skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you lose a lawsuit (or are hit by some flavor of meteor) the business has to pay for it to be able to continue. All that creating a corporation does is to clearly separate what are personal assets from corporate assets.

It may be easier to visualize if you imagine there are several shareholders. Each would want it clear what were the company's assets and what were their personal assets (in addition to their share of the company).

Look at it this way, you buy 100 shares of GM which subsequently goes bankrupt. Your shares may be worthless but GM's creditors cannot come after you as a shareholder for more than the equity that you contributed (the money you paid for your now worthless shares).
Dupe :)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=349078
Best feedback here.
Well I don't know your experience, but most Java developers I've seen either throw the exception, or suppress it... If they throw it, it eventually ends up as ABCGenericException and you've probably got no chance to reasonably recover. If you suppress it you end up with a nasty side effect (a null somewhere perhaps) that causes the app to bomb in another unexpected piece of code.

Exceptions are a language semantic - in itself it doesn't make your code robust. You still need to apply it correctly.

But! The reality is the same applies to C too. What the original author was alluding to what that the mentality of C encourages coders to look deeper into their errors.
Right or wrong, yes I would.
It is amazing how listening to people talk can then affect the way you read their comments. It is like you have a better/newfound understanding of the person they are based on their speech pattern, speed, accent, inflections etc.
It's too bad that "flu" is often used for many things besides influenza, most notably the stomach flu which usually lasts 24 hours. That's way more common than influenza. I run across a lot of people that even think the "flu shot" is for those kinds of flus...
Seriously?

Unfortunately Gmail voice and video chat is not available for PowerPC Macs.
> It would be really nice if all error possibilities were listed in the documentation so I could pick precisely what to handle.

Yeah, that's a problem - it's a problem of style and implementation rather than a "Java" problem... but it's a problem none-the-less.

Many exceptions in Java are simply == "it didn't work". Often there is no distinguishing between: (a) didn't work because you supplied something invalid (e.g. Integer.parseInt("notanint") and (b) it didn't work, but you can probably recover if you want and (c) it didn't work, there is nothing you can do about it.
Summary: "Inferior so called 'designers' charge less than me and still get business. I hate that. They're spoiling everything."
I think it would be cool if I could use it as a search engine for local news.
Crunching a quadrillion calculations per second
Could you explain how you spent your $25,000?
It's a huge deal with checked exceptions in Java. You have to change the signature of every caller, and so on, when you change a low-level function. Abstraction leakage galore; it's why many libraries just throw a single generic exception type whenever anything goes wrong (which defeats the purpose of exceptions) or subclass RuntimeException (which defeats the purpose of checked exceptions).

Unchecked exceptions don't seem to be a problem, because oftentimes you don't care what specifically went wrong, you just need to know that something went wrong and abort appropriately.
Right, so in an area where water front condos are $1000 a month (http://tinyurl.com/64hphe) 3 - 5 times that each month is definitely NOT reasonable.
Programs compiled from C don't change much when run, while dynamic applications vary significantly on every run due to the large environment (e.g. GC.) This is a bliss for debugging. I've never seen anything like gdb on any other language. You can backtrack, set and change things, watch for expressions, and even run one line of compiled code at a time to see what's breaking.

Also C programs usually are made to run many times and stay alive, so the attitude of the developer tends to be more careful.
Don't worry, the end of his jacket is coattail-recursive; it'll just be an infinite loop.
the other side of knuth. so knuthsome.
Using the phrase "pro bono" probably highlights the one time it is a good idea. If you're making lots of money (like a high-priced lawyer), then some well chosen philanthropic or interesting projects can be a good choice.
Sounds like a product idea... ;) Seriously, if anyone knows of or makes something like this, please do tell. But I haven't been able to find anything that simple for this yet.
The only problem your startup will face is that the couchsurfing types don't want to actually pay anything. Otherwise, this is a neat idea for a startup.
Why Social Business Is Capitalism's Missing Link
OK about the helium, but the air will still leak if the pressure inside is higher. Also as the air inside heats and cools the balloon will change shape. Maybe their system is so robust or cheap that these effects don't matter.
If you're renting, who do you think is paying the insurance, taxes, repairs, etc?

Yup - you, the renter. The only time that you're not is when the house is appreciating fast enough to cover those things and the rental market is for some reason depressed. However, if house prices are appreciating, lots of folks are being priced out of buying, which makes them renters, pushing up rental prices.

Businesses that don't pay all of their expenses plus some profit don't stay around long. (If there's no profit, there's no point in spending the time or tying up the capital. T-bills are a safer and less expensive way to do nothing.)
I use Linux, but I am still surprised it is really stable. At low level it's quite messed up and shows the cons of being a pseudo-bazaar ecosystem. Lately it's changing to a cathedral with a handful of core developers acting quite dictatorial and perhaps that will clean up things a bit. I'm not advocating any of both camps, just bringing up it is far from perfect.

In particular I've spent last week trying to figure out TCP/IP port management and it was quite frustrating. Lack of docs and plenty of hardcore operations unexplained, not explicitly marking all macros and inline functions, no clear distinguishing of scope for objects, and I could go on for a few dozen more lines of this.

Only a fanboy or an egomaniacal author can argue that. Don't get me wrong, I like it overall and I prefer it to most other OSs.
The problem with C is they left too many things completely on the wild. Strings and memory management are all laissez-faire and everybody does whatever they think is right.

A typical performance issue is calling malloc/free all the time, it can be avoided but there are no standard ways.

I hope some great features of C++ get some day backported to C. But don't bet money on that :(
i think it's an interesting idea. basically a public forum where everyone sees the messages and rates them.

you should build this, i think if someone "famous" got enough feedback/requests/traffic in "their" inbox they might bother looking to see what the public has deemed important enough for them to waste time looking at.

or something :D
Nevermind this arstechnica article confused me: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/02/google-...

I don't think chrome on linux is functional yet.
I recommend that Barack Obama give Steve Eisman a role in his team of economic advisers.
Incidentally, the National Science Foundation and the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics describe the Obama's education plan as abysmally bad. Specifically the NSF and NCTM are very much against the AP curriculum, which Obama wants to expand by 50% over the next few years. I think the exact quote is that AP science/math courses represent "the worst kind of pedagogy" or something like that.
ITunes Store finally gets a bargain bin for movies
The stability of any system is roughly proportional to how much automated testing is done against it.
I am not sure why are you bringing enterprise software into the discussion. Despite being the most popular form of employment for "programmers" it has always been the absolutely lowest form of life in a software ecosystem and, therefore, should be ignored and left out of any intelligent discussion about programming.

In the 90s it was Visual Basic, now it's Java and C#, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what most of us consider to be discussion worthy.
Because it's far easier for a smart person to get a business degree that pays just as well, if not better?

Because a degree in engineering is a fast-track to career marginalization by the frat-boy MBAs who see technical workers as interchangeable cogs?

Because engineering virtually guarantees you a minimum of social interaction in college, when your peers are actually enjoying their lives?

Because you'll run smack into the wall of age (and possibly sex) discrimination, right when you should be entering your prime earning years?

Because you've got to eternally compete in the job market with 20-year-olds who will always be more proficient with new technologies, and willing to work at lower wages?

Let's be real: as a career, engineering sucks. We shouldn't scratch our heads and act totally shocked when young people turn their noses up at the prospect of working like a dog until they turn 40, only to be laid off by the guys who played frisbee golf and drank their way through school.
Your "summary" appears to be literally the opposite of the point the article makes.
> Despite being the most popular form of employment for "programmers" it has always been the absolutely lowest form of life in a software ecosystem

It just runs our banks, hospitals, governments... Much better to solely focus on those that write kernels, device drivers and filesystems?
Wired.com lays of 25% of staff
Peaks and Valleys
C believes that programmer doesn't make mistakes. About memory management, I don't think it should be a language feature because there are some good implemented libraries out there.
What competitive advantage does Loopt have over Facebook and MySpace? It's unthinkable that they both don't already have location based services in the works.

What happens when people open up FB one day and it has a "Map" tab? Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems that the general population is already so plugged into Facebook that when they release a similar service it will be game over for Loopt.
Just a word of caution on PayPal, being as unbiased as I can.

I have had first-hand experience, on behalf of numerous clients, with problems that can arise with PayPal and some of the crazy things PayPal do out of the blue and without reason (see sites like http://www.paypalsucks.com etc. for examples) and always suggest using other methods for anything but low cost products where a chargeback/dispute won't bother you (if you get 2-3 disputes in quick succession, PayPal typically freeze your account and all monies in it for 180 days and even if you jump through all the hoops they set thereafter, will in most cases not unfreeze your account for as long as they possibly can - which is very bad for cash-flow if you are a business).

Although low-cost products and small payments for web-services (which being intangible goods are not covered by PayPal seller protections anyway) may be less likely to incur problems with PayPal (especially chargebacks), mainly due to the buyers/users being less likely to complain over what are trivial or easy to resolve matters (e.g. shipping delays or miscommunication) and being more honest in general when compared to those in higher value transactions, I would always suggest using a merchant account or service such as protx for online payment processing and repeated billing.

These generally provide a better quality of service anyway, and when things go wrong respond faster, follow legal guidelines and regulations, and are more likely to fight for you than PayPal which will just cave-in and return any monies to the buyer/user on even the smallest issues and with almost no recourse to you or consideration of whether it is the right thing to do in the situation. To PayPal, it is about numbers and money and basically it is cheaper and in their interest for them to hand back money (your money, remember, not theirs) to buyers almost without any seller considerations than fight issues, whereas a merchant account has more legislation and obligation to protect you and will infact dispute chargebacks and other complaints if you so request. Also, unlike PayPal, they will not freeze your account or make other major demands that could affect your business, when customer related issues do occur (and eventually one will occur!).
That's because our system somehow rewards real estate speculators, mortgage brokers, middle management, lawyers and healthcare professionals way more than it rewards engineers. I don't really know why this is happening, but I am sure you all have met a few MBA types who have "the vision" and looking for "just" a code monkey to build their fortune. This is also the reason why GE/Ford/Chrysler continued building shit for decades, giving out multi-million dollar bonuses to their top-tier management.

Someone suggested it's because we live in a "services economy" not a "product economy" and, therefore, the value of engineering is declining. There is some truth in that: google isn't an engineering firm, they are in the entertainment business, very much like ESPN, Fox and those annoying guys in big hats at your local Tres Amigos.
Where the data comes from (Outside.in) - the Radar part of their site already sends e-mail so we didn't do the e-mail part. You should be able to get an RSS feed there too
Any recent engineering grads here who can tell us if there really is a shortage? If you guys are getting multiple job offers with hiring bonuses, there is. If not, there isn't.
In contrast, I consider the Linux kernel code clear and clean. I have mostly looked through the scheduling and file system code; I can't speak for TCP/IP port management.
this also means that if you're going into it, you have to really like it (in addition to being relatively intelligent), which is why the article talks about the "surprising" statistic that mit et al have very high retention rates (though I think caltech is a counterexample)
I agree that there are probably a lot of improvements to be made in undergraduate engineering education.

However...

I think it's a big mistake to assume that every engineering dropout represents a failure of the college, or even a failure of the student. Maybe it's simply a question of incoming students not having the slightest idea what an engineering degree is all about. I seem to remember a lot of people who signed up for engineering before they discovered that you need to learn a lot of fairly difficult math and physics to be an engineer, after which they switched to something else.

That's why the dropout rate is so much smaller at MIT and other elite engineering schools: The students are preselected for their affinity for math and/or physics. For example, I can't help but notice that Olin's "redefinition of engineering education" includes this bullet point:

Applicants are required to spend a weekend at Olin before acceptance. During the weekend they participate in team engineering projects to assess their teamwork and technical skill.

Note: "Assess their technical skill." Now, I'm not saying that Olin's not a great school, but if you get to hand-pick the students, and then you give them a 100% scholarship, having a low dropout rate isn't much of an achievement. I assume with confidence that the vast majority of calculus-phobic people get weeded out before they ever get to Olin. At least, I hope so, because otherwise this practice would be cruel and unusual punishment:

Other engineering schools require students to take foundational courses in physics, thermo-dynamics, chemistry, and math for the first two years. Olin introduces these disciplines as needed throughout the 4 years.

If there's anything worse than hitting the wall in year one, it's being encouraged to go through a year or two in the major before you hit the wall.
The NSF and NCTM are anti-AP? I googled and didn't turn up anything on this, but it's altogether possible that I didn't search on the right terms.

Do you have any links?
that's kinda cool actually.

Perhaps not quite as polished - but I'm still impressed.
Well, I nearly drop out recent two years. It is unbearable in university to see so many students who are 4th year and don't have basic skills in programming (i.e. comparing two double variables in C with == operator). As playing a while with profs, I am so confident that I have all the skills and knowledges I should know in the next 3 years. It is just had to stick on CS major when you had them all. The only reason I still here is that I am so desperately wanting to publish a good paper in next year.
Hey Garry and Sachin please work faster and make the rest of us look bad.

We're not giving this back: http://is.gd/75Vl
Could you provide some links? I googled a bit for some information, and didn't find much, and I'd like to read about this in more detail. It seems odd that either organization would be anti-AP, and Obama's proposed policies would provide more benefits to mathematicians and scientists who decided to teach in high schools...
Leah Culver : Development Environment
So? Despite being useful, what's so interesting about CRUD programming for the enterprise? I've been there, I've had my share of dealing with coworkers that openly admit that they haven't touched a single book since graduation 10 years ago and they see no reason why would they want to.

That's the kind of programmers this industry attracts, and that's the kind of software it builds. What's so interesting about it? Why even bother mentioning these numerous java/C# jobs? My ex-wife with zero programming experience has trained herself in less than a month to run a simple SQL queries in Visual basic and blast results in a grid control on a form, so did thousands of ex-taxi drivers in late 90s. So?
On College-Entrance Exam Day, All of South Korea Is Put to the Test
Yep.
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/

There's always hope that the complete collapse of the Wall Street institutions build by those "frat-boy MBAs" will change things. Probably not though. They'll get bailed out by that other frat-boy MBA institution, the government.

Of course the fact that Philip Greenspun walked away from Ars Digita with ~ $8 million proves there are some opportunities.
The later C standards add additional features. However, I'd argue that there is no such thing as a "great feature" in C++: almost everything in the language is a mistake, either intrinsically or in combination with other 'feature's.

It's a blind pig with fifteen legs, trying to put on its own lipstick while riding a unicycle.
You said "not really" and then agreed with me. Moreover, you only confirmed my theory that when people say "open source" it usually means commercial companies milking OSS developers, or releasing their code "contributions" for products that have no commercial value to them (Obj-C, Chrome).

Where is the code for Aperture? Final Cut Pro? Numbers/Pages? Even iTunes? I also want to see the code for Google's page rank, BigTable and gmail.

I also want to see scribd code for converting MS Office documents to iPaper. 90% of their solution consists of Open Office code that they took freely and haven't released theirs in return.
Why wait? I think The Voodoo Envy is good enough http://www.voodoopc.com/#/productsenvy
I call bullshit--

1) Not a single source that can be googled.

2) The NSF gave the College Board 1.8 million two years ago to fund AP science courses: http://www.collegeboard.com/press/releases/51572.html

3) It's highly unlikely that either organization, which have broader educational concerns than AP curriculum, would ever release a statement condemning either political candidate.
Why would you even want Michael Arrington's attention. You should want the attention of real users, not a pseudo-celeb who only favors his friends.
I was hoping that Don Dodge would actually have some kind of technical background (because mixed technical/business backgrounds are in my opinion the best). Nope - accounting undergrad/MBA. Preach to someone else.
Because I would have gotten C's & D's in Engineering school working my ass off.

Because in business school I graduated with great grades, didn't do anything, and landed a pretty awesome job.

Undergraduate business school was somewhat worthless, but all the free time allowed me to learn how to start my own business and campus job hop like a mofo.
Because you'll run smack into the wall of age (and possibly sex) discrimination, right when you should be entering your prime earning years?

Because you've got to eternally compete in the job market with 20-year-olds who will always be more proficient with new technologies, and willing to work at lower wages?

Come on, that's not the typical experience of most engineers outside the IT/software sector, and as far as I'm aware, most engineers don't work in IT. I'm an EE in oil and gas and it's definitely a "pay your dues" industry where often, the young people are the ones that are marginalised. Believe me, a guy with 30 years of experience isn't competing with 20 year olds, and their payscales are astronomically different (obviously in favour of the experienced). Furthermore, most of the middle managers and top level executives are engineers (eg. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon is a civil engineer, van der Veer, CEO of Shell is a mechanical engineer, etc).

I'm told it's a similar story in the mining and manufacturing sectors also.
Ask YC: open source your code
It's not a secret that most if not all YC-funded startups are built on top of mountains of free code written by someone else. Nobody here pays for XML parsing libraries or POP3 implementations. But I am yet to see the code produced by YC-funded companies themselves.

Scribd, I want to use iPaper on my own site without using your servers. I think it will be beneficial to my customers. Since you took millions of free code for parsing all these pre-existing document formats, don't you think you owe to the community and should release your convert-to-flash code as well?

I know that GPL only covers the case of "distributing" software and running it on your own servers releases you from an obligation to give something back in return.

But does it really justify your behavior of being a parasite?
Malcolm Gladwell: Can Underprivileged Outsiders have an Advantage?
That's funny, it's a routine complaint at Stanford that all the campus job fairs are filled with companies recruiting engineers and nobody else. :p

Our system also rewards engineers way more than teachers, graduates who go into public service, and-- at graduation time, at least-- anyone with a humanities degree. I'd worry about fixing compensation for teachers before rewarding engineers...

Google is an engineering firm, they just happen to make money from ads.
It demonstrates to me that "hover" has a comparable cognitive load to "click." And that's just not worth the cost of changing conventions.
Im using it now and have for the past 3 hours connected to my friend.

The past 4 yrs we have used Skype. Thus far it beats Skype - no echo and or feedback with two parties using webcams!

Skype needs to integrate/sell its tech to Microsoft and Yahoo. Hopefully do something quick..they lost me and possibly thousands more today!