skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hi there!

I agree with Brian in that your treading dangerously close in name, look and feel to the current market leader and might find yourself getting a C&D or a terse email before you ever hit any real traction. I'd reconsider your brand before moving much further. It'd be a shame if your technical accomplishments get tarnished over some bad PR situation.

Regarding your product, I think email input is a difficult feature to pull off. No matter how simple you make the format, your users will find a way to screw it up. And users will blame your service for the poor experience. Having to defend your product to customers and training them to properly use a product is VERY TOUGH.

Further, if you want email input to be the one feature you use to differentiate yourself from your competition, that feature had better be MAGICAL. Posterous is one example of a company that used email input to help users publish content to their blog as it's key differentiation. They put together a great blog platform, but the email input was their 10-second onboarding. "Email your first blog post us and we'll set everything up for you!" THAT'S MAGIC.

Your differentiation aside, I don't think that's what your biggest problem is. I realize this is an MVP, but I think many people take the MVP thing too literally. If you're launching a product in a market which has (as you state) a lot of competition, your MVP launch should at least perform on-par with the rest of the market. First impressions are hard to fix and launching a sub-par MVP will likely doom you to failure by obscurity.

What you should do: Start thinking about how you want to improve on what's out there. If it's email input, then iterate on that feature over and over until it's like magic. On each iteration, get people to use the feature and see if they like it or hate it. I would even take Brian's suggestion and use Buffer's API so you can focus on THAT feature alone. (And don't get discouraged.)
Let me guess.. you are a java senior developer, aren't you?
You should learn python, or ruby. They will open your mind to a whole new level of abstraction.
"The trouble with JavaScript is that when I try to pretend it uses classical inheritance, nothing works the way I think it should."
Sandy Bridge? Ivy Bridge? Which processor?
Facebook’s Scuba project dives into performance data
1) You do what Bob did; have them write code and then ask why they did it that way.

2) Were the written questions on paper or a whiteboard? If so, you should at least give them the option of doing it on a computer with a screen editor (you know the way that almost everyone has written code since the 80s). We have a few computers with just about every editor known to man (well win32 and *nix only, but we could probably scrounge up a powerbook if we needed to) installed on them along with gobs of syntax-highlighting themes so that candidates can feel comfortable when writing code.

Ultimately some good programmers have trouble writing code on paper, and most good programmers have trouble writing code on a whiteboard (though they should at least be able to sketch out an algorithm graphically or with pseudo code as that's a useful communication tool).
It is a nice idea. But I think writing Logs as JSON is still a lot more practical.

The idea of writing Logs as JSON has been out for a while, and in my experience, JSON is far more practical.

This is also a good article regarding Logs as JSON:
http://journal.paul.querna.org/articles/2011/12/26/log-for-m...
I've started programming in JavaScript before or at the same time I started programming in Java and still find that the author's argument is mostly valid. It's not a matter of habit, it's a matter of consequences and the amount of knowledge you need to have to make basic language features work correctly.

Prototypes are simply more complicated than classes. They change behavior of objects, whereas classes _define_ behavior of objects. The syntax doesn't help it either.
I'm not sure what your point is.

I consider XML proved itself as a reliable data layer. JSON is not considered because it does not even supports attributes and extensibility.

I would really appreciate if you would consider contributing some nice ideas. Come over to the mailing list :P
>> EX 5 has a lower setup fee. Some people want to save once and pay more... (I don't understand those folks)

This seems prudent when going with a new vendor. Reduce financial risk until you gain trust.
I tried in Opera, Firefox, IE. Nothing.
Chomp for Android discontinued following Apple acquisition
I've only dabbled in Python, Ruby and JS, but when I sat down to actually write node.js code, I felt like I was writing (basic) Python with C syntax. Given that I've more-than-dabbled with C... :)
Simple tests (what is this jquery doing? why is this ruby script failing?) are great as bogofilters as long as you actually use jquery and ruby on the job.

I interviewed somewhere a few months ago and had a former programmer turned product manager grill me about b-trees (this was a Ruby on Rails position). I was not surprised to hear later that he was the one who gave me the final thumbs-down, I assume he thought I wasn't worth it because I didn't work at the same level of abstraction that he did when he was a coder.
I find it a little worrying that "Must run every line of code to find all the errors" made the list. More worrying was the fact that the author thought having compiler-enforced type safety would relax that requirement. Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe by find all errors, he meant "find all type errors except for anytime anyone does something dynamic or a cast".

I would hope we all recognize by now that even running all lines of code (100% test coverage) is insufficient to find all errors (especially semantic ones). In any language.
Exactly. It's not if they know the answer that matters, but if they can determine the answer. Poor interviewers only test knowledge, not ability.
I wouldn't exactly say that the list is wrong, just because half of it also applies to Python or Ruby.
All languages have some kind of issues, so I guess it's an okayish list of Javascript specific gotchas.
That is not normal, and a very bad sign.
That sounds very much like the more modern DOS game Z: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(video_game). It eschewed the Dune 2 RTS mechanics that had already become dogma by then and I distinctly remember finding it refreshing. (I grew up on DOS so I didn't know anything about the Genesis).
This is something I'd like to hear more about too - if Smalltalk is so awesome, why is nobody using it?
it even show my local 192.168... weird

BUT HOW?
As I understand the story from old Smalltalkers, the Smalltalk vendors shot themselves in the foot and then the head. They had exorbitant licensing schemes where Java was free, didn't make it easy for programmers to try Smalltalk out, and had a supercilious "we're the best, bow before us" attitude that extended into the technology itself, making interop harder than it needed to be and so on. The same attitude caused them to look down their noses at Java and C++ – after all, Smalltalk was obviously better – until it was too late.

Given how much better Smalltalk was than Java and how much of a head start it had, it should have won. That it didn't is either a tragedy or a comedy.

Edit: Part of the issue was generational. Smalltalk predates open-source. So do APL and Lisp. The way people thought about commercial software before open-source was totally different. For example, it wasn't uncommon for vendors to demand a percentage of their users' revenue, something that seems absurd today. So these technologically advanced – still in many ways superior – languages were trapped for historical reasons in an obsolete economics.
The downside of Lean?
In what sense are these the same?
The Early Edition 2 dev discusses paid upgrades on the App Store
Nick Takayama from Glasshouse Apps shares he's thoughts on paid upgrades (or the lack thereof) on the iOS app store having been through the transition with The Early Edition 2.
To be fair, the list of issues are what someone from an OO background will eventually run into when using JavaScript, and the article does offer solutions to those issues for people who want them fixed (namely cross-compilation, or models for dealing with small or large projects).

That said, people using JavaScript should be playing to JavaScript's strengths, or picking a different (if not cross-compiled) platform. It's bizarre that people from fundamentally different programming backgrounds complain about these issues. If you don't like C, don't use C. If you don't like JavaScript, write a native application, or cross-compile. There are options, they're in heavy deployment on several major websites, use them. Then everyone can pick the platform they're most comfortable with.
Nick Takayama from Glasshouse Apps shares his thoughts on paid upgrades (or the lack thereof) on the iOS app store having been through the transition with The Early Edition 2 on the cidercast podcast.
Show HN: Twitter and text message shortener
I'll offer some feedback right now... I think the product is pretty slick, but your site suggests this is the "easiest" way to send a file. A big question remains on what the first-time setup is like. How do I get other people on my "list" and how much friction does that process have? Because if it's any harder than right-clicking a file, selecting "Send via Email" and typing an email address, I'm immediately out.

Maybe other people could be asking this same question (and leaving your page before dropping off their email addy)?
It's worth noting that they are from the same linguistic family. Having studied Latin, to me Russian seemed pretty familiar conceptually once I got past the whole cyrillic thing. I am admittedly nowhere near fluent, and I realize the experience would be different for someone without previous 2nd-language exposure.

About the modes, did you by chance have Russian exposure during childhood (guessing based on your id)... that might account for some degree of integration even if you only became fluent later.
Software license inspired by "Bill & Ted".
If all you want is classical inheritance, there are so many libraries that are available which mimic that.
> Is this common during the bubble

Yes. We saw it a bunch during Bubble v1.

I thought it was nuts then: Weren't the people/VCs supplying the money paying attention? After a while, you realize that easy money covers up a lot of sins over several levels of the foodchain.

When money tightens, those sins will be expurgated, but until then: Party on.

EDIT: To expand a bit, it's not "normal" as ericflo says in another reply and I agree it's a "bad" sign.

I'm just pointing out that as long as those supplying the money are seeing positive returns, they're busy working their other opportunities. When Sequoia republishes "RIP: Good Times", out comes the microscope on spending and board meetings will go over details that were ignored before.
Thinking about getting rid of this domain/service. Do you find it useful?
Nintendo predicts combined Wii sales of 10.5 million by 2013
Sure, shoot.
One option would be to ask them to bring in some code they've written, and then talk through it with them in the interview. Even simple stuff like greasemonkey scripts could be pretty informative as to the candidate's level.

I'd be very wary of asking questions about potentially-obscure corners of tools (I don't know how obscure magic methods are in PHP) -- in a real work environment, you could look it up in a moment, but you usually can't in an interview. You could easily trip up a programmer who thrives with the references to hand, but isn't yet confident enough with the tools not to struggle without the references.
Would anyone care to comment on the quality and English skills of their support?

We considered Hetzner, but were concerned about the potential pitfalls of doing low-level support with a language barrier.
Not all your errors, dynamically typed languages still require testing.

And I agree, I tend to prefer type systems like haskell that offer better compile time assurance than testing, but my point is there's a large contingent of programmers who don't, and who drive uptake of increasingly automated and abstracted dynamically typed languages (this isn't a prediction, but an observation of how things already are).
Good luck! I hope you end up with a Bob over a Ted.
I'm impressed by your vast experience with different languages!
I'm also curious to learn why one language contrasted with another language have no necessary relationship to how speakers of each language think.
The authors post seem to prove the opposite:

>An Australian Aboriginal tribe, The Guugu Yimithirr, famously have no words for left, right, in front of or behind. They use north, east, west, and south instead. And as a result: they develop an internal compass—always knowing which way is north, even if you blindfold them and spin them around.

I for sure don't know the direction after being spun blindfolded :)

(edit: grammar)
TLDR: You do almost the same thing in the USA, only it is automated. We have the patriot act which requires collecting a lot of info-- the US has centralized databases (namely credit reports) that allow easy authentication of people. Outside the USA, they don't have the patriot act, but they have a lot of similar laws, and thus collecting a copy of your passport lets them know you're not an identity thief and lets them satisfy "know your customer" laws in their country. In the US the same thing can be authenticated by running a check thru a database, though in the US the law doesn't care whether you're an identity theif (which is why you don't need photographic proof) but whether you're on a terrorist list... the latter can be done just from the info you give.

They are the target of people who want to run torrent servers, criminal irc chat rooms, and stuff like that. These are not the customers they want. They also don't' want to incur the cost of setting up a dedicated server for someone whose just giving them stolen credit card info.

Since often stolen credit card info is distributed in text form, the theifs don't have access to the physical card. Showing you have access to the physical card and the physical passport does not prove that you didn't steal both from the rightful owner, but eliminates those people who just bought a list of credit card numbers.

While stolen cards are often cancelled relatively quickly, this can take anywhere from days to weeks to process thru, by which time they will have incurred the real labor costs (that they charge the 150 euro setup fee to cover) only to have those charges reversed because the card was stolen.

One thing that was illuminating for me as an american is the discovery that our banking system is set up very differently from many other countries. Thus things that are easy for us, are not as easy for them. (Taking a credit card is harder for a merchant outside the USA because the credit card system originated in the USA under the US legal structure. This is why shopping online is less common in, say, south america, than it is in north america.) Other things that are hard for us are easy for them-- if you want to give your friend $20, you just log into your bank and send him the money. The entire purpose of paypal was replaced outside the US as a simple feature on bank websites.

Asking for a photo of your passport and credit card is not really out of line. I understand why you would be hesitant to give these things up as an american-- when I first started doing business internationally, I was very hesitant as well. After awhile, though, you realize that trustworthy businesses are trustworthy. The data I'll be putting on hetzner servers is much more valuable than the image of my passport (Which every low paid border agent at a third world country I visit gets a copy of.)

If I can't trust them with my passport image, can I trust them with my data?
I can't really compare it to Heroku. You have to compare it with EC2.
First thing. They are planning to roll out Linux hosting but as of right now it's only windows and I have never used Windows EC2.
With Azure you actually get a Windows machine in a datacenter that you choose. You can Remote desktop into it and control it, like you can control your local computer.
Deployment is kinda tricky. But it's important to get Remote desktop working first so you can see what's happening in the system. It's not like heroku how you can do Heroku --logs.
It's very important to remember that with Azure. You have to do everything. Heroku makes deploying, logging very simple for you. But at the same time you have less control.
To sum up. There is a steep learning curve coming from heroku.
But overall, I think it's was worth it.

This is what you get with Bizspark:
http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/azure/
Here's why a "class" definition is a "function" in JavaScript:

Since JavaScript is prototypal and not class-based, the "new" operator simply creates a tabla rasa object. The argument to new is a function that runs on the new object with "this" in the scope set to the object.

Thus "new foo()" creates an blank object and runs foo on it. You can do this with any function!

If you don't try to force C++/Java semantics onto JS, it's much easier to understand.
Skype announce both your IP's into network.
Beyaz Show Konukları Kimler 27 Nisan 2012 Cuma
Researchers Claim Quantum Computer Breakthrough
4 questions to help me understand how people contribute to open source
I think it would also be cool to link your projects (shipped or failed) to some type of karma system. This way you can show your scars and your successes. Maybe even target the karma report for VCs.
> With respect to GMail, when people like pg who get the big picture are saying that the UI sucks, it probably sucks.

this very website proves that that is not necessarily true.
The Value of College for Infosec
PyPy STM work update
This is precisely why a company that has already IPO'd, or one that has been sold outright or been raising private equity at a lower valuation, is a better example (in my very humble opinion).

You've precisely underlined the precarious situation Facebook is in. Enormous pressure on Mr. Zuckerberg to make a good IPO, because afterward he is off the hook.
I haven't used their service yet so I can't comment from experience with them, but I will say this: In germany, you are taught english when you are growing up. We lived in Berlin for awhile and my german is very poor, but almost everyone we met knew enough english to get by. Hetzner is an international company, with a website in english, and I think the odds that they will have a real problem handling customer support requests due to language is very low. Much lower than support being overworked, or other potential issues.

In america, finding someone who knows a foreign language is rare. In germany, finding someone who knows at least some english is not uncommon- and in a company like this, I'm sure (but don't know for a fact) they hire english speaking support people.
Because bash is the standard on Linux and every component you add introduces additional complexity and instability. It's fine to add stuff to your home machine, but you need to be careful with adding things to a server or a work environment. Bash is good enough for almost everything.
Sounds like a challenge. Should be do-able in managed COBOL using delegates.
I promise I'll publicize the results. I just need to get an objective measurement of what's real versus what everyone thinks is real.
So we're doing this thread again? Stock interview questions don't test real knowledge, they test knowledge of stock interview questions.

In my experience, the most accurate interview processes is to ask a candidate to solve a short (but non-trivial) problem in the language of their choosing (or pseudocode). Ideally, candidates could be interviewed by a few people independently to ensure an accurate sample of that interviewee's knowledge. This isn't always possible (due to time and other constraints) but this process better guarantees that a smart candidate isn't tripped up by a very unusual question, or that a weak candidate doesn't memorize common interview answers.
I would say "or just use CoffeeScript", but you really should understand JavaScript better than that before using CoffeeScript.
Thoughts on “Silent” Browser Upgrades
Great Idea. I'm still waiting for someone to come up with the online version of this. Many women simply couldn't travel to SF or NYC (Hacker School) for several weeks to get training. In a Mother-Father-Children household, it is still more feasible for the Father to be away for weeks rather than the Mom. Society is just used to that type of scenario more often than the other way around.

It is even more difficult for single moms (which I'm sure is a much larger number compared to single fathers in the US). Anyhow, my point is that for many girls, there are valid reasons why they can't follow their 'passions' or why they would need to follow them while keeping up with other responsibilities as well.

The advantage of having programs like these where they could have the input and support from mentors and a group of fellow students is certainly a big plus and I would love to see someone replicating the same environment online so that accessibility to these opportunities is not an issue.
Yeah in this case we didn't do that. I'll talk with Dave and see about looking out for this in the future. Thanks for the heads up!
I mostly agree, but it has always struck me as bizarre that to define something like a "class" you wind up defining a function. Sure, that function works like a constructor together with new(), but even after all these years, it still strikes me as a bizarre language choice.
There is no regulation of the tiers - but the best place to look for info is the Uptime Institute.

You should attend their DC conference may 14th

The expo pass is free: http://symposium.uptimeinstitute.com/registration

Register there and you can go and get more info.

You're going to have a hard time getting accurate info on the enterprise DC market given how that info is not well reported.

You should also read datacenterknowledge.com
Politics and Education Don't Mix
Single Stage to Orbit (or any type of reusable launch system) invariably adds complexity and weight, which in turn eats up any gains by being able to reuse stages. It just isn't worth it to add complexity unless you go whole hog and make the entire thing SSO.
In it's heyday smalltalk VM performance was far behind C,asm,etc. As a result it never gained much traction. Once it became practical to run/use VMs the smalltalk legacy had been tainted by C/C++ and thus java.
Thanks, wow kickstarter is just awesome that they offer that openly. A traditional organization I feel wouldn't.
Reasonably impressive and scary.
I loved that too. Opinionated people are great to have on.

Although I flip-flopped on the future for Dropbox. When I've made an arse of myself I'll leave it in there for all to hear.

For posterity, and having ruminated, I think Dropbox is fine. It's the easy-to-user, neutral solution.
If I were to ask 2 questions, I would:

1) Ask something simple, like FizzBuzz. You'd be shocked at how many people talk a good talk but can't actually write basic code.

2) Ask an open-ended question, like "how would you design a multi-player chess game". That leads to a discussion that lets you assess all sorts of traits, the most important of which is communication style.
Find me a real world case where switching from bash to zsh was a bad idea.
If you read my other comments carefully you will see that I think he is under enormous pressure to shoot the moon and stay there. I guess this comes down to personal taste, and if you want you can be in his position. I'm saying there's a better 'canonical example' than facebook as of today, for the parent comment I originally used to put after his or her ellipses.
Also if run several clients it shows them all.