skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It will be interesting to see if the Windows Store takes off. I assume it will since it will be placed front and center in the user experience whereas the Windows Marketplace has always been impossible to get to.

A little competition for Apple is a good thing.
That's not how you use P/E ratios, which are totally irrelevant when comparing firms with entirely different revenue and cost sources.
Monolithic views of government and the military: Good or Evil?
I don't think you need to take it that far to say news should end. Personally if each person that was the subject of a news cast had the option to say whether it aired or not would be enough.

It sort is along the lines that if the person wasn't made available for comment then they'd have no story at all. That way the person gets to say whether the information provided is factual or bias or an alternative.
A large part of Reddit winning was Kevin Rose fumbling while CEO of digg. Reddit had open sourced its code by then, and Digg didn't even bother adding some of the useful functionality.
Some home exteriors are made with brick or concrete blocks but a large number (I can't quote a percentage) of American homes are built entirely from lumber. Current construction usually involves sheathing the outside of the house with plywood sheets and covering the sheets with vinyl siding. Interior walls are generally covered in drywall (also called
"sheetrock" or gypsum board)

Where are you from and what are homes built with there?
You can get a more complete list from the Launch blog - it has a list of incubators & accelerators by deadline updated through spring 2012.
http://www.launch.is/blog/incubatorsaccelerators-by-deadline...

They also have a complete global listing by alphabetical order by country and by states within the US: http://www.launch.is/blog/complete-list-of-incubators-and-ac...

Also cross-posted to your initial question.
I would have thought it's an incentive to not get banned, so preventing spammers etc. from just signing up for a million accounts as old ones get shut down.
Quick guess: "How can little Timmy be overweight if half the kids in the neighborhood are chubbier than him?" (Psst: not that difficult, actually.)
I was a local television reporter for a long time, before switching to the digital side of things.

You're totally correct with most of the above.

One of the crazy (and sometimes fun) parts of the job of being a local television reporter is trying to be an expert in something new every day.

Really what it comes down to is having to try to figure out how to distill down a huge amount of information into a one minute, thirty second chunk of video - when you do that, by nature, only the 'sensational' stuff makes the cut.

Then it gets cut again by someone who has no idea about any of the stuff you left out of the story when they write a promotion about it, which is how you end up with teases like "What you're eating right now can kill you".
"Prototype.js and Mootools did not break the web"
I see so frequently that when a child is overweight, their parents are overweight as well. I wonder what their perception of their own weight is.
This obfuscates code, and I remove it wherever I see it.
Sometimes people are too clever for their own good.
Use an object. Override a method, FFS.
> In conclusion, TV news should be ended in all forms.

Even though it sounds a bit broad, I'll second the idea behind it as I understand it.

> Wow. I agree there's a lot of misinformation and poor reporting on TV news, but that's like saying the Internet should be ended because of the poor quality of slashdot comments.

There's too many misinformation and poor reporting on TV and no way to distinguish truth from falsehood. You wouldn't trust a person who verifiably lied to you 70% of the time. That's why you don't trust YouTube comments. It's a waste of brain resources to even try.

The same thing happened with newspapers and major news station. Even most news from news sites that end up on HN get debunked in comments after few hours by people who actually know the domain.

I personally don't know who to believe now - everyone on "popular news" seems to try either to steal attention, or to advertise something. And the truth suffers.
I am aware about the nature/well-being (I even read a study regarding sports performance), but I have no knowledge on the findings on how to organize work floors. Care to share some links? Thanks.
It is a frontend for browser apps to OpenGL that is an alternative to DirectX (or a part).
Starting up (by 4sq founder Naveen)
Those involved must've felt horrible when they realized that the projectile was going to miss the hillside and go into residential territory. So glad nobody got hurt.
Teaching kids that science is dangerous is perhaps one of the greatest contributions to society they could possibly have!

Kids love dangerous things. (Works best if you tell adults to back off and let them have fun)
My objection to the idea that JS will so easily replace Python is that if you apply the same degree of analysis to JS that is causing you to reject Python, JS fares far worse. At least Python addresses the encoding issue, JS strings are far stupider, more dangerous, and require you to do a lot more of the paperwork if you can't assume an external environment that takes care of it for you (the browser, in this case). The next generation of JS fares somewhat better, if it is implemented according to the spec (and there quite a gulf betwixt a spec and an implementation), but when will you start being able to use that?

Try implementing even a medium-sized project in both Python and JS and tell me JS is a serious replacement, let alone for the large ones.
Counterfeiting changes the value of money. Laundering doesn't. It just hides the flow of money from authorities.
I would buy Visual Studio (in fact I own a copy), but the average developer who develops for iOS/OSX/Android is going to say something like this to themselves:

"You're right. I won't buy Visual Studio. And I won't use the Express Edition, because it is seriously limited when compared to even the low-end paid version of Visual Studio. And the Express Edition is seriously limited when compared to the functionality found in Xcode/Instruments.

And as a result, you won't get revenue from any apps I develop, because I'll happily ignore your platform".

Microsoft is free to shoot themselves in the foot. They've already done it with the Zune and with their fixation on stylus-based tablets this century. Do you really want to add this to the list? It just strikes me as silly on Microsoft's part. If you want to get developers interested in your platform again, you need to make concessions to sweeten the deal.
I like to use defaultdict for this. A strategy dictionary, with a default strategy.

dispatch = defaultdict(default_stategy)

dispatch['one'] = new_strategy

print dispatch['two'] => default_strategy.

Beats case statements and elif chains.
Yes, American houses are made of some kind of plywood (structural insulated panels according to Wikipedia).

They take it for granted, but for someone used to houses being built of bricks and mortar and concrete, it's odd.

I really don't know how they're called, but they're vastly different. Someone with at least passable knowledge of building can clarify :)
There are and will continue to be (I would assume) free tools for developing for Windows, including Windows 8. The Express tools are quite capable of doing the job. If you need the extra power afforded by the full version of Visual Studio, then pay for it, because you probably aren't really a hobbyist at that point.
I don't see a bunch of variable definitions on one line as an improvement, just reads less easily and only feels justified in the case of some low numbers like

var x = 0, y = 1, z = 0;
// Some looping or similar here

I do agree with your using of `english` variable to assign `currentLanguage`.
I hope that was sarcasm. The Internet has shown that people don't have to work in a newsroom to be a journalist, but it's also highlighted the fact that being a journalist of any note or quality requires the same combination of skill and training and work of any profession. It's really really easy to suck at it, but it's an intangible enough thing that a lot of people don't realize a) that it's something you can suck at, b) that they might suck at it.
Piriform uses this to great effect. Not sure what they're taking in from their enterprise level offerings, but everyone and their brother uses their free products.
This reminds me a bit of the working for Radio Shack come-on... They tell you it's minimum wage plus commission. Then your first check comes and you find out it was minimum wage OR commission, whichever is higher.

$25,000 is a pipe dream for the vast, vast majority of mobile apps.
It's interesting to look at these renderings in the context of the story from a couple of days ago about working out at the office (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314922).

Treadmills in a conference room are certainly better than sitting all day. But instead of a treadmill, I'd rather just work in an office where I could go outside and take a walk. I hope more companies will start thinking about office design in the way that Apple has, even if they do it on a smaller scale.
What's the purpose of using this over underscore?
Thanks! That seems pretty useful. Will include that in my next commit.
For me, the strongest point is about which version of Python everyone uses at work. When you have many commercial users its really difficult to get everyone to move. Python3 is not currently a target for my code at work because just writing the features is a full-time job. The difficulties in porting would not currently be worth the effort and I would have an extremely hard time justifying the ports business value.
Hacker Installs Ice Cream Sandwich on Kindle Fire
I really expected them to copy user-created subreddits. They'd had a critical mass of users at that point, so whereas it took a year or so of me seeding new communities, doing house ads, and generally hustling subreddits -- they could've been up and running with a myriad of healthy communities.
1) they were on a military explosives test ground and firing range. implying that they were in someone's back yard is a bit disingenuous when i'm sure more dangerous things are regularly tested there.

2) i rather suspect that they were pointing it exactly where they were told to point it by the officials and experts, as has been the case with pretty much everything they do on that range.

it sucks that this happened, everyone's lucky that no one was hurt. but i largely suspect they weren't shooting from the hip about it. the firing range must've had officials to oversee it. their insurance company regularly oversees all stunts. and the crew of the show are straight up experienced professionals, regardless of how it comes off on tv.
I agree with all of your points, but I'm wondering about the case where it's a solo technical founder that has to do EVERYTHING - marketing, development, customer relations, billing, etc. In that case do you think it makes sense to outsource non-core functionality just so he/she can accelerate development in order to get a more complete product out there (beyond MVP)?
PERICONCEPTIONAL NUTRITION ISSUES Part 1
This has been on HackerNews before, but it is still interesting. It is also worth noting that in http://lesswrong.com/lw/up/shut_up_and_do_the_impossible/ he admits he has conducted 3 more experiments since then (for more money) and was successful in one of those. The fact that it was EVER successful (using a mere human, not a smarter-than-human AI) makes the point.
This is a neat idea. However, the Redis backend seems rather pointless. If I'm understanding the code correctly, each bit of the filter is implemented as an item in Redis. From the comments[1] the overhead is ~130 bytes. So each bit ends up needing 1000 bits? At that point, it'd be even be more efficient to just use a hashtable with the SHA256 hash of the item as the key and storing a count+expiry time...

[1]: In the comments: "The simple backend I added treats each key as an individual bucket, and based on my rough testing, Redis added about ~130 bytes of overhead per key - which, of course, is a huge difference compared to the bit vector."
Is there an HN Web Service
Do anyone know if there is a Hacker News Web Service?
Your question seems a bit premature, with an underlying assumption of no future progress. Why not wait and see where you're at by the end of the FI program? You may/not have pivoted, gained partners/team members, attracted funding, etc.
What (Natural) Language To Program In?
I was on a badly set-up mailing list once where someone has set their out of office, which replied to the list, which emailed the response to all including the OOO person,which posted to the list.. you see the problem! There was a whole night of this.

I was on a student placement at the time and as I had only mamanged to unsub after about several thousand emails I spent a few nervous hours awaiting Sauron's gaze from IT support.
Thats the problem with someone that has not done development/engineering leading and development/engineering team they have a simplistic view of the problem or only understand it superficially.
The only concern I have with this is the impact this may have on the eco system that is hard or impossible to predict. I guess that it's very hard to impossible to go back after the fact.
You previously equated doing an immoral thing with being evil. Now you equate my statement:

"It is sometimes advisable for society as a whole to look out for our long term interests and this is a good thing."

with knowing what is best for everyone else. You logic is faulty. I used the word 'sometimes' and this is an important word in the sentence I wrote. I also never used the phrasing that I know what is best. I said society. Your conclusions are not logically supported from what I've written or stated.

You make too many leaps and appear to go from one extreme to the other. There is a huge gap between "let everyone do as they please" to "I know what is best for everyone".
5 Main Causes of Roof Deterioration | All Roofing Solutions, DE/PA Roofer
Hey - I love this site, I'm reasonably new to Ruby stuff and it gives me a taster of things I love reading about, and things I'd like to do. Can anyone please suggest any other similar blogs/places?

Thanks!
TV news is no better and no worse than other forms of journalism.
Did the NSA shut down reddit to limit occupy wallstreet news & organizing
Dude a cannonball was fired within clear sight of a residential neighborhood. Regardless of what you thought of the news reporting quality, it's pretty indefensible, negligent behavior.
The express version is free and is meant for hobbyists and individuals. If you were to form a small company, you might be able to get a bit more than that for free.

http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/12/03/you-should-be-using-mic...
Out of curiosity, what's so limited about the Express Edition? I haven't used it in a while, but last time I did it seemed quite capable.

As for your claim that developers will ignore Windows, I think that's at best unlikely. Developers have embraced Windows with the same toolset split for a long time. And iOS with its $100 signup + 30/70 split has proven that developers will pay to develop for a platform if they believe it's worthwhile.
Can you really call ad-supported SaaS "adware"?
Windows 8 beta announced for February 2012
Interesting article.I wonder if most of them could have gotten away if they weren't that greedy. Making 5 bucks to get some cigarettes would probably never be uncovered.

Get a new book every few days. Use it to buy groceries. Don't print yourself a yacht.
The cheapest Visual Studio is totally free (Express).

I don't mind MS trashing where's it's due (crap js & imgs for code snippets for example), but don't spout total nonsense.

Also I paid nothing like the price you're quoting for my BizSpark subscription, MS offer different prices to startups. I believe there's a web focused one that's even cheaper, though I can't remember the name.
>Another big difference from Apple. I wonder though, with the various antitrust agreements Microsoft has made around the world, whether they could even consider an Apple-style “if you use our store, all transactions must go through us” policy.

I believe that doesn't really apply to Windows 8 because you can sideload regular non-Metro programs all you want, just like on Windows 8. The Windows Store will still link to third party websites carrying non-metro apps.

The only hardware where you cannot do this will be Windows 8 ARM tablets. And since Windows is starting from zero in a market completely dominated by the iPad, I doubt anti-trust will be a concern anytime soon, considering that Apple is getting away with the lockdown and 30% cut of all in-app purchases despite being a near monopoly.
On the surface it looks like a lack of strategy lead to the company hiring too many PHP developers.

Bingo. It's the only logical explanation. I've yet to meet a decent PHP Developer who isn't willing or capable to turn their hand to a new technology. There must be more to it than Rose simply not exploring the idea of adding to the teams existing set of skills by letting those Dev's try new things.
When I read the article, it actually seems a bit complicated and not so cut and dry.

If foreign companies want to enter China, they need to obey Chinese law, especially when those laws aren't malicious, make sense, and are enforced correctly, even if the result is ludicrous. Any country should expect the same when a foreign company comes to compete within their shores. And in this particular case, it doesn't seem ludicrous.

Here's a ludicrous example, a close cousin to domain name squatting:

http://www.chinahearsay.com/coca-cola-plays-it-smart-in-its-...

What Apple has going for it here is the fact that it has Foxconn as a key manufacturing partner, which is a huge employer in China. That may give it some political power. Who knows. In the end, $1.6b is chump change for Apple, and it may be worth it for them to just settle.
Advanced Perl Maven
> Perhaps someone should tell them about physics

Are you referring to the hosts or the general public that the hosts enjoy educating?
Old Versus the New in Online Lead Generation Software
A response to "How Google is quietly killing Firefox"
That's like comparing an ant and an elephant.... how does it even compare? One is a bottle of Sprite, and not even a class action lawsuit, the other is a trademark for selling rights in the entire country.
Verizon's overpriced new Android tablets
Roller Garage Doors
Fair enough - was too lazy to write "I agree" instead.
Apple sweeps PC World satisfaction surveys
Sectional Garage Doors and Insulated Sectional Garage Doors
ClearDB Announces Heroku Add-On General Availability - The ClearDB Blog
For that analogy to be correct, shitty TV news stories would have to be a relatively small proportion of total TV news. That's not my experience.
First, it seems like unnecessary overheard - memory, and potentially network - to store a Bloomfilter in Redis. A modern machine can pretty easily fit a BF containing hundreds of millions of items with a very, very low false positive rate into memory. Why get Redis involved?

Second, an alternative solution might be using multiple, smaller Bloomfilters, and dumping the oldest BF shard whenever the most recent one fills up. This wouldn't be appropriate for all use cases, but it's simpler, and potentially superior in some cases.
Then why haven't the more dangerous things wrecked houses too?

I'm stunned at the level of apology going on here ("it sucks that this happened [...] but" -- seriously?). I like the show too, but people: they put a deadly projectile through someone's house. That's just not acceptable under any circumstances, no matter how many rules were followed nor precautions taken.

Someone screwed up badly here. That stunt should never have happened where it did. Does anyone seriously disagree?
Windowfarms Raises $223,000 on Kickstarter to Manufacture New System Locally
I used to own a Proview CRT monitor back in the day. My, my, how things have changed.
> Finally, we also make use of the native expire functionality in Redis to guarantee that keys are only stored for a bounded amount of time.

So if I'm understanding this, the time-based aspect comes solely from the fact that Redis/the backend is storing the timestamp of entries and also deleting them behind the Bloom filter's back?

Well, that's a lot simpler than the strategies I was imagining.
Android market reviews now grabs users device and app version number
projectiles in flight actually do some surprising things -curving or literally spiraling through the air are just some of them. I have no idea what this thing was doing, but at speed and with spin, weird things happen.
Mono for Android 4.0 – C# Development on IceCream Sandwich
any developer worth her salt jumps at the chance to learn a new language on the company dime

I would agree with that sentiment. Another way to put it is I would prefer not to be on a team with a developer that wouldn't do that.

Still, I also think competence can be relative. There are lots of developers who prefer to stick with one thing. They usually cost less and are more likely to stick around long term. They can be experts in their domain (even if it is limited to 1 or 2 languages). There's something to be said about someone who is content (or ignorant) to have their career stagnate for years working with older technology and projects that keep the company running. Personally, I'm of the opinion that it's important to keep up with the times, but if you have a requirement for that sort of thing those developers can be the workhorses on projects that some other developers wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. They can also mean certain disaster if you hire a bunch of them for your fast-moving startup.
The collections team groups "items" into "collections", an item being a book, movie, song, etc. Has nothing to do with collecting cash.
Just off the top of my head: no extensions (no ReSharper, for example, no Nuget), no integrated source control, no memory/performance profiling, basic UX as compared to full VS - things like that.

Xcode is a full-fledged development environment. Those things come standard in Xcode. VS Express, by comparison, is a kids toy. It is not a serious development environment.

Microsoft also thought huge iPhone/iPad adoption rates was "at best unlikely". Yes, developers had embraced Windows over the past two decades, but that all started to change with iOS/Android. You cannot seriously believe that the world is the same, and that developer's attitudes towards Windows is the same.

[$100 + 30/70 split] for iOS is a completely different story than [$49 + $479 + 30/70 split] for Windows. That price point is way to high to drive adoption.

Don't take my word for it, though - wait until developers find how disappointing the development experience is with Express.
Facebook is Watching You
What Apple has going for it here is the fact that it has
Foxconn as a key manufacturing partner, which is a huge
employer in China. That may give it some political power.

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. That doesn't count as "political power" in China.
Developers love to complain about other people's minor bugs, and yet hate it when testers open them against their own code. "Who even cares about this?"
A thousand times this. One of my projects is SMS heavy, and I had to switch it to Tropo because Twilio wouldn't do Canadian numbers. The developer experience has been far inferior.
I think your argument misses the point. The main advantage of the internet is that the marginal cost of a better report(er) is essentially zero. The marginal cost of a TV second is huge. So detailed reporting material gets pushed out of the market for TV seconds by sensationalist crap.

On the internet, you have the chance to look for the better material. On TV, the circumstances behind the business model drive it to CNN headline news quality.
Requiem for Jumbo Frames