skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If 10gen make it big: perhaps. And then again, perhaps not.

The fact that this guy spent 10 years as the CTO of a company and was still capable of producing a piece of quality software like MongoDB says that this guy is isn't quite like other people. Very few people who make it into the executive ranks (and stay there for a decade or more) manage to stay sharp enough to actually write a coherent piece of code. Much less a piece of code worth building a company on.

However such people do exist. Years ago I had the pleasure of working with a fellow who was nearing retirement age. We worked on a project together and he was learning a new programming language. As the weeks passed I slowly learned that he used to be an executive, but found this work boring after some years and wanted to return to the floor as an engineer. I also learned that he worked on software for the Apollo program.

I have no doubt that if 10gen become very successful he might have to dial back his level of direct involvement. But if he is the brains behind MongoDB, it would only be natural that he stayed involved in the project.

As an investor I'd see this as a plus. If nothing else then because it proves the CEO does have some brains and is less likely to be a business dullard.
Ah, but think of the sponsor & advertising angle. Rent out the space on your t-shirt.

Eventually every surface will turn in to an ad. And animated ads after that. The animated t-shirt can't be all that far into our future.
To whom it may concern; I've published a Kaddish for Steve Jobs which is actually a literary masup work using mainly Allen Ginsberg's materials (Kaddish for Naomi and Howl).

Hope you find some, if any, interest reading it.

http://ikaddsh.com
I'm curious if there's anyone around that codes more than Chris Wanstrath [1] (Github's CEO). He's a beast. And someone we should all look up to.

[1] https://github.com/defunkt
In fact I've implemented precisely that first tradeoff in a library and it isn't too bad. It's still much slower than machine words though.

In Dart this becomes more constrained as it uses dynamic typing. Apparently the types specified by the programmer will be thrown away when it is compiled down to VM instructions. They are only used to specify/check interfaces.

What this means is that those tags become quite large in the implementation. You can try any Common Lisp or Scheme R6RS without type inference to see how fast or slow this is in practice.

I don't completely understand the second trick. Where are the bignums?
> He completely lost me when he said people could change jobs to reduce the commute. Isn't there usually a reason that people are working where they are?

Sure, but that reason would probably evaporate for a large enough raise. Which not having to commute is, if you look at it rationally.
An Interactive Periodic Table
Stepanov. Notes on Programming (From the courses taught at SGI and Adobe)[pdf]
They just added very easy to understand privacy controls, for one. They're good enough that I'm considering merging my two "identities" into one Facebook account rather than my current two: I can now easily keep them separate.

The other point is that it's impossible to prove the negative. Any action can find an interpretation that it's an assault on privacy — if that's the interperetation that helps make your point — but it's difficult if not impossible to prove there was no malicious intent by anyone related to Facebook.

At least I, for one, find it hard to believe that Facebook really cares that much. But if you want to believe they are out to get you, I'm sure you can find and twist whatever you want to suit that opinion.
I am more often reading the "new" and "ask" segment than the top30. But I almost never go deeper than the top30.
Being someone who submitted an application around 11:59pm in a previous season, I wonder what makes people wait until the last minute. In our case it was the big decision of whether we should apply or not (we didn't have a site, didn't really talk it through among ourselves), which pretty much made the resulting rejection a self satisfying prophecy.
Per the author's own post:

Yesterday (October 4, 2011) Oracle made the surprising announcement that they would be porting some key Solaris features, DTrace and Zones, to Oracle Enterprise Linux.

Key word: would be.

It's been a week since they announced they have decided to port it, its' probably been in development for 2 weeks, and the author is upset it's not mature. Hmm...
Slides from the Google Dart presentation
SmarterComics has converted quite a few business / entrepreneur books into comics:

http://smartercomics.com/
Possibly of interest: http://izettle.com/
(sigh) You don't have kids, do you?

It's not about price, it's about complexity. Plugging an old iPhone into a chassis is something anyone could do, even my 6 year old son. Programming an AVR from scratch is something many adults cannot do.
Am I promising you a pony? No, but then you are not a three-year old. I am simply working every day to advance the open web, including JS, including on mobile devices. What are you doing, besides asserting falsehoods about the JS standard and its leading implementations?
Not really. Ghostwriting is a well-established phenomenon.
an enlightening quote from Gilmore v. Gonzales:

"Moreover, Gilmore had actual notice of the identification policy. He alleged that several airline personnel asked him for identification and informed him of the identification policy. They told him that in order to board the aircraft, he must either present identification or be subject to a 'selectee' search. He also saw a sign in front of United Airlines’ ticketing counter that read 'PASSENGERS MUST PRESENT IDENTIFICATION UPON INITIAL CHECK-IN.' Although Gilmore was not given the text of the identification policy due to the Security Directive’s classification as SSI, he was nonetheless accorded adequate notice given that he was informed of the policy and how to comply"
Google:Social::Microsoft:Search
I plan on eliminating Net::HTTP entirely and writing my own client using Carl Lerche's parser for his Picard library which is written in Ragel:

https://github.com/tarcieri/http/tree/master/parser
I'm not sure what that anecdote was trying to say. I think the majority of the 2 hours would be getting to grips with the codebase, given that he probably hasn't had time to look at it in years. I've never seen anything to suggest that Zuckerberg is an incompetent programmer.

Similarly, if you took one of the engineers and showed them the commercial agreements and reporting that Zuck would be instantly familiar with I'm sure they'd take a long time to get grips with it.
Apple received more than 1 million pre-orders for iPhone 4S in a day
All - just want to re-affirm Andrew's points and provide some more clarification - we're the publisher behind the eBook, and we did partnered with Andrew/Mixergy to do it.

In short, we work with domain/subject-matter experts to publish high-quality eBooks. Some we create ourselves, some we work with publishers who already have great content (eg, Mixergy).

Since we're a startup there's still a lot that we need to improve, but one thing we're doing is making the books more interactive, and for PG's book we'll be adding video clips from the interview. Unfortunately Kindle doesn't have an easy way to provide existing customers an update, but if you did buy the book, please email me (kevin@hyperinkpress.com) and I'll share it with you.

Also, if you have knowledge on any topic that people would pay to learn more about, and want to create a beautiful, high-quality eBook to share that knowledge, please reach out to me - we're actively recruiting authors. A big thing of ours is sharing a lot of the content for free, it's not purely altruistic since that's great for building loyalty and traffic too. Thanks!

Kevin, Founder of Hyperink

PS Right now hyperink.com has almost nothing on it, we'll be launching a marketplace for our eBooks and our authors in the next 2 weeks
Data scientists will be the one of the most coveted jobs in the near future. These are the new form of hackers.
410 Gone - Thoughts on Mark "diveintomark" Pilgrim's and _why's infosuicides
Parent said willing, not "doesn't mind." The difference is important.
Firefox Aurora
IPod nano and the new Nike+ Active - A Perfect Match?
I meant selection criteria in the same sense that ability to succeed in college may be selection criteria today. It does not require birthing more kids, rather a consistent use of this selection criteria from generation to generation in a subset of the population. If machines are performing all the work, and being able to send 10M messages per day to these machines is a requisite for economic success, some parents will filter heavily for this criteria in he best interest of their children.
Indeed it is, its a very common thread in my life and I'd say for a lot of readers here. It something you get used to and you learn to deal with, its called maturing, hence why I said it was an immature thing to do.

I don't go around bad mouthing the people paying my bills over my own ego.
Thanks Ben, I'm glad you like it.
Hilary Mason Says Twitter’s URL Wrapping Won’t Have Any Effect On Bit.ly
And I commute via air once a week. According to his math; if I could simultaneously live in five cities at the same time, I'd be a millionaire.

Mobility matters. I'd rather take the highest paying work within 500miles vs. the highest paying work within 10miles. Also moving is not as trivial as he would make it seem.
I would point you to this post by James Kwak: http://baselinescenario.com/2011/10/09/wall-street-and-silic...

Venture capital has been around for centuries, and in its modern form, since about the 1950s. Very little of it comes from Wall Street.
Scientists Claim Optimism Could Be Due To ‘Faulty’ Brain
Brett also says "After spending a month building the first prototype, investors saw what I could do and I never heard the cofounder advice again."

I'd like to point out that Brett is an extraordinarily productive coder AND designer. I run Sunfire Offices (I'm Yishan) and it's pretty rare to find someone who can output so much stuff on his own so Brett's experience is admittedly atypical. Of course, that's also why we invited him to work out of Sunfire - I saw his stuff and was like, shit, this guy can really crank it out.

Anyhow, I should probably address some of the comments further up the page: Brett's the real thing and his company actually makes a Real Product. I'm afraid he hasn't put out any other public marketing materials because they've been working on the actual code. I know I probably don't have any credibility here (i.e. less than Brett himself since I don't post much on HN) but I'll still say - trust me, it's not just some crap marketing.

Brett: you should frickin release already! Sunfire was one of his beta-testing organizations and we'd like to be let into the new version, please.
No browser vendor will give a free lunch to a competitor, at high opportunity cost, by locking themselves into a brand-new and 2nd scripting engine. No one. Steve Jobs' ghost will haunt anyone who tries.

It doesn't matter how "good" Dart is.
This is what this conversation is starting to sound like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOrI6uqS-vk
Who Cares: Square Now Processing $2 Billion in Payments Per Year
Node is straight up cancer. Get over it.

Also, I think you mean "boxes", bro.
ZeroCater is hiring for Customer Service, Restaurant Outreach
Zed had two parsers: a server parser as part of Mongrel and a client parser as part of RFuzz. I actually used the client parser from RFuzz in my Rev/Cool.io libraries. I talked to Zed about his plans for these, he wanted to do a unified parser that can handle both HTTP requests and responses (since the only difference between the two is the first line) but he never got around to it. Both projects are now unmaintained.

Carl is working on a comprehensive event-driven HTTP (and Websockets) framework for Clojure. I'm just borrowing his parser and re-wrapping it in Ruby. I prefer to use Carl's as he's (at least for now) actively maintaining it, as opposed to using Zed's abandonware.
so let's say it's world war ii and i'm a us citizen. i get on a boat to germany and join the german army. do you think a us soldier is not allowed to shoot me because the constitution allows me a trial before "execution"?
You're missing an essential bit here: the use of DTrace damaged the system. This violates the Hippocratic promise of DTrace: to do no harm.[1] This transgression should not be written off as a youthful indiscretion of the port, for it reflects that those undertaking it do not understand this most essential of constraints. And to be honest, I'm personally astounded that a port with such modest ambition could be so busted: if you can't get the syscall provider right, FBT, SDT, USDT and so on will remain firmly out of reach.

[1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2005/07/19/dtrace-safety/
Frisse en goede adem. Looking to cure bad breath? Discover Colgate Mouthwashes.
This is the most mind-tickling thing I have seen/read/watched in a long while! I am going through all the slides and now I know how to interview other coders. Thanks for sharing this!
I'm having a little trouble imaging how the actor model would apply to GUI programming. Could you explain?
Successfully tried it out a few hours ago! It's a little nerve-wracking with the timer, but it's a pretty good marketing/hiring ploy.
Isn't it slightly concerning that you are finding out about your competitors through this feedback thread.

I recommend you find out about all your competitors, try their services and see what they are doing "wrong". If you can improve on these or come up with innovative features that make live easier for small business than its a good idea. Otherwise your just another book keeping firm.
Promoting your own websites is generally seen as ok by the HN community, but you should point out that it is your own website and avoid being self-laudatory about it (i.e. "the most comprehensive")
umad, bro?
I don't think the term "psychopath" is used clinically anymore, except by Hare et al. who insist that there is a difference between sociopathy and psychopathy. I have read at least 5 separate explanations of the differences between the two, but I couldn't tell one from the other. Even the DSM-IV criteria for antisocial personality disorder are quite vague, as I see it. Aside from Hare, other psychologists like Millon have basically introduced their own classifications of people with antisocial tendencies. Millon's subtypes are even less useful because they overlap other personality disorders, like narcissistic, schizoid, and histrionic.

But consider Mr. X, who has several characteristics of schizoid personality, was described as alexithymic by a clinical psychologist, scored an 8 Simon Baron-Cohen's Empathy quotient[1] (whereas most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20), scored equally low on the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS)[2]. If Mr. X shows any kind of aggression, he might very well be considered to have ASP. Without the aggression, he seems to fall somewhere in the Autism spectrum.

Then there are also conduct and dissocial disorders, which have a lot in common (lying, stealing, violent behavior) with ASD. As far as I know, only the ICD-10 definition of ASD attempts to rule out conduct disorder.

To me it seems like most of the terms in the antisocial realm are pretty much generic labels that aren't very useful. The "psychopath" kind of touched on that implicitly in his letter a few times. It's at least some food for thought.

1 - http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuoti...

(this is not a test used in clinical settings)

2 - http://cooccurring.org/public/document/sias.pdf
That's new submissions.
I think a "What do you think of my idea" site generator would cover a real need
So, with more and more users using some mobile device as an access point to their computing experiences, how does it help FB to have ad-free, FB credits free apps? I mean, I would rather have ad free experiences and I don't care for FB apps much. Just wondering..
Nissan Explores Thought Control for Cars
The thing about commuting by bike/transit in the Bay Area is that it is doable, largely because there is critical mass with regards to enough people doing it that the facilities exist. In many cities, you cannot bring a bike onto a rush hour train. Here? 2 bike cars per train, packed to capacity. This summer, I was commuting from SF to Stanford. 10-minute bike ride on one end, 5-minute bike ride on the other end, 37 minute train ride in the middle. Got plenty of reading/homework done and a bit of exercise.
Which is used on the Twitter gem for ruby: https://github.com/jnunemaker/twitter/blob/master/twitter.ge...
Also, thanks a ton for the feedback - we're updating the product description on Nook and Kindle so that it's clear that the content is from Andrew's interview.
Being the size Google is, I sometimes wonder why it took them so long to come up with an alternative to Facebook. If they had of launched Google+ back in 2005 or 2006 I think they would have had a decent chance against Facebook but launching in 2011 was just a bad business move.
"Foreward"? Is that on purpose?
He's basically saying: If the integer is tagged in its static type to be within the range of some array -- then that is proof that it is not a "bignum" and can be stored as a machine word.
It usually means that you're spending most of your 9-5 sending/receiving email, on the phone and in meetings. Then you go home and look at the commit log to see what's changed, check the issue tracker and push some commits yourself.
Producing. It's not the destination, it's the journey.
We won't get 4000; closer to half that. Also, you can't simply multiply the application rate times the length of a day, because the rate gradually increases as the deadline approaches.
They're all out there to push their own agenda and profit from what they print, and one act considered in isolation cannot be the sole deciding factor for the integrity of a publication.

I can't speak for US media but the News International scandal we've had in the UK, and the corporate reaction to the allegations, pretty much says it all. "We're doing it for the good of the public!"

Like fuck they are.
Great write up!

Definitely illustrates the difference between saying and doing. Many people say they want to date a "supermodel," but how many people want it enough to go for it?

Sure, the digital world has just strengthened the "walls" people put up in public, but that just makes breaking down those walls that much more memorable.

Think about it...Did you thank someone today for something, no matter how small, or say "Hi!" to a stranger or new co-worker?

A little goes a long way, and I often find myself pleasantly surprised at the stories people share.
Yup. Both parties work for the same lobbyists.
The Surprising Money Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs
"I hope that it can remain confidential for the time being, seeing as it is quite personal. "

Dude, wtf?
Silicon Valley Reality Show
The source is the Daily Mail. Anyone familiar with that rag will know never to take whatever they say as truth.

Surprised they didn't run with 'Google+ gives you cancer'.
Only tangentially applicable, was including for some humor and as a reference to the 'Gervais Principle' (an article that posits the Office's brilliant ability to characterize the effect of a psychopath on an organization). Robert California's complete lack of empathy was the basis of the situation - using both subtle and direct cues ('I think you are a loser') to re-create a team environment.
Are there going to be any grubwith.us dinners with YC founders this term? (the last one we went to was really great).
Nothing, sorry.

My point was, there's nothing to be done about it. They're going to do it, just as sure as gravity.
They actually do know what it is (Brett, I hope I'm not revealing too much here). Brett tested versions of this product with his old teams back at Intuit and some other organizations (including Sunfire), so people have been using it for awhile. He's been re-designing and relaunching, which is why there's so many people lined up and waiting - it's basically existing users. Well, that and people who are excited BY THE HYPE YEAAAAHAHH!
With low voter turn outs in most nations I'd say citizens fail to inform themselves already, so democracy in its purest sense doesn't really make any sense anyway.

Democracy presently relies on political parties alienating people from each others candidates and relying on attrition of the voter pool to get elected.

Well the Republicans lost by 3% in key states, so we only have to reduce the Democrat voter turnout so lets run a stronger smear campaign.

We recently had this in Canada with the Conservatives. They knew they could get a majority with only 44% of the popular vote (I'm not sure how that even works or makes sense to anyone that a minority of votes can give a majority government).
Alright. Good luck !
>that poorer, less supported children actually regress during long summer breaks //

Presumably you mean poorer as in less financially wealthy.

Is this just an observation that parents who educate their kids educate their kids?

Isn't your proposal just a way of harming the education of more able kids?

If parents are neglecting to aid their children's education over a long summer break why do you feel that dividing that break up will stop the parents from neglecting to aid their children's education?

Less homework I'll go with.
Google Moderator can be used for getting idea feedback, though it won't generate good looking pages.

http://www.google.com/moderator/
It's not hyperbole, it's historical prices & rounding.

I was on a $4.99 1-DVD at a time plan. Then I was on an $8.99/month unlimited streaming plus 1 DVD (yeah, unlimited streaming is worth the extra $4).

Nov 2010 it up $1/month. Then this year it underwent mitosis , becoming two $8/month plans.

Yes, $16 is less than 2 * $9, but the process feels like a 2X increase in under a year.
My wife was just hospitalized for a Crohn's flare. She was on Pentasia in the hospital an then Flagyl when she got home. Nasty stuff that Flagyl is.

Diet certainly can alleviate some of the symptoms, mostly in dealing with the preventing of obstructions.
JIRA Mobile Connect 1.0 - Building better mobile apps
going to my google account settings page, there are two options to shut down functionality, "Delete profile and social features" and "Delete account".

If the difference between "profile" and "account" is confusing, clicking on either explicitly lists the data and services you will be shutting down ("Delete account" even includes a checkbox by "gmail" that you have to click before it will allow you to actually delete your account).

It doesn't seem terribly confusing.
Disgusted with my own countries actions.
I guess you weren't paying any attention back in 2008 or so, when Krugman was vehemently arguing, not for subsidy of the banks, but for nationalizing them.
Oh yeah. That's an optimisation more languages should use. But he clearly doesn't do much mathematics if he thinks most integers are array indices. His point is doubtlessly right in his problem domain though and maybe even for a large sector of the programming community.
Dispatch, http client in scala
Ask yourself why the US needs to have secret laws? Why the US pours so much resources into domestic "counter-terrorism"? This ramping up of domestic security has gone on intensely for a decade even though there is no credible domestic threat. When the state spends so much resources effectively preparing for war domestically, there just might be cause for concern.