skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Those weren't the examples that were given to me.

Even assuming you're right on that single fact, being incorrect on a single fact still isn't quackery.
I'm not in silicon valley, but just a question for your question: If you want to do any kind of hot-shot software development as a career, why would you study systems engineering and physics? It seems like an oblique way to go, kind of like getting a statistics degree if you want to do pure math research. Within a CS degree there is also a lot of room for your own interests, many of which are highly quantitative.
Does anyone have a reasonable explanation as to why HN does not have a mobile stylesheet?
If this a genuine request for feedback, I will happily share my experience with the query "learn chinese".

Result #1 (-tools.com) is part of an interlinked series of clone sites. Result #2 (clear-.com) has zero original content. Result #3 (-wen.com) is decent. Result #4 (-mm.com) is low-value. Result #5 (instant-.com) is a spam site with no content. Result #6 (rosetta-) is OK given the strength of the brand but is not the most obvious choice. Results #7 and #8 are the exact same page. Result #9 is a spam site with no content. The in-lined videos are meaningless and low quality.

Things get worse on page two, with almost all of the sites that rank, ranking because they spam. Compare the results with what you'll get searching the Apple podcast directory (which lists stuff people actually use and cuts spam by actually requiring content) and you'll see the quality of the offerings and the user experience is literally night and day. None of the highly-rated stuff there shows up in Google.

So assuming the results should be the leading free and or paid services or resources for learning Chinese, Google has a total fail, with not a single relevant result on its first page, and only a single hit on page two. If I'm looking for sites to spam me or put me into a high-pressure sales funnel, I basically hit bingo though.
If you want a client coupled to a specific service then you don't want REST, you want a classic client-server architecture, which is more or less the antithesis of REST. But everyone insists on calling it REST when it goes over HTTP, then they complain that the apple tastes nothing like an orange.
We have had such comparisons for MRIs posted on this thread already, given as examples of prices being much less at facilities that do not deal with insurers at all.

While I would agree that having buying power should bring down prices, this can be completely outweighed by the middleman trying to maximise profits. If prices are kept high, for instance, then you can make more money per person, so therefore having less administrative overhead per dollar made and so more profit margin.

For a non-medical example of this, just have a look at Apple, who make tons more money than their competitors, despite shifting less product, by simply ignoring the bottom end of the market.
Paying for the gasoline after you put it in the vehicle. At most gas stations in the US, if you want to pay with cash, you park your vehicle at a pump, go inside and prepay a certain amount, fill up your vehicle, and then go back inside to collect any money you didn't spend.
Haha. Sorry Taze. Thanks for reminding me.
Serious question: Why would you want your search engine to be run by the same company that runs your email and cloud documents?
No, it's not. Often the topmost comment, although interesting, is at a tangent to more relevant comments. There is no way to collapse a tree of comments like this.
The more I've worked with SQL, the more I'm starting to question this idea that huge elegant queries are any good. I used to almost be fanatical about only returning exactly the information I needed from the DB.

They are such a nightmare to read, there's no exposure to them in the code that your IDE can make sense of, if there's a performance problem it's almost always down to one of those huge queries and in the end most software I work with the DB engine is either on the same box or on the same network so pushing across more rows to process in the app in a far more generic way doesn't cause the sort of latency problems you describe (seems a pretty rare config imo).

So I disagree.

Also I disagree with your admittedly fairly throw away comment about ORM & NoSQL. Even if it is just a data persistence layer bunging everything in a NoSQL solution is usually going to be the wrong call in the long run. If you're dealing with data it almost always pays off to keep it in a relational structure because if the app/business is a success someone will invariably start wanting to use the data in other ways. I think NoSQL is good for a very small subset of data storage problems, I want to use it, but have yet to have had a reason to.
Hello Zed and all

A few of us have even bought one of your books :-)

My mature students taking basic maths courses in the UK will read the textbook and come back at me with questions that show they have confronted the material and put some time into it. The teenagers need a different approach, games, Web sites with interactive material, carefully chosen written material.

Have you any age data about your participants? Perhaps the video courses?
Oracle is pretty smart about this, if a new plan is slower than the previous one, it seamlessly flips back.
I agree. 'sink or swim' has been the technique of preference in academics for many years. I would think it it is the same for any discipline (electronics or chemical engineer). may be the fluid abstractions used in learning software make it much harder to train people?
An astronomer observing stars would certainly notice the missing 12 hours.
Only one feature keeps me with Instapaper: Readability's crappy bookmarklet implementation. On my iPhone, I can save a page to Instapaper with a click of the bookmark. Readability, however, will throw up a prompt page asking me to confirm that I really want to save the page. The extra latency turns out to be really annoying in practice. If you're going to prompt, at least do it client side.
Entrepreneurs Running On Faith
Yes, it would definitely have been lesser work to just use Cocoa. And yes one of the main reasons for choosing mobile web apps is that they are cross platform.

Having said that, I still applaud the guy taking the time and ploughing in so much effort into something that he wanted to do. I appreciate the true hacker spirit in striving to create a webapp that looks and feels totally native. Kudos to the OP.
I usually think of the Pale Blue Dot photograph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
Gov't budget and import/export of currency has nothing to do with each other.

Current account deficit is what I wanted to type, not only trade. It works like this since Bretton Woods (okay, 40 years ago): US has current account deficit, that means that US dolars (or bonds in USD) are collected by other countries, and the US receives physical values (traded goods, raw materials, etc.) in return. When the USD loses value vs other currencies, the other countries posess now less value, because the USD they own is worth less physical stuff/other currencies.

The US is trying hard to do the same thing with China currently, since China has bunkered some 3 trillion USD. Devalue the USD a few percent vs the Renminbi and the US has saved a lot of value it would otherwise have to "pay back" to China some day.

Its a good thing to run the leading international currency (ie the USD) because of the implicit value transfer to your own country.
DMCA: Horrors of a Broad and Automated Censorship Tool
Randy Pausch helped create Alice, which is a bit like a modern Logo or Mindstorms - helps you create 3d animations and various other cool stuff, while teaching Java syntax.

http://alice.org/ (and if you haven't seen it yet, Randy's last lecture is amazing... http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/ )
Also have a look at my http://code.google.com/p/php-ga/ project, which opens the door to many advanced server-side use cases.
As YouTube Channel Switch Deadline Approaches, Most Users Still On Old Layout
23. I had recently graduated from engineering school and realized that I don't know how to program (despite good grades). I also had the regret of not having any side project.

So I decided to spend a few hours a day practicing; it's been almost two years, I haven't stopped since.
term sheets have "no shop" clauses which prohibit you from talking with other investors. But they're pretty unenforceable so it happens anyways.
Impressive that so many started at 13 or before. I'm a bit jealous.
"It certainly is worth thinking about whether you really want to go the CS route, but don't write it off because you feel like you can simply learn it all along the way."

Thanks for this comment.

Many developers who don't study CS tend to not-know-what-they-don't-know. It's fantastic they can throw together some web apps, but they don't always seem aware of what they can't do. I'd like to see the OP be thrown into a situation where he has to, among other things: write a static analyzer, design a stable routing algorithm over a mobile ad-hoc network, or publish, defend and implement a novel cryptographic key distribution protocol.

Here's a bit of philosophy for the OP (since he seemed so keen on hiring a "philosopher"): Knowledge is being more cognizant of what you don't know.
My reasoning was compared to a CAT scan it seems safer.
I really like Instapaper. I only really use it within the iOS ecosystem, and only by adding articles directly from the instapaper site, or from longreads or longform. I use an ad blocker anyway, so the sites aren't losing out on marginal ad revenue from me.

Maybe Readability or Read It Later are better, but instapaper is the first one I found, and I'm happy with it, and have a queue of about 500 nice articles built up, so I'm not likely to switch unless I see a better reason than "Marco is a bit presumptuous in podcasts" and "a competing site integrates a tipjar."
Hello Richard

I teach basic Maths in the UK. A lot of us use

http://www.skillsworkshop.org/

You upload a worksheet or game (granular level, something like 10 or 20 minutes of class time) and the moderator checks it over and classifies it by the level/type. Then it appears as a pdf.

If you upload a lot, you can ask for access to the editable versions of other files. This sort of addresses the 'free ride' problem.

At present, the site is a lot of work for one teacher, but she is recruiting moderators to spread the QA load.

A more commercial example is that run by the Times Educational Supplement (TES, trade paper of teachers over here).

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources/

Login required, reputation system in operation.
Bing is a very good search engine, pretty much identical to Google for my searches.
1978. Two years later, I had managed to save up enough money to actually buy a computer kit and run the stuff I had written.
started at about 12 by participating in a Logo "course" in a monthly youth magazine. I don't think I thought about it as "programming" back then, it was more or less in the same category as solving math puzzles and stuff.
Gmail gets unlimited
Apple's App Store: 25 billion downloads
I started at 13. It was 29 years ago :)
The systemd fallacy
And I am at -1 why? I actually worked with a couple of guys that did that, both from the OpenBSD camp. It looks weird and nerdy, but there are people who interpret GPL very conservatively.
The sentiment in the article looks laudable at first glance, but I have real trouble when the first paragraph ends with this:

> In many ways, PHP is that programming language. It’s simple, logical

and does not follow with "just kidding". Especially when the article itself contains things like:

> Keep your parameters consistent.

or

> What’s easier to remember “gnxID” or “getNextId”?

or

> Consistency is a virtue. If you have two similar APIs (say, search & read) they should take the same parameters and produce identically formatted responses.

Furthermore, while many of TFA's demands are the "well... duh" kind (though they do bear repeating), quite a few are also highly debatable:

> Just because you love Ruby, doesn’t mean everyone does. Show examples in a variety of languages.

Not sure why, as long as the examples are clear and readable (meaning Java is probably out as the only demo language), the language used for the examples should not matter. Stripe is awesome[0] but I don't think that thing should be termed as a requirement, let alone a "basic requirement".

> * Yes, you love XML. Guess what? I don’t!

> * The customer is always right. If the customer (developer) wants JSON, XML, PHPobject, or just plain text – you should give it to them.

> * It’s the API designer’s job to make life easy for developers – so reply in whatever formats the developer wants.

Is a second — significantly worse — iteration of the one above (and nonsensical in the face of the latter demand that the API developer provides libraries in a variety of languages: why do you care what the response format is if it's all hidden behind an access library exactly?). Are multiple response formats awesome? Sure. Are they a requirement? Fuck no, developers are not babies, as long as they have tools which let them process your responses (meaning ASN.1 is probably the wrong response format in most cases) they'll handle it just fine.

> The Wikipedia API is a brilliant example of this. They have a human readable response for their API calls.

The link leads to a dump of the XML response in an HTML page [1] in which lines are not wrapped and the non-text content of the response is a uniform and unreadable shade of blue. Meanwhile in every browser released in the last 15 years the original XML response [2] has syntax coloration, nicely wrapped lines and the ability to fold sub-trees you don't care about.

If [1] is brilliant, I'll do without brilliance thank you very much.

TFA's demands/recommendations are to be taken with a significant grain of salt: there's good, there's bad, and you'll have to pick them apart on your own.

While it does only cover documentary issues (which really are 30~50% of TFA) and not API design, I'd strongly recommend reading Parse's "Designing Great API Docs" instead[3], I find it comes across far better and... it documents what it preaches via examples for almost all its "bullet points".

[0] https://stripe.com/docs/api?lang=curl#top

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=lang...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=lang...

[3] http://blog.parse.com/2012/01/11/designing-great-api-docs/
Around 8 with Pascal
Who Can Shut Down Cell Phone Service?
I include a game manual anyway, in addition to a future seamless tutorial/game. I know time is a limited resource, but in my case, game development is on a timescale of decades, not a few years.

If it's going to be in development for a few decade, or even longer, I am going to give players every possible resource on how to play my game. It will be youtube, in game tutorial, in game manual, question and answers, etc.

Otherwise, I agree with the idea on allocating resource to an interactive tutorial.
Geek Love: Reasons to Date a Geek
I don't remember. (That option is not there)
My term sheet wasn't signed so I would have understood if the entrepreneur chose the other partner.

In the case of the new vc / old vc example that wasn't me ... yes, there was a 'no shop' clause. but ...

1. those are mostly unenforceable (is a vc going to sue an entrepreneur over no shop? not likely)
2. if the team really wants to get around it they can just run out the clock. most no shops are 45-60 days.

In the end, a term sheet is really just an expression of honor and reputation.
Do more, Click Less
An example using wordpress of how a well thought out User Interface design should enable the user to achieve more with less clicks.
wow this was amazing!! thanks for sharing!! everyone with kids aboard should watch it!!
When I was 15, I had to get a TI-83 for school. There was a fairly lively program trading scene, so I got a handful from friends. The 'EDIT' menu proved too tempting for me to resist and, TI-BASIC being what it is, everything went downhill from there.

Now, I don't think I could write anything in TI-BASIC to save my life. Thank goodness.
Cool Aatma Studio iPad 3 Concept Video Goes Viral
I wish I could vote you to the top. It's painful to see people "rediscovering" something so obvious. By not understanding this people are wasting so much time.

I've been programming for 30+ years. It was the enthusiasm of putting sprites on a screen and moving them around in 6502 assembler that kept me awake into the wee hours, pouring through books and magazines. The need for loops, branching, subroutines, etc all come naturally. As programs got bigger, the need for modules arose.

Once you have the "need/desire" to learn a subject, the rest comes so much easier.
As a sophomore in high school (1971), I had the good fortune to take part in an NSF-sponsored seminar that taught BASIC and the elements of numerical analysis. Afterwards, not having computer access, I started up a notebook that I wrote BASIC programs in. I wish I still had it.
You're missing the point. High prices for drugs, procedures, and medical devices in the United States are what makes their development financially feasible. Without the American market, the expected payoff to new medical technologies would be much lower, so it's reasonable to believe that fewer would be commercialized.

Americans bear the bulk of these costs, which are passed along in the price of their treatments, because much of the rest of the world has instituted price caps that are too low to cover the full cost of R&D, from basic science to a product approved for sale. (These treatments are nevertheless available in other countries because the marginal cost of synthesizing a pill or building a device that's already been developed is low.) It's a classic free-rider problem.
Great work and a fantastic writeup. One crucial interaction missing for the native scrollview feel is tapping the time in the status bar to quickly scroll back to the top. Does mobile safari expose that event?

Edit: it scrolls to top if you tap the navbar. The anim is a bit wonky, but it works.
that is EXACTLY what happened in the situation I described. We hadn't yet signed the term sheet. So I told the CEO that I would understand if he went with the other firm. But that I personally couldn't be involved with the deal for reasons I described. Until a CEO has signed the term sheet (or gives you an email saying they will) I assume they are still negotiating with others.
The Raspberry Pi can help schools get with the program
I am fairly certain that nobody lurks on Ping. They don't even visit for sightseeing.
Dragon Age 2's gay character controversial with straight, gay gamers
When you were 12 or younger how did you learn how to program? I was 16 when I started programming as a hobby and I had a programming class. I wish I started programming when I was 12.
You Know You're a Startup Founder When...
Some of the best:

...You stopped watching f*ing Lost!

...Watching Mixergy isn't watching someone mix experimental cocktails.

...A Ping Pong Table is an essential form of office equipment.

...You check your Analytics every few minutes to see if there’s been any activity since you last checked 2 minutes ago… did anyone new sign-up yet!?
Yeap, those will take some time since I'll have to store the username and password in the app. Still not sure how I should implement it.
Almost every hacker I know started between the ages of 11 and 14. That seems to be the sweet spot; the time when brains are malleable enough to be able to adapt to strange new concepts but have enough knowledge to be able to put those concepts in some context.

I think that compsci programs should be like art schools where your portfolio is what's considered first when you apply for admission.
I guess it's like an army of lawyers trying to understand the part national, part european legislation of a couple of dozen countries ;-)
Every rating system is like this. Censorship is arbitrary. Check out the MPAA giving an R to Bully, a documentary about high school bullying targeted at high schoolers. Well, not anymore.
Depending on the hourly rate, €80 of paperwork isn't all that much.
12. I was coding JavaScript for ProBoards. I shudder just thinking about it.
x264 has worked fine in many many MSVC applications, even compiled in minGW with gcc.

There are some minor catches:

1. If you want a .lib instead of a .dll, you have to make one yourself separately using a tool. Not a big deal, it's just that gcc does do it for you.

2. No debug symbols, because MSVC doesn't support DWARF/etc.

3. gcc guarantees 16-byte stack alignment on x86_32, but only with respect to the caller; MSVC does not, so the stack may not be aligned as gcc expects it. You can use -mpreferred-stack-boundary to make gcc expect it, or you can just explicitly align the stack, either with the gcc intrinsic (requires ~gcc 4.2) or a small assembly function.

There are probably a few others, but overall, it does work; cdecl is cdecl.
Windows 8 Consumer Preview license or Serial key
That ad is really making me mad. It keeps moving and I accidentally clicked it twice.
On why i haven't written another tech book
If HTML counts, 11 or 12. If Javascript is the minimum, 12 or 13. I'll vote for <= 12 then.
> Something wonky with your knee? OK, let's get an MRI and check it out.

Maybe; let a doctor look at it and decide. An MRI may be useful. It might just provide complex hard to interpret images that don't provide any more information than an experienced orthopod could find with some manipulation.

> Using MRI technology for health screening and preventative/proactive treatment is great.

You need to provide some evidence for that claim. There's a number of flaws.

Giving everyone screening MRIs needs many more staff. Those staff are diverted from other areas of healthcare, so that's one negative impact.

You'll get bottlenecks in screening and interpreting results, so some people who need treatment may end up waiting longer than someone who's just getting a screening MRI.

MRI scans are complex and hard to interpret. Knowing that every MRI is called for by a doctor makes people screening them look hard for problems. Knowing that there's a bunch of screening of probably healthy people means that screeners may not look so hard, and may miss minor (or major and hard to see) problems.

A patient who is healthy but who has a blob on MRI will be under considerable stress until that blob is investigated and ruled safe.

Investigations carry some risk. You have to drive to the hospital (which will cause many deaths and injuries); you're mixing with ill people; you're increasing the number of people visiting hospitals and thus increasing the numbers of people with MRSA and NORO virus and etc visiting hospitals - you're increasing the number of healthy people carrying illnesses visiting hospitals which have people unable to resist those illnesses.

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more problems.

But I don't have numbers, so I can be persuaded if someone has good quality reports.
11. Saved money from my paper route and bought a Commodore Vic20!
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol actually dealt with this tech in a semi-realistic way, and acknowledged the "only works from one viewing angle" problem. The invisible car in "Die Another day" ignored it.
I learned from my father, by looking at code, and by reading books/manuals.
Dear Google, It's Not You, It's Us
A Dependable iPad