skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Stay strong, don't give in to pressure by people who are sore because their open source free lunch is ending.

I don't disagree with this sentiment, but the dual licensing is somewhat of a two-edged sword. If they're perfectly fine building the entire Meteor stack in house, then a dual licensed commercial/GPL is fine, but if they're trying to encourage me to join a community of contributors to help build the platform then I'm definitely demotivated by the dual-license. Why should I contribute code to them (and presumably sign a CLA since that's the only way they can dual-license my code) if I'm going to have to pay them if I ever want to build a closed source app myself?
There's a clearly visible idea presented here; at least I see something about writing anywhere you like, just like on paper.
None of this follows from my previous comment. You seem intent on making this argument about me, and not about the law we're discussing.
What a great presentation. The concepts are very well detailed and seem intuitive and highly useful.

Am I missing the "what next" section? Is there a git repository or download somewhere?
Tiny correction: As of March 2011, iTunes has 200 million credit cards.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/02/apple-200-million-itunes-ac...
I'd be surprised that Valve would even go for that, Apple hasn't been their market anyway.
Healthy Weight Loss Foods List
The sum of all the cash flows related to the stock (discounted for time). Dividends are not the only factor there. For most investors and most stock, the future sale price (i.e. when I sell my share) is the major factor, and any dividends are a minor factor.
> most people care

I have a problem with those who "care", yet probably don't understand why it's better to treat the meat with ammonia than not treat it at all. They obviously realize that processed meat has less fat and this panic may very well raise the fat content of what kids eat.

And they'd be probably OK with cheese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet).
An excellent game. Along with telehack (http://telehack.com/), oldusenet (http://olduse.net/), and now this, semi-accurate emulation of the 80's online really seems to be catching on lately.

(disclaimer: I did olduse.net)
GM crops, including "roundup-ready" Bt corn have been banned in France, Germany, and other countries. GM crops have been topics of studies that have linked GM food to organ failure, autism, and vitamin deficiency. The pesticides used along side these large, unnatural monoculture crops have been linked to colony collapse disorder and potentially the single driving factor in dying bee populations.

I'm not surprised to find a pro-GMO attitude on a technology site, but there are always two sides. Unfortunately on one you get fear mongering, but on the other you get propaganda from those that directly profit from you agreeing with them.

Links for the curious:

http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.as...

http://myrighttosafefood.blogspot.com/2009/04/germany-bans-m...

http://www.inquisitr.com/206612/honey-bees-dying-from-corn-i...

http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm
Good to see how other developers evolve. I wonder if OP would start with PHP today or go straight to Python/Django?
I personally like the "Welcome to the future" tag even though it is generic. It immediately grabs me, peaks my curiosity, and makes me excited that I'm about to see a new product that doesn't exist yet.

But the image could use something to convey this is an audio product. Something more clear than an angled shot of a music app. Maybe some headphones next to the comp, or subtly work some music notes into the header somewhere. Just spitballin, but it would be nice if the header communicated music a little more clearly
There are many existing restaurant apps[1] that do this now (interface with POS, pay with CC), it isn't a big leap to think that it would be easier for me to order a burrito with my iPhone by clicking 'Pay with my Apple Account' versus having to enter a CC number.

[1] - I'm most familiar with Chipotle's http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chipotle-ordering/id327228455... - which allows for all sorts of custom orders.
We love MongoDB at Catch, it's been our primary backing store for all user data for over 20 months now.

> Catch.com
> Data Size: 50GB
> Total Documents 27,000,000
> Operations per second: 450 (Create, reads, updates, etc.)
> Lock % average 0%
> CPU load average 0%

Global Lock isn't ideal, but Mongo is so fast it hasn't been an issue for us. You need to keep on slow queries and design your schema and indexes correctly.

We don't want page faults on indexes, we design them to keep them in memory.

I don't get the safety issue, 20 months and we haven't lost any user data. shrug
Great read, but I'm slightly horrified that it took until #18 to realize "concatenating strings to form SQL queries is a bad idea."
Mike Monteiro: FU Pay me (Frelancers) (video)
> I don't think CISPA replaces ECPA.

CISPA has a bunch of clauses saying that it trumps any law to the contrary ("Notwithstanding any other provision of law"), so the ECPA only applies when CISPA doesn't. CISPA even has a redundant clause talking about federal preemption that appears to be there just to emphasize the fact that it was intended to overrule everything else.

Perhaps you would prefer to hear the ACLU's opposition piece: https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/aclu-opposition-...

They repeat a fair number of the EFF's complaints, including how the law is too broad. I don't think the sky is falling here, but I do think that putting a giant loophole in every single privacy law, however inadequate the current ones may be, is a mistake. If they really want to do something, they ought to update the ECPA. It's rather dated.
Isn't that exactly what Y Combinator companies do? They create single, focused, unproven products and try to "prove" them.
> RSA and other key exchange techniques are another story though, as the article mentions RSA is theoretically significantly weaker to a functioning quantum computer than AES to start with, and I don't really know the extent to which the government uses RSA.

NSA Suite B Cryptography recommends use of ECDSA over RSA, but the latter is acceptable for documents with "SECRET" classification level.
Teredo is a pretty clever technology, but there are a lot of downsides vs native v6:

http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2011-04/teredo.html
Videogame 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' to take up where Aliens/Alien 3 left off
Simple. Do some monte carlo comparisons between a large number of generated functions, based on various heuristics like number of instructions. So quickly get rid of explicit mapping of tests, especially if used larger. Add some genetic algorithms and a little more AI stuff ;)

One interesting thing though with auto-generated code based on specific test code is that when the test fails at some point the process just has to be repeated, potentially being done automatically.
I agree sometimes the dogma in tech can cloud peoples perspective. If we get down to brass tacks their is no "right" way to develop for the web, when talking about using JavaScript or not. It is a preference, opinion and bias issue as such it is a persons prerogative if someone want to build apps based on those constraints, but to hold it out as if it is the "right" way is disingenuous. I personally make my decisions based on data, specifically how many users are doing what, in the real world the amount of people who do not support JavaScript for whatever reason is insignificant, in my organizations we tend to redirect the funds that it would cost to chase them to mobile efforts because their is a more significant market and ROI. For us that is the right way, for other it may not be.
I love my iPhone. As an appliance it works great. But I must be in the minority when it comes to using apps. I use two, maybe three, on a monthly basis. Safari, Maps, and sometimes a weather app. I was floored when he said he spends $50-$100 a month on apps. What is he buying?

Also - is there a huge market for mobile purchases? I must be getting old, but I certainly prefer buying things online on a laptop or a desktop.
Thanks for sharing. I really like your perspective (not to mention the analogy). Would you agree, though, that part of the problem is with company's views on their own employee's trajectories?
I believe people actually prefer not to know. I can recall several instances where a friend would say "I'd rather not hear about that" when I point out how their poultry is injected, processed, killed, packed and shipped. If people really did want to know they would realize that it's actually difficult to find out first hand, and then laws would have to be changed. And people might eat a lot less meat.

I do agree that people would like to believe their food is produced in a way that seems wholesome to them. The way they do that is by not asking questions. Even something as simple as orange juice isn't produced in the way that most people would expect and accept.
> I don't get the safety issue, 20 months and we haven't lost any user data. shrug

Nobody loses any user data until they do.
Gabe, if you sell to Apple we will never forgive you!
I think, put quite simply, the systems reply completely devastated the Chinese Room argument. I don't know why we bother even bringing it up any more.
This is really good stuff. The roadmap from beginner to expert is generally consistent irregardless of the language or framework.

I always hoped for a "knowledge map" for programming (example: http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard) that clearly shows knowledge dependancies.

Can this be a step towards developing a comprehensive, collaborative knowledge map which would benefit programmers of all levels?
I realized this about me too, the other day. I'm completely unrealistic about schedule for the first half-an-hour or so after I wake up. So I try to get as much done the evening before so there's less risk of that unrealism trashing my morning.
Another interesting possibility is mobile Steam with app purchases and Appstore interoperability. It would be awesome to buy a cross platform game on Steam and get it for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android all the same time. Ridiculously unlikely, I know, but I can dream.
Awesome! Brings back so many memories...
Not to be a spoilsport or anything, but is there any confirmation for this? A photograph, or at the very least a Twitter message? Something...?
For competent people, getting fired is awesome as it always means a big pay raise.

At most jobs I carry a letter of resignation with me at all times, ready to be handed over at any moment. This practice really helps take the edge off of many situations, since I don't see any situation as anything I have to put up with, which seriously reduces the angst and depression that I encountered from feelings of futility and hopelessness from "situations beyond my control" before I adopted the practice. Now I know that all situations are under my control as far as my own choice to be involved at all is concerned, and likewise, others are responsible for their own decisions and happiness.
If you've fixed the design to 320px that's about half the width of my phone screen and a quarter of a portrait tablet screen.

Dedicated Apps are dedicated to my device, mobile web pages aren't.

Mobile Safari doesn't automatically zoom because Apple were to rushed to take that feature out, it auto zooms because Apple went out of their way to add it. Same with the phone/tablet/whatever. You don't know why I'm zooming either, maybe I'm in a moving vehicle or using it at night in low brightness and can't see well, or without glasses or when tired or while holding something else and viewing at a distance or anything.

As a principle, content is there to be used not to be aesthetically perfect, and content overriding the local display device is giving control to someone without the context to make useful decisions.

I know apps don't zoom - haven't we been complaining about resolution independence in desktops and implementing magnifiers and ctrl-scroll and other clunky workarounds because of this for many many years?
> It's disgusting nonetheless.

Trust me. It's probably the least disgusting part of the process of killing a cow and putting parts of it on your plate. If people really became aware of how it happens, they'd not be mad about pink slimes - they'd become vegans.

And cows would go extinct in 50 years.
You're giving the article way too much credit (I'm the writer).

But, I think the notion of creating a Khan Academy style map for web development would be really cool.
The vagueness of this bill IS the problem. Vagueness in the law makes for really bad laws.

Give me one reason I should support this bill.
Long predated by "Unicode Snowman for You": http://xn--n3h.net/

Or http://☃.net if you prefer.

Interestingly, I observe my font is rendering the snowflakes around the snowman as pentagons. Some font designer needs to study some more science.
So it's actually 100% the same as you would do with on-the-fly migrations in SQL:

(1) Add column and add code moves the old data when you access it. Deploy.

(2) Let it run for a while. Run a background job that migrates the rest (this might be done days or months later).

(3) Remove the column and the custom code.

The more I hear about "schemaless" the more I realize that it doesn't make any difference at all.
The order on some of those items is a bit messed up (i.e. it's not quite chronological).

I was uncaffeinated at the time I wrote it, and the order somteimes reflects the order I thought of them in, not the order they happened.
It's interesting how a company known for games has basically no game developer positions open. Anyone know why?
Which languages do you now know?

I would not recommend Haskell as it is a heavy lifting language, not really a scripting language. Perl is probably the strongest scripting language out there, and PHP is certainly the most ubiquitous web language out there. I learned Perl first, which made learning PHP super easy (you just have to unlearn a few things).

You can write scripts in both Perl and PHP, but web programming is definitely much easier in PHP. Try out both and see which one you like.
Reading the article, I think it's the opening blockquote that got the author's dander up:

>> For example, at Posterous, they use [CoffeeScript] but don’t have any real JavaScript engineers.

The OP probably should have ignored it, but sweeping comments implying that Posterous developers aren't JS engineers is bound to get a response.
What software produced this slide presentation?
Maybe they already have all their positions filled?
Putting ANSI escape sequences for BLINK in the label of a floppy was fun, and annoying.
You might then enjoy a more accurate critique of the law:

https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/aclu-opposition-...
There are several types of learning, and some people are better at (or prefer) one over others. Some people do well with text. Others do well with pictorial representations, other do better with demonstration and talks and some learn by doing/failing/doing again.

I personally am good with pictorials and the do/fail iteration styles of learning. Text is passable, but I am usually translating it to pictures in my head. There have been times where I have gotten more out of one crappy but representative picture than I have out of an hour lecture. Good pictures that engage the viewer are even better. In this case I was easily able to imagine the gophers walking along doing their tasks, and just "seeing" the flow because the picture was pretty representative. I could have gotten the same message from boxes and arrows, but not as quickly I think.

So why should we have more good diagrams? Because it would help more people of a certain type learn to program easier.
I'd recommend changing the hero text on your main site's home page to something like "Hall is collaboration for your company and team, all in one place" from the current "Working Together in War Rooms Doubles Teams' Productivity", then.

"War rooms" as a concept already exist outside the context of your app; when I first saw the site, I didn't understand how the statement connected to your app. I thought it was just a generic statement about war rooms, which was confusing.
s/professionals/Ruby fans/
This should be a deal breaker for any serious app. Does the performance hit of safe mode negate all other advantages of MongoDB?
He is off base again :)

The real product coming up is iGame manufactured by Valve..probably this fall or q1 2013.

If you think I am joking read the Valve and Apple job ads..:)
While I audibly laughed at the idea that there is a "Meat Industry Hall of Fame" I am really finding it difficult to believe that there was somehow "innovation" here (I really think that word is overused, and in this case repulsively so).

Now I don't fault the guy for coming up with a method to separate meat from fat mechanically (itself not an act of villiany), but the end result is what it is...and calling it "lean finely textured beef" stretches well into absurdity, especially when you add the lack of clarity as to what an "ammonia puff" entails and its real impacts, the fallout once its in the public eye should not be surprising.
I think I agree with everything the ACLU is arguing for, while noting that these are things we don't have today. For instance, when security and investigations info is shared with the government today under the post-PATRIOT ECPA, there aren't "use restrictions" and there isn't a requirement for PII to be scrubbed.

One by one, ACLU wants CISPA to:

* Narrowly define the privacy laws it will contravene. In other words, the law should directly reference the ECPA & Communications Act and carefully define the parts of it it overrides. Sure, but this won't fundamentally change the character of the law, because the ECPA doesn't offer strict protections either.

* House domestic cybersecurity efforts in a civilian agency. I'm skeptical of all government cybersecurity efforts and could care less where they're housed. If anything, I might rather have the military leading this, since they actually have operational experience. I don't buy that we need a new "Cyber TSA" to be created.

* Require companies to remove personally identifiable information (PII) from data they share with the government CISPA already suggests anonymization. ACLU would presumably prefer to make anonymization the default. That's fine. But there is no provision requiring scrubbing of PII in ECPA.

* Limit government use of information shared for cybersecurity purposes Who's going to disagree with this? Certainly not me. But: the protection ACLU is asking for does not exist today.

* Create an oversight and accountability structure that includes public and congressional reporting Zzzzzzz.

I'm glad for the reference to the ACLU statement on this bill (I support the ACLU). But again, I think a lot of opposition to CISPA falls into a mold of "if we're going to pass new laws, they should improve privacy from the status quo". And: I like privacy! But "not improving privacy" is just not the same thing as "demolishing privacy" or, as Doctorow thinks, "selling the whole Internet out to the MPAA".
How does saying "If you use my code, you have to give me your code" make me want to use it, let alone join your "community"? It seems toxic and coercive to me. It's suggesting that my code is of much lower value than your code, so don't worry about it. This might be correct most of the time, but when it's not, it's a problem.

Good communities are founded on mutual respect and voluntary engagement.
My primary issue with CoffeeScript: people that use it insist that it's JavaScript.

Example: I see a post on HN or in one of my RSS subscriptions about a great new JS library or plugin, only to click through and see a page full of CoffeeScript examples, and the source code is written in CoffeeScript as well. This is not JavaScript. I will not learn CoffeeScript just to decipher your plugin or library and integrate it into my JavaScript project. And no amount of forceful whining on your part will convince me that it's so readable and intuitive and minimal that there is no significant learning curve there.
Very original, I hope this gets funded. 5k isn't much either!
For purchases where I need to type in credit card info, yes I prefer desktop over mobile anytime. But I use the Amazon app on my iPhone all the time because its just one click to purchase something. That is the driver behind this idea, if buying on mobile can become simpler than buying on the desktop, why wouldn't people do it?
"The nail which stands out gets hammered down."
Entirely agree. Sometimes real evolution is slightly horrifying. :)
Off topic, but an old aphorism is, "If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice." In some ways, asking YC for money is a way of asking for advice and constraining YC to prove that they're sincere.
I don't support it (I think it's a NOP designed solely to gain attention for its sponsors), so I certainly won't be offering you any such arguments.

Where I take exception is with efforts to stir up hysteria about it.
Not really. But you can tell your ISP it is not RFC compliant, I will tell mine.
Bank Account -> Debit/Credit Card -> Apple -> Merchant = 10% loss to merchant.

Bank Account -> Debit/Credit Card -> Merchant = 1.5% loss to merchant.

Bank Account -> Google Wallet -> Merchant = 1.5% loss to merchant.

Bank Account -> Paypal -> Merchant = 1.5% loss to merchant.

Bank Account -> Most payment startups -> Merchant = 0.5% loss to merchant.

I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't take 10% in this environment.
I second this recommendation, actually even if you do not program in Java nor on the JVM. Like no other book it taught me a particular kind of foresight - to analyse the consequences of each small decision being made during implementing some new thing and to design things in such a way that they are least likely to cause problems now or in the future, to me or to other programmers working on the project - my code is much more solid and less error-prone ever since and it was definitely a big AHA moment for me. The author, Joshua Bloch, designed some of the standard Java APIs and I actually can't think of a better way to learn about those things than implementing an API used by other people, which explains why he has so many interesting things to say that are seldom found in other places. Here is also a very nice talk by the author:

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design
Hotels are the worst example since they are also low margin and the consumer makes the purchase over the phone or online with their debit card handy or paypal account ready.
Again, it would be great to get feedback on exactly why it's a drag.
How will you execute better than the original Color did?

"Color -- the cross-platform app which allows users to share recently snapped photos with others in their vicinity"? Apart from the 1KM radius vs 150m, I don't see a fundamental difference with the idea.

But what you can do is execute better. Color failed not because of the idea, but because they

a: Had horrible UI, with mismatched icons and unclear UX
b: An incredible buggy app, frequently crashing phones
c: Most importantly, an empty world when starting out

So, what's the takeaway? I really like the idea and think it has potential, but what you have to do is:

a: vastly improve your design. It's a good start, but it's not the most attractive

b: Make sure that there are always enough photos, whether you start with a limit city in mind, or do some code shenanigans

c: Start you marketing now. It's only viral if there are enough people to make it so. Especially so with an app like yours that is contingent on there being enough people around you with the app

I'm really excited to see where this goes.
Yyyyyyyup.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=FD3xe6Jt
Nice post. It's even more fun to read and compare to your own experience, there are some things that I had know during the earlier stages that you learned at a later stage and some things I didn't know until the later stages, but you knew at the earlier stages.