successor to BDB. According to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/learnmore... it's based on BDB-JE High Availability (HA). BDB-JE HA is a separate product that has been around for awhile. Basically it's a multiple node cluster where each node runs BDB-JE.
It sounds like they are just rebranding BDB-JE HA, adding a couple features, and calling it NoSQL.
The dichotomy is not false, because the author of the article believes the reporter did find the identity. Probabilistically, he believes the likely answer to the question is "yes" (No, you cannot have a definite answer to that question. But this is true of any future question of fact or policy: "Will Obama win the election?" "Should we create a carbon tax?")

Given the content of the article, it would be an inaccurate title to say "reporter postulates that Michael Clear is the author of BitCoin" because the NPR article implicitly argues that Davis is probably correct. In this situation, the question is perfectly appropriate to express some level of doubt, but a likelihood of truth.
..because the people that are protesting are hugely mis-informed and come off like entitled kids?

After hearing stories about people protesting because they weren't guaranteed a job after college and are now in debt, I can't take the protesters seriously. This and the fact that they don't seem to be protesting for any solid reason.
No other industry has the features you seem to want. You can't just put any tires on your car and have it just work. You can't just throw any gas in it.

As for printers, PS was proposed as a standard so that printers "just worked". It cost money to license, not every jumped on board, and so it didn't establish itself as the dominant brand. PDF is based on PS and people could certainly standardize around it. The problems are the same as with PS, however.

Your screenshot example. I assure you that you are not the first person to think of this feature. Apple does distribute Photo Booth with OS X after all. Is your complain then that they didn't cater to an the incredible minority with a command line tool to do this? I don't see this as a reasonable complaint. It's certainly not something to hit yourself over the head with.

None of this has anything to do with computers nor state-of-the art. Your complaints seem to be that society is not catering to your specific needs quite enough. Or that people are not working together quite enough. While I agree with you on the later point, it's not worth getting so worked up over. It's always been this way and likely always will.
On #4, I gladly (along with apparently nearly 4,000 others) have paid $2,500 a year in subscription fees to an investing newsletter done by a heavyweight in the industry. Knowledge gained has more than made up for the high cost. The question is: what is the relevant value and utility of said content?
Our in-house solution uses InnoDB (via MySQL even, not directly) and find it to be much more stable and performant than BDB for a number of key/value workloads.
Yes, go to Mars Bar (7th and Brannan) and start buying people beers.
For some reason, RailsCasts.com is not loading up at all for me. Am I the only one seeing this?
If it helps, I am using Chrome 14.0.835.186 on a Mac OSX Snow Leopard.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. I think that it's one of those "Internet Laws" but I can't find a reference as my Google-fu is weak.
I'm glad you brought up the point about software architecture because it's something I constantly find myself explaining: the difference between good architecture that survives many many generations and forms of code re-use vs. code monkey output that is fit only for that individual programmer's or his client's one-time use. This is an especially important point to bring up when you encounter business people who wonder why we can't just outsource everything. Cheaply-outsourced code is too often the drudge code monkey output we would find deplorable.
> Which, when compared to documentation, is light years ahead in terms or proof.

In three replies you've gone from calling unit tests formal documentation to saying that they are not documentation at all. The fact that you don't see the problem with this is evidence of the bias I mentioned.

> Well, apparently, if my API is clean enough, then you shouldn't need API documentation. Right?

Sure. In an ideal world, the API would be so obvious that further documentation is redundant. That's often not realistic, though, so we have additional documentation to shore up the API. (In modern code, the bulk of this is actually in comments inside the API interface.)

> Regardless, a clean API can be self documenting, but having tests demonstrating all the forms and intents of the classes can help with precisely what to do. As for code being clear: What does code have to do with an API? The whole point is to avoid actually having to look at the implementation of the API.

So instead of looking at the API itself, it's more appropriate to look at unit tests? It's better to look at 'testWiggleWidgetThrowsOnNull()' than to just look at the API and see that 'wiggleWidget()' throws on null? Or better yet, look at the documentation that should state that null is not a valid argument?

Unit tests are not good documentation. Good documentation is intended for humans to read. Unit tests are intended to test code, not to convey information. They generally contain a ton of noise in the form of boilerplate and mock objects.

> These are two different issues entirely. One has nothing to do with the other. Regardless, documenting 25 hours doesn't change the fact that changing it requires testing. It's as simple as that.

Of course. I've not argued against testing. I don't believe unit tests are always appropriate, though, and I think the argument that they are documentation is really weak.

> You seem to be playing straw man with your first argument, you're just confused with your second, and targeting something that has nothing to do with what we are discussing.

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to as my "first" and "second" argument. It's absolutely not a strawman to say that unit tests don't prove code correct. It's a fallacious claim on your part to say that they do. A unit test passing only proves that the code does what the unit test expects. It doesn't prove that the unit test expects the right thing, nor does it prove that the code is being tested where it actually matters.

If the second argument is about documentation, I stand by my assertion that unit tests are not good documentation. In fact, I would say that they are terrible documentation, for the reasons I outlined above.

> It's like me bashing git because it doesn't compile your code.

Which would be a pretty reasonable response to someone claiming that git is a great compiler.
[EDIT 2: I deleted my first posting of the following comment, out of concern that it might not be appropriate. But darned it, it was a frustrating enough experience -- and one that others should not have to go through -- that I'm reposting my comment. My apology to anyone (other than Adobe) whom this may irritate.]

[EDIT: I'm hesitant to use HN for what might -- perhaps legitimately -- be seen as a rant. But this may be my only opportunity to make someone at Adobe having any degree of authority or ability to communicate with the relevant management, aware of this problem. Further, we are all at the mercy of Adobe technical support, to the degree we need it. And this applies, in this specific context, to the many students and staff on this site who might face issues in particular with regard to academic licensing.]

OT, but I recently spent in aggregate 7.5 hours [1] getting one your tech support to walk over to a manager and convince them to generate a correct license code for a thoroughly documented academic purchase, after the third-party licensing vendor who was supposed to do so failed to and then only, finally responded to an Adobe tech support rep, whom they told that they had no clue what license the Adobe tech support rep was talking about.

Said license generation and delivery took only 10 minutes, once Adobe tech support -- AFTER 7.5 HOURS of phone calls -- finally did it directly, themselves -- and for the first time, finally, did it correctly after also following my instructions as to what specific type of license was needed. (Rhetorical: What is wrong with this picture?)

Briefly put, someone needs to straighten out the delivery of secondary CS 4 license codes for support of academic purchasers of CS 5.x who are running Win XP 32 bit (said support being clearly described on the product package and in its marketing).

I realize that, officially, you are not the correct party to address, but since you're the only member of Adobe management who is likely to even see a comment on my part, let me just say that in this case your technical support, while always polite on the phone, sucked in terms of results and follow-up; you took several hundred dollars from the person I was helping while failing for over a month to deliver the product (license code) and support that was clearly described on the package; and on this basis I, personally, [changed to calm my tone down] cannot wish your company well.

(I was tempted to send your corporate HQ an invoice for my time, but I figured they'd be too obtuse and/or dismissive to get the point.)

1. I would never have spent that kind of time on the endeavor, except for the nature of my relationship with the purchaser.
Absolutely! The future potential of crowds lies in real-time applications, and we're seeing these emerge with increasing frequency.

Embedding intelligence in software applications is a powerful concept. We can build applications that understand our intentions in natural language, that talk to us, and that amplify our ability to do work in new and powerful ways.

Putting cheap human intelligence into software lets us realize the vision laid out for AI systems fifty years ago.
Getting results out of this sort of process seems to depend upon making hazardous leaps. Even concluding that UK spellings mean UK English locale is a leap in logic. Who's to say the author couldn't possibly have selected the UK spellchecker in emacs?

Put another way, you can risk accidentally filtering the right answer out in exchange for good odds of finding the answer, or you can get bogged down in sifting through China.
Scott Heiferman (Meetup): "We won't escape real identity, & anonymity will die."
interesting use of punitive downrating - maybe HN is just to full of Google employees and stockholders to entertain an objective critic of the company.
Strange Loop 2011 Conference Review
Phil,

If the deal doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense because the company is overvalued. But for a VC to agree that a company is worth X and then complain when 2% of that is used to de-risk founders is hypocrisy: the payout constitutes a smaller percentage of deal value than the VCs charge for allocating capital.

Any VC that finds these compensation figures absurd should have balked at the proposed valuation LONG before this point. This is in principle no different than de-risking founders 100k each out of a round valuing their company at over 10 million.
Roku 2 XS and XD to be sold at Target retail stores
this article seems like a more educated and experienced manner of asking "mr. babbage, if you put the wrong numbers in, will the right answers come out" ...
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HP has it plastered all over their webstore. I know this because I remember thinking, "Seriously, that's the most important gif you could put there?".
You built it, right?
Making Windows XP file copy animation in the Real World (Google Translate)
There's another start-up that does something similar to this called Brass Monkey. Their angle is turning the iPhone into a Wiimote-type controller.

http://brassmonkeysdk.com/

Both interesting concepts that could be even more disruptive to the gaming industry.
Visalus Science Review
http://portal.nifty.com/2011/10/04/b/img/pc/018.gif
I think it's an HN thing. At least, I heard it here.

I get downvoted a lot.
Ward's Wiki is wonderful. It totally reminds me of the old days, when a website was nothing more than a collection of hypertext links.

The original rant really does make a good point about how accessible things once were. Gosh even being 24 I remember the days of screwing around with logo and qbasic and hacking serial ports with zterm. It's not that everything 'just worked' then (It didn't) but that if it didn't work you could still get something useful out of the machine. The layers of abstraction from the hardware have grown so much now that nothing makes sense.
3 Steps to Build Your Own Social Economy
Power of Nostalgia
Then you run some samples through it and make sure it works correctly.

What if the exact meaning of "correctly" isn't defined?

Here's what happens when you blindly apply this approach to real-world applications: you end up with hardcoded "correct" md5sums that are "whatever the function happened to output last time, and we checked and thought it was right". I've seen this happen, repeatedly, with real-world apps, and it is useless at best and usually harmful.

For a huge span of real-world applications, there is NO RIGHT ANSWER. You can't blindly apply unit-testing to that in the same way you would for a web framework.
If this means less Siegler writing in the mainstream tech press, then I'm all for it.
Yeah, and I think that would be OK. I'm not certain about it, but I think that a lot of the time and energy that goes into support could go into development instead, and most people would be happier. For example, clients that are paying me to fix things might pay me instead to make new things for them that would better fit their needs.

I'm not under any illusion that it would work that way for everyone. But, I can't think of a single support-level person (whether consultant, phone, on-site, or otherwise) that's been doing it for more than a few years that's really happy with it. It can be exceptionally frustrating to be the go-between between users and fluky systems. So, at the very least, it would eliminate a necessary evil that makes a lot of people unhappy.

It might also result in fewer jobs to go around. But I don't think so.
You're absolutely right. I've spent hours debugging strange form input behavior related to quirks in Mobile Safari / UIWebView which are hardly Phonegap's fault. It really comes down to optimization and ironing out all of the wrinkles, though it can be a bit painful since most mobile browser quirks aren't well documented online.
In general, the harder the filter, easier it is for those selected. You can think of yC as prep-school for what is ahead at Sand Hill. The correct question perhaps is " how to clear demo day and land an A round from top-tier VC ?". An effort within striking zone of that will ensure that you don't waste the opportunity at yC.
To be fair (and I have a tough time of it with Adobe), a lot of their suite was acquired. They seem to be able to transition products fairly well for a large company.
Maybe so, but I can think of a few high profile examples where things did change for the better. Think civil rights, women's suffrage.

I honestly feel that this current patent perversion is a temporary thing. It just can't be sustainable in its current state.
Adding to what anandkulkarni said, some people have proposed very innovative applications on top of the MobileWorks. Applications such as spam-filtering, object recognition etc. can revolutionize what is possible using software.
Personally, I am not for real name policies or anything like that, but the problems with non-anonymity needs to be fixed if possible. For example, I remember during the Google+ nymwars that someone said on Google+ that it is odd that anonymity is needed to talk about nymwars.
Keep up the good work-Solid acquisitions by bigger companies will move good tech forward.
Questions Arise Over Yahoo's Value as Buyers Weigh Bids
What questions should you ask a software startup before joining?
Lies, Damn Lies and Photoshop
My friends at Nitobi directed me to Xero Touch, which is IMO the best example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6wM5QJhVus&hd=1

While an iOS designer like myself sees a lot of telltale signs it's HTML (the flicker of loading buttons' assets for example) it looks very nice.
That is the least funny thing I've experienced all day. No smile, not even a cringe.
Seriously. I always find it funny when people make generalizations like "Any serious developer would..." only to be 100% wrong (and thus proving that they aren't serious developers).

I used to think like your parent. Then I got over myself and just push everything to a a public github repo. So what if most of my project have no watchers and no forks. It can't hurt anything (except maybe my ego?). Once I did the transition with one of my bigger projects, I've nerver looked back.

Private repositories are for "serious" companies. Public repository are for "serious" developers.