skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Xitrum looks interesting and I am really happy tyo see another option for Java/Scala that isn't tied to the J2EE platform, but this gives me no compelling reason to switch from play in fact it seems there is some downsides. It doesn't use Scala as its templating language and there appears no way to deploy to an Application Server. It does seem like they are making it easier then play to do Async services, but I will have to wait for Play 2.0 to make a final call on that.
Not hypocritical at all, if you read the background story here: http://www.simondale.net/house/family.htm

Initially we had no capital and we had decided resolutely to be full time parents whilst our children were young. As you’ll appreciate to be a full time mum and part time dad our income is low, about £5,000 p.a, so a mortgage was not an option and the prospects for renting seemed grim. Providence came our way and a landowner offered us the chance to move to his woodland in west Wales to build an eco-house. There would be no formal security or long term ownership, but £2000 was available for materials, so we jumped at the idea without a backward glance.

Sounds like just the sort of risk-taking, scrappy bootstrapping story that'd do well on HN, but everyone seems to be bagging it.

ps. Scrap = things that other people are chucking away, or will have to pay to take away. Making use of it is a good thing.
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If you have enough ram you can just disable swapping all together which is what I've done on 2 computers that have SSD's and 14+gb of ram
Regarding CHAR/VARCHAR: At least in MySQL VARCHAR only has one byte of padding, while CHAR is a huge waste of space if you don't use mostly full-length strings.

Edit: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/char.html
I prefer Linux over OS X as well. The OSX userland is a strange mixture of GNU and BSD tools in sometimes ancient versions. OSX has a UNIX certification but there are some bugs in their POSIX API or even missing functions like clock_gettime. Linux seems more POSIX compliant.

The OSX package managers suck. I tried fink, macports, and homebrew. A lot of packages are simply broken especially now after Apple switched to clang. You end up in all kinds of weird situations. A friend of mine recently wanted to install Octave and gnuplot with homebrew and it took him several days until he gave up.

It's hard to get help with problems in OSX. This might have been improved. But back when I started using OSX in 2005/6 it was really bad. It was rare to find people with a good knowledge of the deeper layers of OSX. It was a complete different culture than Linux or even Windows. Maybe that has improved now that OSX is much more popular.

And it feels like Apple is more and more ignoring the UNIX folks.
Why do we (as "hackers") follow the mantra of "Move fast, break things" and yet highly scrutinize people when we don't...
Don't take your cellphone or laptop to China
Yes, but unless I'm mistaken I think lithium is not mined in open-pit mines but in salt evaporation ponds. Activism is focused on open-pit mines at the moment.

It's also worth mentioning that the plan in Argentina is to produce batteries and compete with China. Well, that's what it seems to be. The first factory was just built recently. We'll have to see how it goes.

(Argentinian here)
i would say django is the default choice for "yet another website" with some application logic sprinkled in. I wouldn't use it for anything other than a website serving up dynamic pages. I also feel I am fortunate to not have to build those websites anymore.
Cost of living in NYC is pretty insane. Housing is consistently high. Food prices are nuts ... think > $7 for a box of cereal. For taxes, you've got Federal tax, state tax, and city tax, plus some exciting new taxes like MTA taxes for the mismanaged transit authority you're already paying your fare to use. Want to own a car? Either park on the street for free where you'll need to move your car no fewer than three times a week due to street-cleaning, or you can get a parking garage for anywhere from $300/month to $550/month depending on the type of car you're trying to park. The list goes on and on.

It's an expensive place to live. The upside is that anytime you take a vacation elsewhere it feels like you're stealing because everything is so comparatively inexpensive.
It's not merely about competence/rigor that leads an employer to hire a specific graduate from a specific school. If that were the case, then Harvard Extension School students would be just as highly sought after as Harvard College students, given that they complete many of the same courses taught the same instructors.

The reality is that employers can choose to be picky within the boundaries of the marketplace. While I do believe MITx is revolutionary in that it is pursuing a global, open-access education available to anyone with a high-quality brand behind it to boot, I do not think it will change much in terms of employers and hiring.

Employers will continue to hire MIT/Stanford/Harvard graduates because they simply want "the best and brightest." I do not see MITx certificates replacing this recruitment pipeline. MITx credentials are probably more appropriately regarded as something of a wildcard -- an extra edge for a job applicant over more people without evidence of continuing education or certifications.

Since MITx is not in the business of conferring full-blown degrees (yet?), the "sub-par" institutions can rest assured that their students are not going anywhere. And even if MITx did offer full degrees, as does Harvard Extension School, there is the whole other issue of how the marketplace values prestige and brand.
It's hard to describe why Apple's trackpads are better, they simply are. If you are used to them, every other one simply feels clumsy. It must be a combination of the surface (friction), the sensor (precision) and the software drivers that makes them special. I think it was when they introduced the unibody Macbooks that the trackpads became so good. The old plastic Macbook trackpads where vastly inferior in comparison.
It just reminds me of the time I got points off for writing a self-modifying macro in a TeX class.
Normally I don't submit Slashdot articles, but there were three interesting links from the one article.
I agree in part, but is it too hard to prevent the entire player from crashing when it encounters bad data? I'd much prefer a frown-face icon like chrome for a crashed plug-in to a crash of the entire player.

VLC is easily my #1 crasher on OSX.
Getting ZFS up and running under CentOS 6
An unusual opposition – Please don’t let TV broadcast the Supreme Court
Subversion Tip of the Week - Moving a Subversion repository
> 1) Are there really people who claim SQL Server 'expertise' and then not know things like the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE?

Yes, but this isn't specifically a SQL Server thing. People will often inflate their skills ridiculously on their CV, sometimes just telling bare faced lies. I once had to deal with an idiot who despite his CV listing him as knowing Javascript to an "advanced" level and jQuery specifically at an "intermediate" level, did not understand what $(<function>); did and was no wiser when we took out all the shortcuts to produce jQuery(document).ready(<function>); I wish I was jesting or exaggerating here. You should have seen the vacant look on his face when we tried to explain a very simple closure. Advanced indeed...

> 2) If above is true, then am I short-selling myself by not putting SQL Server in my resume?!

Possibly. If you understand all the basics covered in that document and have actually used them (rather than just having read about them) then yes. But be very careful to stay aware that knowledge does not necessarily imply experience (nor vice versa) - chose your wording carefully to put yourself in the best light you can without bending the truth (or seeming like you are trying to) implausibly.

Claiming expertise is another step forward: if you say you are an expert that sets the level of expectation very high - you will be expected to have an excellent level of both practical and theoretical knowledge (the how and the why) and a lot of experience to back this up. If you ever claim to be an expert be quite explicit what you are an expert in. If your expertise is in the DBA side of things or from a programmers perspective (to give two generic examples) say so - databases cover a large area of subject matter and you can command a high price if you are truly an expert in the lot!

Basically out on your CV the level that you would be comfortable being asked questions about. If you have some experience or knowledge of SQL Server then by all means say so but try not to exaggerate. If you have experience with SQL based RDBMSs other than SQL server then put that instead (as the basics and some of the not-so-basics are very much transferable) but don't claim SQL Server specific experience unless that is what you actually have.
Creating Multiplexers Using Logic Gates
yes, I did update to Lion.
Phoget, shared photo album beta sign up.
The beta sign up for Phoget has started. What functionality would you like to see in the first release?
SolveMedia is a CAPTCHA system which verifies that you're a human, DoubleRecall is not a CAPTCHA system and it only verifies you read the advertisers message. It's much easier to decypher than CAPTCHA, so more straightforward.

We did more than 100 of design iterations on millions of people to come to the current simplistic design.
Find the jQuery Bug #4: Animations Gone Wild
With re-typing you are helping the publishers to provide you with quality content that you otherwise couldn't get.
This is utterly stupid. And the example he cites for why he prefers an odd function syntax doesn't cause errors..... if you use semicolons.

JavaScript interpreters insert semicolons. If you abuse this, you'll end up with unpredictable results like his function example.
You sure about that? It is my understanding that Zope/Plone has a fairly sizable community. They're just not as loud on the web as other framework fans. No one will know for sure until they are all counted though.
Just to be clear, not all Hungarians endorse this notation ;-)
Why noreply email addresses are bad for business
I raised the same sentiment in my comment (below). First, there isn't 3 questions. It's technically about 6 questions, with a statement thrown in there. Second, the answers are by no means simple. I (possibly like you) was expecting three straight forward questions that were a silver bullet to understanding how to validate my start-up idea.

Thought-provoking perspective, possibly... differentiated from the validation that the lean start-up promises, not really.
The problem is that you are treating Mac OS as if it was a Linux distro. If you want the Linux experience, with package managers and command line utilities and X11, then Mac OS is not a good choice.

Package managers with automatic dependency resolution are a typical feature of a Linux installation. But they go against the core principles of Mac OS X. Software on Mac OS X is distributed as self-contained packages, that can either be simply dragged to the application folder or installed by the Mac OS Installer program (or with single click if the Software is available on the Mac App Store). Typical software written for the Mac has no external dependencies.

The fact that package managers like homebrew or MacPorts exist does not mean that they are the preferred way to install software on your Mac. Compare it to wine on Linux: You can run Windows software on Linux, but it will never be the real thing. MacOS tries to be compatible to Unix, but nothing more.
Is this true? I cannot confirm this, as the link there does not clarify much.
On the authors point anyway, there ARE laptop makers who make hardware of that quality. I bought a HP Envy 14 last March, solid metal with a high quality screen, huge multi-touch touchpad, no fans on the bottom, no stickers all over the place, switchable graphics. Wonderful backlit island-style keyboard. It's the PC Macbook. I sold it last month for more than half of what I bought it for, still in perfect condition.

Not saying this is what the author thinks, but a lot of people I know complain that their PC laptops are low quality and end up switching to Mac because they refuse to buy high quality laptops. My Envy was $900 with an i5, 4GB of RAM and a Radeon 5650. Spec a Macbook at that price.
You can configure a lot of options for JSLint, but not all of them. For instance, JSLint objects to the following:

new Entity(parentEntity);

This can't be turned off without modifying the JSLint parsing process.

(Yes, this is a rather odd bit of code, and it definitely should be flagged up normally. This is from a project where invoking a constructor would add the object to its parent object and trigger a GUI update.)
A used shipping container is about $2,000. You'd want to check it for chemicals. It's closer to $10,000 if you want them fitted out as something you can live in, though. I'm not sure about the charm factor.
If it was presented as a scrappy bootstrapping story that would be one thing but the article's title is misleading in that it says it was only $5000 to build, which the actual cost was a lot more, the total expenditure was $5000 , but total coast of materials and labor puts it well above $5000. This is more what people were thinking.

http://web.mit.edu/cre/research/1k-house-project.html
I come from India. We have the world's toughest entrance examinations to get to public funded courses. I got an engineering degree through one of those. However once I got through the admissions, I found the courses outdated. The professors got into colleges after bribing the managers and were sub-par in their teaching, the labs under-funded and there were frequent strikes at school for things like proper lodging. However the tough entrance exams meant that most of the students graduated and became successful self-taught professionals. I think something like Mitx, has the potential to become the single curriculum for the entire planet. Kids would be demanding this instead of the stale university offerings. Some of them pay ridiculous amounts of money for getting into private colleges without any merit scholarship. Check the below link. Mitx could become the university of alderaan for planet earth!!! Think about a million hungry Mitx grads a year getting through grueling MiT level coursework. That could take technology to unforeseen levels.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/University_of_Alderaan
He mentions 1500 hours of labor, which, if you were paying somebody to do it, would be somewhere around 100000 USD (full cost of a skilled craftsman is around $60/hour).

This statement could be used against almost anything falling under DIY, hacking, hobby work, etc. I mean, sure, you are technically correct, but who counts that, if you are having fun doing something for yourself.
I can think of a few reasons:

1) MacBooks are pleasing to the eye. ThinkPads are well-designed functionally but ugly. Aesthetics don't matter to everyone, but to those for whom they do matter, they are not a frivolous concern. Working in an elegant environment (including hardware) can have a positive effect on one's state of mind.

2) A lot of people are interested in developing iOS apps. This is much easier on a Mac.

3) MacBooks are status items like designer clothing and may make people feel more attractive / successful. Obviously this is not universal but neither do I think it's a negligible effect.
Boffins claim breakthrough in hovering robothopter experiments
How many things should we take away from Whitney Houston's death?
A "tagged union" which is what I assume you mean is usually abstracted as a native type (struct) in other langauges (Go included). C gives you architecture level access to it. Go leaves it to the VM to decide.
It is a valuable and documented code quality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

Principle of least astonishment (POLA) was also a core design decision behind ruby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)#Phi...
Anonymous’ Weekend Rampage
If your database has a very limited query language that doesn't allow you to specify tables for fields in queries, this may prevent name clashes.

I can't imagine anyone having this problem after the early 90's...
Download GTA Vice City Game Don 2
>There are at least four different ways of installing software on OS X. Download a DMG image, drag the icon from there to Applications folder, run an installer, install stuff from Mac App Store or compile it yourself. There seems to be no standard way how to do this properly. Of course, being a software dev, I ended up using the last alternative a lot.

It sounds to me like the author expects OS X to be like Linux where its UNIX underlying is the centre point of the OS. That's true to some extend, however OS X abstracts a lot away so the user don't ever necessary to have touch the UNIX part of the package. Once you understands it that way, the way of "installing" software on OS X is reduced to 2 (plus 1) for most people.

One is drag and drop an icon into somewhere in your hard drive; which is not even "installing" since what you do is simply... copy it to your local disk. Installing applications via Mac App Store simply automates this (the plus 1 part). Another one is via PKG installer; if any app does this you should be alarmed that they're modifying your system, they're going to scattered files across your system, uninstalling this thing going to be nightmare, etc.

Once you stepped into UNIX land, you're on your own. It would be nice if Apple provide a central repository of packages, but then I have to worry about outdated packages (given the nature of Apple that avoid anything with GPL/GPLv3). Homebrew has already done a great job covering that.
I've used SQL server for years and am completely comfortable with it, but for the past year I've been using MySQL and I think it's kind of overwritten anything I had memorized about SQL server.

So I would fail this interview.
I really can't understand bitching about memory in this day and age. First thing I do when getting a new machine is to max out the RAM. My Mac Pro has had 32 GB since 2008, iMac all have 16 GB and Macbooks 8 GB. It's such a cheap thing to do and it improves your daily life so much, it's essentially free in the end.
The "built on" sections seem to fall out of phase later in the document, but otherwise an interesting round up/overview.

Now to chase down some of the links, tutorials, and further information.
Humility about oneself and the path and process to being better, at anything, I think, is core to the constant asking of questions. As the @tmac721 touches on: ask to challenge one oneself (and others), ask to listen (truly listen!), and ask because being better always matters more than being good.
Stream of random coding music
Endless stream of great coding music, IMHO (and a coding friend found the same):

1. Go here: http://grooveshark.com/s/Strangers+We+ve+Become/32OrMW?src=5

2. Toggle the Radio on the very right bottom of the screen;

3. Code away!

Similar to musicforprogramming.com, but I like this music more. Also it's random and infinite. I think you have to click "Yes I'm here" at Grooveshark once every one or two hours, but you never have to look for new music.

Tip: Use space to pause or resume.
Mozilla's plan for 2012: Break the ecosystem lock
Find Which Plugins are Slowing Down your Site
Id believe it just based on the ridiculous Amount of heat the mac laptops seem to generate. Im constantly turning mine off to cool down
Google for "macbook fire" and look at Google images for some other unlucky ones.

Yes you are lucky because you spilled from the top which it's obviously at least slightly better at handling. If the base gets even slightly wet, boom.
What's the alternative exactly? Sell your resources as cheap as possible to avoid being corrupted by money? Surely there should be a way of capitalizing on your natural resources to improve the living standard of your people, and the explanation for most OPEC countries not being great is a big more complicated than this.
I feel like you'd need to know a lot of engineering to be able to design the thing, and still be able to sleep at night knowing it won't collapse on you.

Also how does something like this work with county inspectors?
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I agree with the author: Apple has by far the best hardware in the PC business -- here's a great example of the extremes they go to in order to manufacture superior machines: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/apples-supplychain-secr...

Alas, Apple's #1 target user is not the developer; it's Aunt Tillie. And this shows in the choices they make for OS X.

IMO Linux distributions have vastly superior software installation and management tools because they had to evolve them in order to survive and thrive in the wilds of the Internet. There has never been an 'Apple Store' with a 'Genius Bar', so to speak, for Linux users.

I agree with the author that Debian and its derivatives, like Ubuntu, have perhaps the best software-management tool on earth: apt-get. The damn thing is fast, and in my experience never breaks anything -- the system is always kept in a consistent state. (My experience with other software management tools -- particularly RedHat's yum -- has been less than 100% trouble-free.)
Very cool design, and it scales well with font size too.
Honestly, contrary to this article, I think you'd find that most developers using Macs use them more for the OS than for the hardware.

If I could build a seriously beefy desktop machine and run OSX properly on it, I would. For laptops the nice hardware (as others have said, especially the trackpad, but there are plenty of other reasons) is a definite plus, but OSX is just great.

Wanting some specific hardware for a desktop machine recently (I was actually in a similar position to the author, it seems, I wanted to run basic stuff + dev tools + a lot of VMs) I spec'd and built a Ubuntu box. I lasted for about 8 months being annoyed and decided to use the box as the VM host and a Macbook Air to access them.
Too Much Theory
Nuclear weapons seem to primarily deter attacks that threaten the target country directly, not warfare in general.
Perhaps you are right that, being a new startup founder, asking these questions to yourself may not help a lot. But I have no easy way to know that. Only someone who is new and is currently evaluating his startup idea can give me that feedback. In fact, I would love to have that kind of feedback.

But from my limited sample size of interaction with 4-5 new founders, I think the framework I laid out helped them get at least some clarity. Maybe that was because I asked them questions, or maybe it was because of questions themselves.
I would like to add that MediaWiki does this. Here is the DB schema: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Mediawiki...
Someone send this to Page.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, leaders need to make a culture and create a managament style THEIR way. Whatever works for them and their company, not attempt a copy/paste of another CEO.

Engineers can't adopt a designers management style overnight because they don't have the background to attain the respect their decisions will require.

Just like coders hate an MBA telling them to build the next facebook in 3 hours because it's "just a few pages and they all look the same anyway, how hard can it be?".
I agree with this, what is left is one guys opinion, which makes it to hacker news front page. Next up: vim vs emacs.
There are open source java based tools that let you do this. Can't think of any, but this isn't new...