skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
CRUD: Node vs. Rails
If one is building a CRUD/BASE website to be used on both mobile and desktop browsers, which would be the best framework to use on the server side, Rails or Node?

I'm building the site to serve a niche segment of the social dating marketplace. It will be profiles, email, a lot of uploading and viewing of pictures. I want my users to primarily access the site through mobile devices but there will be a desktop version as a fall-back. The major sites in this space have a lot of customers but don't seem to be keeping up with the times. Go to any of them and you'll think you've gone back in time seven years. They've also all been very slow to get on the mobile bandwagon. As for me, up until three years ago I was a web developer. I'd started out as a Unix sys-admin before moving on to web development with ColdFusion and then ASP.NET (I hate Microsoft technologies but that's what my company used.). I learned just enough JavaScript to get by. More recently I've read the "pickaxe" book and a couple of Ruby books and I must say I like Ruby a lot.

My biggest concern is that speed, which has never been Rails's strong suit, is critical for mobile users. My thought was that even if Node wasn't built with CRUD/BASE apps in mind, if you can still create such apps with Node, why not use it and eliminate that worry right off the bat? Second, both Rails and Node will have steep learning curves. If I'm going to invest a lot of time in learning a framework, why not learn Node and get in near the "ground floor?" Knowing it will also give me the flexibility in the future to build real-time social apps that RoR isn't suited for.

Ruby/Rails Pros:
- More mature technology
- Great community
- Faster development time due to "convention over configuration"
- A lot of books, blogs, etc. on Ruby on Rails
- I like Ruby

Ruby on Rails Cons:
- Blocked threads and GC can impact performance and require more infrastructure (= more $)
- Less flexibility due to "convention over configuration"
- Configuring servers appears to be challenging at times

Node Pros:
- Performance shouldn't be an issue
- One language (JavaScript) on both client and server
- Growing and enthusiastic community

Node Cons:
- Better suited for real-time apps that require a persistent browser/server connection than for CRUD apps
- Event-based will require learning curve
- Not 1.0 yet so libraries, etc. will be changing a lot
- Frameworks (like Express) are less mature than Rails
- Less documentation and just a couple of books (more coming)
- I don't hate JavaScript but it seems somewhat "ugly" compared to Ruby
Need knee surgery? Medical care?
I was thinking of making a website that people can post to: they would indicate what medical care they need (with an anonymous name), and optionally, why they haven't been able to get their needed medical care.

Then I thought, maybe you could make the website? I'd appreciate it! Let me know, and I'll add my own submission.
Any opinions on which startups I should look out for?
Apparently, nobody! Thanks for the insightful title!
Are you sure?

The better and more important question would be whether they were put in a benchmark like the Russell 1000 since it would force mutual funds to consider whether they should own it.
The site looks great-- I think the purpose that it serves is very inspiring. Continue to tell stories like yours on your site, and I'm sure it will reach the audience you want faster.
Maybe, but alternatives include everything including long term trends like people moving to cities to avoid fuel expense.
I propose MTPL, the mechanical turk programming language. It is a declarative language where you can essentially write what you would like the program to do, not how you want it done. When you click compile there is a call out to a powerful computer that is a bit slow but in a reasonable period of time will return a working program. This is an iterative compiler though where you may have to adjust your code slightly and compile multiple times to get the right result.
None of my computers have had a working DVD Drive for the las t 4-5 years and I'm yet to go 'damn I need a DVD Drive!"'
10 Designs Inspired by Microsoft’s Metro UI | Fuel Your Creativity
The biggest issue that I have with an app like this is the set of permissions that it needs with Dropbox. It needs access to my 'complete dropbox'. That implies it can read everything on it.

I would rather that it only have a 'write-only' access or a limited access to a certain folder in my Dropbox. The Dropbox API[1] makes it possible for you to sandbox your app to only one folder.

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/developers/start/core
I'm a bit disappointed that it'll take until September for them to release all of webOS.
> I want Google to return the same results to me as it does to Bob and Ann (if they're both in my country).

I do plenty of international travel and, until I figured out how to control the country-level Google I got, I violently hated this.

It sounds to me like you want Google to implement exactly the level of personalization you want, no more and no less. I don't think that's reasonable. What I do think is reasonable asking Google to give you the tools required to control the level of personalization you get. For the most part, I think they do that (though I'm sure there are more than a few rough edges at this point).
Just 714 article views for OMG! in the last 24h?

Hmm, either it's really unpopular, or they forgot to include "thousands" or "millions".
Make Things Now - pragmatic functional programming
It's much harder to work through removing DRM if you have to play the game for half an hour each time you want to test a partial solution.

Actually, I think it's best if the time interval is something like two weeks. Shift much of the revenue to downloadable content and online multiplayer. Make the consequences for having been detected completely invisible until then.

This gives the pirates two choices: either they can release their crack early, and their customers will be screwed, because even if a new crack is released, those users will already have been identified, or they can wait until well after the release, when the downloadable content comes online, in which case, you've won a reprieve where there are no sales lost to that pirate.
Interesting, what data does the JS send back to HitTail (interested in scope / privacy here)? Does it have any dependencies?
Is Facebook attacked earlier than Anonymous said?
Devil's advocate:

1. What's the advantage of doing this in HTML5 vs Flash? This is not a game I can play on a touch screen device.

2. Why should customers get excited about a game that would have looked pretty average even in the 1990s? Nobody cares that it's HTML5.
If hackers can find exploits in your software after its code is made public, then they can find them before as well. Relying on source code being secret is security through obscurity, which everyone should know is not security at all. Especially for software with security implications (remote access, encryption, etc.) the last thing you want is proprietary code.
Loads quite slow...
Lovely!

Perhaps the next implementation should use Raspberry Pi instead of a laptop.
They differentiate between programming and software engineering. Combine both occupations and you get a projected 29% increase from 2008 to 2018.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm#projections_data
Comment #125 over a year ago :)
A flawless uninstaller!
My jail is CIA or something. Fucken evil parents are CIA.

God says...
C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\YANKEE.TXT

eagerly together, that the knight of
the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--"

"_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to be
broken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaud
and support it."

. . . .

"So these two knights came together with great random--"

I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn't
say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble with
the visitors by this time, and this turned
having been to this room, it is legally not possible to get to the building without crossing into Switzerland over the border, iirc.
Oh, pcAnywhere, I hope you come out of this ok.

I still remember when you opened up a world of remote working to me, first with dialup and then over the internet.

I could sit anywhere and work anywhere else. The remote access you opened my life up to is right up there with wifi, and laptops, for things I just didn't know how I lived without.
One startup we are paying and one we aren't. Paying does give you a phone number to call. However it doesn't give you anyone useful that answers the call.
Anon Bringing Down Facebook
Two words: zombie apocalypse
Your freedom to own your smart phone will disappear eventually when Hollywood figures out you didn't actually buy your phone, you are paying a monthly service which pays down your phone, an unspecified price. A percentage of which should go straight to Hollywood.
Keep up the good work with regards to precompiled luajit binaries.
> First, I'm enjoying this discussion and I'm glad it remains civil. Thanks!

Yes, me too!

> I don't see these as divergent.

Not divergent in the sense that one precludes the other, but where one doesn't involve me, the other is all about me. The old Google cared only about my search terms, the new Google seems to want to climb in my bed with a notepad and figure me all out.

> Does Google have to not be evil in the eyes of every one of its employees?

Google, the institution, just has not to be evil, as they have defined evil. That there's obvious internal disquet about their new direction should be fairly disqueting to you.

> Could you describe in what ways you think Google is building an institution that leads them inevitably toward doing evil?

It doesn't matter how many websites Google crawl or books they digitise, we don't have to trust them or their intentions or any of their staff. But our personal information can be used both for us and against us, and it's eventual misuse is inevitable whether by the institution, corrupt agents within it, or parties outside of it. The only thing we can do is limit the potential damage by limiting the data they hold on us.

> Maybe the part I don't understand is what lies at the bottom of the personal data mine.

That's part of the problem, I don't think anyone does really. We're in uncharted territory and part of the reason it's so tricky is so much can be inferred about you from seemingly innocuous data, or from analysing your social graph.

> Is it a matter of how much data they collect? What they do with the data?

Well they have a loosely defined need which is pushing them to collect this data. It seems fairly benign; to improve search. But where does it end? Larry Page doesn't seem to have drawn a line anywhere. Once they have the data and it's been mined for further meaning, it's inevitable they'll find new uses for it. So one leads to the other, leading back to the first.

Google is staffed by thousands of very clever people. I don't want them spending their days trying to figure me out. They're not uncorruptible. It's bad enough Facebook is at it; we really don't need Google competing with them in this endeavor. If we allow the situation to get out of hand, the winner will be the company that holds the most complete portfolio of information on us. Are you comfortable with that?
I've thought about this, and the answer is probably not for any real time trading platform.

Storm is meant to be distributed across multiple nodes, and even if they are different machines on the same hardware I think whatever communication system storm uses is going to be orders of magnitude slower than any direct memory bus. So if latency is your goal, you probably have to stick to tried and true, whatever that may be (GPU server farms?)

However, I bet it'd be perfect for a market analytic systems, where it can scale to consume and create massive amounts of data in near real time. Maybe as a compliment to your latency sensitive system in some way.

I bet nathan could answer better though.
These sorts of reactions by vendors really imply to me that the full disclosure philosophy is better. How much better would things be if Symantec had kept - or been kept - on the ball?
I didn't know about verbatim, thanks! As icebraining noted, though, this doesn't fully solve the problem. It still adds an extra step.
any draconian DRM scheme that's effective against piracy will also punish legitimate users.

I disagree. Draconian schemes as they've largely been practiced do punish legit users and drive more piracy. I contend that not enough emphasis has been placed on the economics of producing cracks and not enough care has been taken to avoid the unproductive punishment of legit users.

Basically, do subtle things to drive the cost of pirate software engineering through the roof while being as kind and attentive to your most faithful customers as possible.
It seems that every generation rediscovers the old stuff. Being only 20 years old, you missed out on the 5GL craze.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_programming_la... (Fifth-generation programming language)

It was led by Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer_syste... (Fifth generation computer)
I did ask my dad to call. Nothing seemed to come of it.
I was working in a hurry and didn't think to simply change the exe name, making the presumption that such a simple thing shouldn't influence the AV decision.
Is Facebook.com down right now?
Copyright "Czar" Victoria Espinel laid out a roadmap that includes:

Authorize DHS (including its component CBP) to share pre-seizure information about, and samples of, products and devices with rightholders to help DHS to determine whether the products are infringing or the devices are circumvention devices

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/15/concrete-steps-con...

Basically, giving Hollywood veto rights on anything imported into the country that can be used for jailbreaking. Sounds like we are in danger of losing DMCA jailbreaking protections.
Heads up, Thomas Frank on Forum tomorrow
I had to turn off Quick Find in Firefox, but after that it was awesome
Jailbreaking does unlock a lot of functionality that should be in a PC. Being able to SSH into the system and use unix tools opens a lot of possibilities. Just being able to rsync music over wifi to my iPod and scrapping iTunes is worth it.

Apple's underlying Darwin system works great on a mobile device. I don't own an Android, but afaik it's underlying Linux system is not as robust as Darwin. So where else do you go for a Linux/Unix based smartphone/tablet?

Where are the Linux tablets, and where is the support from the Linux community for such hardware?
You are comparing something which doesn't placed to be compared, nodejs are plainly a language, if you compare nodejs, you shall compare it with ruby instead. if you want to compare rails, try compare it with a framework build on nodejs instead, something like expressjs or my favourable railwayjs.com
On my computer, this game seems to run at a much higher framerate/smoothness rate than anything I've ever seen in a Flash game.

I could just perceiving that because I'm an HTML5 nerd though.
Clean code, clean logs: logging levels are there for you
this is an issue of principal.

principle
There is a very reasonable solution to this. Offer special rates for civics activities like voting and taxes. AFAIK, a special rate with return receipts already exists for filing taxes.
Why are government services spending time and money with advertising at all. They exist to provide a service to citizens if citizens want it. We're both shareholders and customers. They certainly don't exist to ensure their ongoing existence.

This isn't a PSA for the greater good of the country, this is full blown advertising and it should never happen with tax payer dollars. ever.

This blows my mind.
I think this looks great, and hopefully will encourage a ton of people to join the registry! My only feedback is - I think the slideshow on the homepage moves a little fast. When I went to the page and started reading, it moved on to "Joining the Registry" before I finished reading. I'd recommend either slowing down the progression, or making it all manual (only change when the user rolls over a section).
What would be the advantage of doing this in Flash instead of HTML5?
How does this deal with small sample sizes? The monthly visit numbers at each payment level are fairly small, so I wonder what sort of conclusions can be drawn from the sample sizes available.
it's okay now - apparently others saw it down too.
Yes, I understand your point. All I'm asking is which language/framework would be more suitable for a CRUD site, Ruby on Rails or JavaScript/Node/(Express or whatever)?
I noticed slow (>2 minute) load times for about a 5 minutes period, but now it's responding quickly again
Child Support
Traffic ticket attorney can help you with your suspended driver's license case. Visit http://www.suspendedlicensecalifornia.com, call (866) 780-1234 or go to their office at 16633 Ventura Blvd. Suite 503, Encino, CA 91436 for more information.
I would go for node.js (basically server-side javascript) on the backend if you're going to work with a lot of data. Both because it could be fun and is especially good at handling lots of data quickly.

It would be possible to write the website itself in node.js as well.
Question: if he's hit with a zero-day exploit, how does having AV installed help?
> I never said they weren't successful... I'm just saying that not everybody buys into their bullshit or likes their shitty proprietary products, that's all.

...So you've chosen to swallow someone else's bullshit line then instead? That's way better.
Getting rspec’s “let” method to work in pry
Power napping at your desk
Loads very slowly.
This game uses WebGL, so it should run faster than anything software rendered
how will AV help against zero-day browser exploit? Zero-day, by their very definition, have no antivirus definition that will catch them yet.

On my personal machine, I don't run any anti-virus software, but I also don't use adobe pdf and enable flash only on sites I trust.
How does Varnish know the backend server is not a teapot? It's a blatant violation of the standard to strip it out.
Or it would be if "simply concatenating a keystream with a secure hash function" created a secure MAC, which it doesn't.

You see what I mean about "yes-but"-ing ones way into treacherous confidence. Believe me when I say that a lot of systems have been deployed using this same design process, and all of them failed --- it is hard to name a well-designed cryptosystem that didn't succumb to spectacular failures.

And, on another tangent, you can see how your design now begs a pretty big question: between AES and SHA-256, virtually everyone would agree that SHA-256 is the less sound primitive (they're both "sound", but SHA-2 will fall before AES, which is why we're busily selecting SHA-3 right now).

Concern about AES drives you to contemplate OTPs, but forces you to rely on something like SHA-2. An AES design could use AES both for confidentiality and integrity. Either way, you're not getting "perfect" security; you have all the downsides of OTPs and none of the upside.

OTP's are kind of silly.
I believe that there are no such a things as 'best' languages, things is what suited you well, accumulated by the experiences, the conditions, the product and the vision you'll made, one thing important to consider are also the development timeline.. I believe technology being used does count, it's just matter of the strategy and plan of what might you've been doing right now (quoted from non-technical entrepeneur).

One more things, i myself are the opposite of what your conditions right now, im technical entrepeneur, experiences for building product and such, but find out that i need slightly more non-technical entrepeneur to cover things up. sounds good things?
I think you, like many others, don't understand the practical ramifications of a completely pure language. Let's take Haskell as an example--it is, after all, the poster-child of purely functional research languages!

And yet, from a practical standpoint, Haskell is not pure. The underlying abstractions are pure, sure, but the language makes working with impure computation feel just like writing an impure program. The magic of Monads and do-notation may sound complex, but in reality it's just a neat way to write impure code in a pure way (sounds like a paradox, but it isn't).

Look at this snippet:

main = do name <- getLine
putStr $ "Your name is " ++ name

This trivial program is technically purely functional. And yet it is also imperative from the programmer's point of view! It looks just like something you might write in Python with slightly different syntax.

So you say, what is the advantage to writing a program this way rather than using an impure language? The answer is simple: Haskell lets you mark impure code using the type system. This is similar to the Scheme/Ruby convention of 'do!' functions being unsafe, but actually enforced.

This sequestering helps you avoid bugs by not having implicit mutation and IO everywhere and it helps the compiler do clever optimizations like running your code in a different order. And yet, if you need it, you have IO and State and fancy things like STM right there, with only a little bit of complication.

Of course, learning to think in this admittedly roundabout way is tricky. But learning is a one-time cost; using a less expressive or harder-to-maintain language is a recurring cost.

In other words, there is no reason why a language focusing on one idea can't be a "just-fucking-works" language as well. In my experience, Haskell and Lisp are just as practical as others; the only difference is in the initial learning period. Look at Common Lisp: you can't get more "just-fucking-work"ing than that!

I think that one should usually ignore a one-time cost like learning in favor of recurring benefits, but others naturally disagree.
It's nice to see this data becoming public. However, even a trivial browse shows Y!'s weakness -- their aging user base.
How do you find a good copywriter?
My dad's business is having a hard time finding a good copywriter. We might hire a freelancer for some urgent work, but since the business revolves around a somewhat monolithic system, the time/resources it would take to train him/her would probably be better spent on a full time employee.

Any advice on how/where to find a good copywriter?
"And of course there's overhead involved in the application framework where messages get passed around to delegates and so on." Am I the only one who finds this an amusing & concise summary of iPhone development?
21 Upcoming Hackathons: HTML5, Kinect, Hardware and Education
Lisp had to be bootstrapped with another compiler before it could run, of course. The compiler, in this case, was Steve Russell's brain.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node3.html
Doctor: Furthermore, start doing the same thing (developing software) to the other one (Linux) because it's .. Er.. fresh.

Man: Wait, but won't the other one start hurting because I'm using it more?

Doctor: Oh right, I guess if everyone switching to use Linux tomorrow, then the malware authors would begin targeting it more aggressively. I supposed my anti-Microsoft rant was misplaced.
It's a neat theory, except I did buy my phone.
Great project, easy to install, beautiful presentation.
Why limiting to GH pages though? I would love to use it with my markdown documentation, but my project is not on github.
His point is that what seems like gloating to you, in fact, speaks of inexperience to many. Having been programming since you were ~10 is nothing new or unique around here.

Your post would be strengthened by omitting that detail.
This is awesome, however I think it needs to be promoted much louder that you can get a cheek swab kit sent to you via mail for FREE by signing up at http://marrow.org/. I think most people look at sites, like this one, wanting to help but not understanding that it's so incredibly easy to register and you don't have to drive off somewhere or schedule anything.