skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I just read the first couple of chapters and I find it a bit painful to be honest. I am not a CS grad and I don't write software as my primary job though I do write code to solve problems in my discipline. I have programmed C, Ruby and Obj-C a bit over the years and I find the pace of this book too slow and overly wordy. Yet, I think a beginner would find it quite hard going. Thinking back to when I was first learning, the first exercise (2.1) has too many traps to trip up an absolute beginner and you wouldn't write a true/false expression like that in practice. So, I'm not sure who the target audience is for this book. But, I'll have a read of it anyway because it's the nicest 'Learn Javascript' web resource I've seen so far. Picaxe is still probably the best introduction to a language I have read, gets right in there quickly with minimum fuss.
The problem with pop psychology is that it often is not quite right. A half dozen decades ago, the "new idea" was that kids should not be beaten, but encouraged (spare the rod and spoil the child). In the last decade or two, we've learned that the kind of praise you employ is important, and the advice now is to praise effort rather than innate ability.

Once you get into the real world, though, you learn that effort isn't as important as doing the right things well. School itself is teaching us the wrong thing, and this effort-praising business is compounding it. Trying really hard at History when you don't like it isn't going to make your life much better in the long run, it's just going to be hours and hours that could have been spent furthering some other ability or otherwise enjoying childhood.

In a couple more decades, we'll have a shiny new experiment that shows that praising effort has ruined a couple generations, teaching them that life is nothing but hard work, soldiering through undesirable situations without considering importance or relevance. We'll learn that we need to teach children reflection, to foster creativity, and to encourage curiosity. Then we'll learn that those kids don't work hard enough, and the parenting industry will roll on...

Rural parents have had it right for generations. Making kids play outside, giving them real responsibilities (e.g., necessary farm chores), and teaching them a variety of skills outside the classroom is practically guaranteed to result in well-rounded, well-adjusted children. You don't need to read the latest parenting mumbo-jumbo to know how to raise a kid.
Big Data Search
What comes next: a look at some of what entrepreneurs are thinking about
Try the batteries-included distro from ActiveState.com.
Actually you don't need to know JS at all to learn PHP or Ruby. JS is mostly client-side language used to design interactions (although JS server side implementations are gaining traction now).

If JS syntax looks daunting to you, you can start at jquery, which is a js library, with much more elegant syntax.

Also, if you want to choose between Ruby or PHP. Go for Ruby, As weird as it may sound, learn some basics from other languages (PHP or Python), just because ruby is syntactically so different from other languages, that in my opinion makes ruby a bad starting language.

Most of the time, you can manage with Ruby and JS for server-side and client-side programming.

Hope this helps.
What makes you think "soon"?

It's obvious that in some distant point of future programming will cease to be The hot thing to do, but what makes you think it might be soon enough for us to see it?
More on why it sucks to work at Zynga
Startup hopes to hack the immigration system with a floating incubator
Actually, most people don't seem to know this, but if you go ALL-Microsoft or ALL-Apple, everything pretty much works. The problem is, most of us don't want ALL anything, because neither company has a perfect solution for everything.
March of the uber...
No, I'm not saying it's preference. I think we agree, actually. By "workflow", I meant the way your particular work tends to split across apps and windows.

For me, it's a better default to switch entire applications than windows. There are edge cases, sure, like the chat one you mention, or different browser windows, but I'd rather just switch from Excel to IE to Outlook than have to tab through my history of open documents and browser tabs (curse you IE) to get back to my Outlook window.

It sounds like for you, it's the opposite: the better default would be to switch windows, not apps.

The question then is which is the most common pattern, but I don't know of any actual research on this. You can't generalize from personal experience, plural of anecdote and all that.
Who would still use HTML? There would be no upside at all, Flash has always had better tools.

No upside at all? Open standards, semantic code, SEO optimization, separation of presentation and content, ability to look into the source code, ability to alter the content and/or visuals by user, better printing support, userscripts, ad blocking,... Just to mention a few.

Anyway, no matter how good Flash could have become it would always be only a plug-in. A third-party injection, not an integral part of the web - and as such it always was doomed in the long term perspective. Relaying on plugins is like - excuse an over-the-top metaphor - having nitro system in a family car. It's exciting for a while, but nowhere near an experience of having a real supercar. HTML5, in it's current state, is not yet a Ferrari but it has way bigger chance to become one than Flash (or Silverlight, or anything) ever had.
Yeah, even if I have a 50% chance of getting slapped in the face when I tell someone they're ugly, if I'm not doing it all the time, that doesn't mean 50% of my interactions involve me getting slapped.

Likewise, if there's a 50% chance that a neuroscientist messed up a particular kind of analysis, because they don't do it all the time means that less than 50% of neuroscience papers will contain that error.

Still, it's embarrassing.
Why is this on hacker news? OpenBSD has been doing this for years? About as news worthy as Windows 95's BSOD.
Marking add-ons compatible by default is planned and implemented for FF10 (off by default, but it'll be turned on by default assuming all goes well).
How to post a PhantomJS screenshot of your site to a user's Facebook account
OK, I understand. The symptom you're describing isn't really "fragmentation". Fragmentation is the inability to use smaller blocks of memory because the larger allocations won't fit. That behavior isn't changed by this.

You're talking about a resource reclamation issue. Unmapping a page is a clear signal to the kernel that the memory is unused and can be repurposed immediately. Otherwise, it needs to find and eject a page from memory using the VM system, which is more expensive (though I'd guess not a lot more expensive except in pathologically allocation-bound systems).
Right, coffee is a (mostly fungible) commodity product that requires an investment of ~3-5 minutes of drinking time and you're done.

There's basically no opportunity cost to picking the "wrong" coffee. It won't take you longer to drink, will probably give you the same amount of caffeine and just won't taste quite as good as the "right" one.

Apps can require a significant time investment to learn/use them. There's also a potentially large opportunity cost to picking the wrong app. App store searching kind of blows, without some invested time, you can't even know which one is the "right" app for you to spend some time on. Though I also agree that 15-20 minutes is much more likely than hours of research.

The $2 isn't the point, it's the cost after the purchase that you're spending time to make sure it isn't wasted.
System packages install globally, pip can install globally or inside a virtualenv.
Just to clarify, while I am the only one full time developer, there is bunch of other contributors that are doing great work on Firebug!

I am also a member of the Mozilla dev-tools team and one of the Firebug's goals in the future is to reuse Firefox built-in tools and components. This way, we can reduce amount of work on Firebug side and also make sure that APIs of these built-in tools are well designed.

So, Firebug would still be a Firefox extension, but built on top of much better APIs, adding advanced features (e.g. those that are not suitable to be natively in Firefox).

It's also an advantage for other dev-tools that can appear (as Firefox extensions) - especially for those that integrate with Firebug.

Honza
Though the article claims to be targeted at users running on linux, most of the the info is still quite useful regardless of the platform - just figure out how to install python and and pip and the rest is pretty platform agnostic.
Stop saying "leverages" unless you're describing lifting a heavy rock using a stick. The word you're looking for is "uses".
There are a few quotes from college I'll never forget. One of them was by my chemistry professor who said, "I have a great deal of respect for the equal sign."

He put one student's homework on the screen. Instead of answering:

A + B = C
C + D = E

she took this shortcut:

A + B = C + D = E

(Variables replaced for simplification.)

It was clear what she intended, but what she ended up with was a total fail.

Funny this post reminded me of a little incident and a great quote so many years ago. To this day, I still have a great deal of respect for the equal sign.

Thank you, Professor State...

http://sites.allegheny.edu/magazine/fallwinter-2003/best-abo...

http://www.memorialsolutions.com/sitemaker/sites/hathew0/obi...

EDIT: I just realized that Professor State's class was one of the few that actually helped me develop good work habits for life. I once wrote about that here on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1544573
Updating the source package is easier for one. Ubuntu's packages are often out of date, especially if you are running an LTS. It also integrates nicely with virtualenv which makes managing dependencies easier, via pip freeze.
Customer Support Developer - JavaScript. WebMynd is growing in San Francisco.
Customer Support Developer at an early-stage, well-funded startup with paying customers. This is an entry-level position which could lead to a core development or leadership role later.

Learn more about us and apply here:

http://webmynd.com/jobs

Responsibilities:

- Track all inbound support requests, and either satisfy the customer personally or make sure they are being serviced by an appropriate member of the team

- Add features and fix bugs in our JavaScript library. You can see our current API documentation here: docs.webmynd.com/en/latest/api/index.html

- Help customers solve their problems using our framework by reviewing and patching their code, and creating example apps

- Update our build tool and native wrappers in support of bug fixes or new features. This may mean you learning new languages

- Write unit tests, update documentation

- Participate in code reviews, enthusiastically learn from and help teach other team members

- Contribute enthusastically to company business from feature prioritization discussions to attending events in support of sales. We're a small team who love what we do and expect everyone to muck in.

Requirements:

- You have built mobile, web or browser add-on applications that you can show us

- FizzBuzz is way too easy, you're confident you'd do well at a JavaScript coding test

- You're diligent, outgoing and ambitious, looking for an entry-level technical position

We also value these skills and experiences:

- Java, Objective-C, C++

- Native application development experience: Windows / Mac OSX apps, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7

- Computer Science degree, experience working in a software development team

About WebMynd:

WebMynd is a software company based in San Francisco and London.

We're a tight-knit team of 9, all but one are developers, backed by top Silicon Valley investors. As an international founding team, we've found work trips away to be hugely productive and fun. We have paying customers and enjoy working on a product with real value that our users recognize.

Our framework, called Forge, is like HTML5 without the restrictions: you create a common JavaScript codebase but can access native functionality from it. The end result is that you code your app once and get many native apps across multiple app platforms.

Don't build another social network for pets. Apply to solve tough problems for real customers.
Ask HN: Should you ship an MVP if your team isn't agile
I've been working with a vendor who is clearly on to something product-wise but the version they shipped is buggy and simple things like modal window controls aren't working. They impressed in the beginning but now the bosses are talking about ditching them because they aren't able to fix the features they shipped in a timely manner. It really made me wonder if they've done damage by shipping too early. Thoughts?
I don't understand why there are no SOHO-priced network-attached scanners. A simple scanner with ADF and a button, which stores files on the network. The pure hardware cost is nowhere near the $1K pricetag most of these devices have.
Interesting. Do you have any idea what kind of topics the course teaches? Is there a list online?
"Because the item is a copy, and (digital) copies actually do cost nothing. That is just the physical fact, and people will always have some underlying sense of it -- as they should."

So why don't people have the same mindset about currency?

It's just ink and paper that represents a perceived value...very similar to the way digital items work.

How about art? It's just paint and paper.

Digital copies may cost nothing, but the original usually costs thousands of man-hours and or lots of money.

"The idea that you should not be allowed to make copies, but must pay for them, is very unnatural"

In the programming community, it seems only unnatural when it involves proprietary software. If a company uses GNU software without giving back to the community (the currency involved with OSS), people here want heads to roll. Just look at any discussion here in HN that involved the thesis theme. Many, many people called him a "thief" and that he "stole" code from Wordpress. In reality, nothing was "stolen" (using your logic).

Your mindset will eventually cause the following:

1) Developer wages will decrease over time
2) Most companies will just have a web service as opposed to an app. It means you will be paying a monthly fee for software and it will cost more to the end-user in the long-run.
Art is a social manifestation. In an industrial world where any machined object is more perfect than the best handcraft work, the importance of craft is deemed unimportant by modern art. And beauty is mostly relative, anyway.

Yes, modern art is cynicism and relativism at its best, with a touch of snobbishness... At least, one indisputable advantage is that it pisses off conservatives :)
XSS Sanitization in Web Application Frameworks
Abstract :
Filtering or sanitization is the predominant mechanism in today’s applications to defend against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. XSS sanitization can be difficult to get right as it ties in closely with the parsing behavior of the browser. This paper explains some of the subtleties of ensuring correct sanitization, as well as common pitfalls. We study several emerging web application frameworks including those presently used for development of commercial web applications. We evaluate how effective these frameworks are in guarding against the common pitfalls of sanitization. We find that while some web frameworks safeguard against the empirically relevant use cases, most do not. In addition, some of the security features in present web frameworks provide a false sense of security.
For some obscure reason word-break is missing (couldn't find it with instacss, can't find it now either).
I'd like to think the Internet has changed this to some extent. My guess is that I would have found it a godsend. I remember trying to learn advanced statistics and getting frustrated because all of the software was expensive. Nowadays you've got a huge amount of free software and even more importantly strong active communities around it. I am cautiously optimistic that this will help connect lonely smart kids to others in the world who share their interests.
I'd definitely be interested in reading the full list :) Any more suggestions?
I think you can divide (useful) experience into two components: 1) a person's maturity as a programmer / team member, and 2) their level of practical knowledge with a given technology stack or your problem domain. I think that maturity is undervalued in this industry and is a must-have for senior developers. For practical knowledge, it can be extremely helpful to have someone who knows where the bodies are buried in the tech stack you are using. However, if you already have the knowledge on your team, then getting someone who can pick things up quickly might be a better focus.
The customers are generally older, not web-savvy customers
Precisely, that's the intention.
Honza
Since it seems like the multicore thing is here to stay, may I suggest that if you are doing anything parallel you should know about Amdahl's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing#Amdahl.27s_l...
System package's availability vary a lot with the distribution you're using. For instance I use Debian and my web hosting provider is based on CentOS and share my REQUIREMENTS.txt file.I can't really depend on the packages being available on every distro's repository, let alone the same version.

Also, I wouldn't like to install some packages system-wide (a friend's personal project from a github repository) so I use pip and virtualenv in a similar manner as the article recommends to maintain a per project dependency library.

That's how I see it :)
I also had a problem getting it to run according to the install/config/run instructions.

I am thinking about having Cloud9 set up for you automatically on my new CoffeeScript/SSJS servers (thanks to Trevor Burnham for the idea of having an editor).. if that is something that anyone might be interested in.
How to be Prepared for an Interview
Have an interview coming up soon, but you’re not ready? Don’t worry. We know interviewing can be a stressful and daunting process, but it doesn’t have to be. With these tips, you’ll learn how to be prepared for an interview, become more confident and assertive and land the job you want.
What I'm guessing you are looking at is a prototype, whether they know it or not, and it is rarely a good idea to simply try to fix the bugs in a prototype. They are great for validating early assumptions but typically should be thrown away once that cycle is completed and rewritten.

Trying to improve and fix prototype code is typically very challenging. It often has no architecture or structure, so changes and new features are slow to implement.

If this vendor doesn't understand this, or it seems likely that having them rewrite it would just result in another prototype quality result then your bosses are right to walk away.
This is a good point, and it's a problem in theoretical economics. Some economic models abstract away some important real-world conditions.

My experience, though, is with applied macroeconomics. We'd derive models consistent with theory, then make sure we avoided a number of time series pitfalls (autocorrelation, mistaking cointegration for correlation, overspecifying a model) using a variety of statistical techniques.
Feds Seize 150 Websites In Counterfeit Crackdown
"This is an important reminder that events do not progress in a straight line"

Yes, Google+ is the intermediate step in the all seeing "identity" service depicted in this story ;)
These are very welcome improvements, especially in the area of adding a parsable semantic structure to pages.

My personal favourite semantic additions are:

1. The itemtype, itemscope and itemprop attributes, for completely unrestricted noun-based semantic markup (especially useful when using a standardized set of information schemas, such as those provided by http://schema.org/),

2. The <time> element, to allow easy parsing of time no matter how it is visually displayed, and

3. The <figure> element, which encapsulated pieces of media with their captions, much like a LaTeX figure does.
Singapore: Why Innovate in Utopia? (And minor rant on US immigration.)
The Poor Man's Spying Tool
The first comment on the post explains that the account in question appears to be set up by a spammer. It is an impersonation by a bad apple, not something Facebook did. Reporting it should result in its removal, hopefully.

If that doesn't happen, _then_ Facebook is responsible.

http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/28/facebookFraud.html#c...
"I’m accused of fanboyism a lot more these days, but only because Hacker News keeps sending huge waves of people here who tell me I’m an idiot."

It is true that, at times, HN can latch to technology "beliefs" as strongly as some political robot spews garbage in the HuffingtonPost comment section (whatever you do, spare yourself the pain of ever looking there).

This is because people naturally focus on their individual experience and bias, not large swaths of the population. It's the way people are wired. And, a lot of HN'ers are hard-core-anything-but-Apple for lots of reasons.

But I do think the discourse here is at least backed up with intelligent supporting arguments, not just knee-jerk opinion, even if it is myopic and individually anecdotal. And it is for that reason that I often find myself reading the comments here before I read the actual articles.
I am hard working to fix all Firebug memory leaks (and did fix some of them recently). What I really need is a simple scenario showing that Firebug leaks. That helps me a lot!

Any input is appreciated, please post here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/firebug

Honza
Without irony, this is really "du grand art".
I feel responsible for what I recommend so I'm careful with big claims. When I help I rather try to go with incremental improvements rather than "the" solution.
Yes, they're hard problems, but most of what we do is a cop-out, or as the OP says "whatever shoddy pile of hacks we’ve cooked up by then".

For example, I have to search for some obscure instructions to get my two Google calenders syncing with my iPhone that involves my either adding an "email" account, or manually typing in some ridiculously long "secret" url. Why can't I just open google.com/calendar on my phone and have it say "Hey there, want to add me to your phone's calendar? Click here!"?
Symlinks don't work on all filesystems, so don't always work.
Being in the app business for more than 2 years, like any other business, there's a cycle. It's a definite trend that mobile ad spending increases towards the end of the year and so publishers will see higher CPM and more impressions. Come January, that bump in ad revenue might reverse and newbie developers could be in for a surprise drop in their ad revenue.

The key metric to measure is DAU, and checking that you are generating more impressions from more active users.
O'reilly is also running a Cyber Monday sale:

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/cyber-monday.do
$$$  &#8211; $100$1500 Quick Cash in 1 Hour. Get Now for Cash Today.
The argument (for installing 2 as a default) is that a novice to the ecosystem will be disproportionately harmed by the inevitable Python3 experience:

Novice: "I want to do X"
Internet advice: "Use package Y"
Novice: "Okay <install, install>, wtf nothing is working"
<long frustrating debugging session>
Novice: "Oh, wow, this doesn't support Python3 yet. Now I have to ignore all the internet advice and forge my own path, OR port all my code back to 2.7! This language sucks!"

The alternative seems preferable:
Stuff works, but occasionally you don't get a whiz-bang feature (you "only" get 2.7's feature set, poor you). Five years pass, you learn the language. Now you've gotta learn a bunch of new habits, which sucks, but it's not as bad because now you're pretty good at Python, so the easy parts are easy.