skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Crud-bones - Boilerplate project to kick-start your Node.JS/Mongo/MySQL CRUD app
No, it's not an another framework. Chill. All this code is basically the template which I use to jump-start with new project. It has simplistic Model and DAO (MySQL and Mongo - which are interchangable), and all the usual set of Node.JS modules I like to use (I gathered them from across many forums, as the most stable and reliable). So, it saves me a ton of time. I clone it, and go from there. You can get simple CRUD right away, just change the model (yeah, it's very "opionated"). And if you feel like you need something more sophisticated just change the code!
The GPL is just a pain in the ass for all involved. At least that's how I see it.

You are not alone.

I find the GPL, but more so variants like the Affero GPL, to be ticking time bombs. And I have followed the development of FOSS over the years and occasionally helped out a project, so I probably have more interest than most people who aren't in the FOSS community.

The lawyers and managers at companies where I've worked were far more pragmatic: it's not worth the time and risk to analyse the licensing implications of every bit of GPL'd code we might consider using as part of our own project, so just blanket ban any development use of such code across the entire organisation and avoid any potential legal risks. In short, using GPL'd code is fine, but doing any kind of development with it is a firing offence, end of discussion.

I think this is a very sad state of affairs, but knowing how complex the legal issues can become, how militant certain FOSS groups can be, and how much damage such a group could cause in PR terms even if they had no legal case at all, I can't say I blame the lawyers and managers for their "not touching it with a 10' pole" policy.
Yet Another Hacker News Redesign
I wanted to create a design that I could use, so instead of pie-in-the-sky, I modified the CSS as suggested by the 'A Better HN: Aligned' post using Stylebot (awesome tool!). While its just a visual skin and not a complete UX overhaul at least its functional and useful right now.

Screenshot: http://cl.ly/1E182J1r0V040M3H302J

CSS: http://pastebin.com/JHEUQjcq

My concern with the previous designs I saw on HN were they weren't too readable.

In my design, I am giving prominence to the article title - bold and contrasty.
The comments is what I personally like to see next and I went with a subdued orange/brown for these links.
I increased the line-spacing and generally have a bit more white-space without overdoing it (you see about 15 of 30 articles above the fold on a 13" MBP).
Additionally, I removed any distracting elements (such as the header or orange lines) except for the Y-Combinator logo.
Great idea! We also thought about this one. As we will re-sell cloud APIs it will be definitely a good feature to protect our users from slashdot effects.
Google realized that it was going to make a lot of millionaires when they went public, so they hired financial advisers to give lectures at Google, explaining to all these soon-to-be-rich people how to manage their money. Here's some of the advice they got: http://web.archive.org/web/20080109024137/http://www.sanfran... (The original seems to be gone, so I'm linking to an archive instead.)
All good points, but one size doesn't fit all. Without details, I'll say that a) I'm physically incapable of biking that far (although years ago I could think about it), and b) my life and schedule intersect with other people before and after work. A car allows me that intersection. Or to put it another way, that intersection (which is all but mandatory) dictates that if I have that job over there then it must involve a car.

Bikes and public transport are great when it works, and I'd love to take the bus or train, but the metro region and jobs and me are laid out the way they are, and that's (all but) that.
To me, what would be interesting about a world without cars (or even with cars, but vastly more attractive public transport) is that it would partly reverse a sad isolationist trend that's come along with the power and control given to us by modern technology.

I used to catch a bus every day through the city, and there were a lot of strange people on those trips. Gangs of 9 year old gangster kids drunk up the back. Little old ladies muttering racist slurs at asian students. A guy who hadn't showered in so long his clothes had gone partially transparent from the grease. I don't think I was ever in any danger, but it sure was uncomfortable sometimes. I work pretty close to home now (in fact, mostly at home), so it's not really an issue anymore. But strangely, I find myself missing that chance to interact with people who I didn't choose to interact with.

It seems like every time we get more power (like by inventing an engine that can move us around) we use it to get more control (now I can encase myself in a metal shield that prevents any accidental congress with the outside world).

A bunch of technology has gone the same way. Efficient worldwide shipping and postage means you don't need to go outside to shop. Communication moving online means you can block people you don't like rather than have to deal with them. OKCupid means you can pre-screen your dates to avoid accidentally meeting someone unpalatable. You can GPS track your kids so they won't ever end up lost or at the wrong sort of party.

And those are all good things that give you more control over your environment. But they also isolate you. Unknown experiences are fundamentally scary; so scary that we feel more afraid of walking in a dark alley than we do of heart disease. Like every generation before us, we strike out against danger with the power of our tools. But our dangers are, at this point, largely invented. We're getting to a point where instead of being safe, we'll just be cocooned in a real-world filter bubble, where we never have to fear the unknown, uncontrollable, unsanitised real world that gets forced on us when we get on a bus or walk around a city. I suspect, for all our newfound safety, we'll just feel a bit unsatisfied.

I guess I've just argued myself out of believing that the future without cars is ever really going to happen. Maybe there'll be a virtual bus MMO.
If you're curious about this stuff, see Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City, Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High, and Ryan Avent's The Gated City, all of which discuss contemporary urban life and how restrictions on building height lead to suburban sprawl. In particular, based on their readings, I'm not sure this is true: "There are significant diseconomies involved in making a big dense city." Some parts of cities scale sub-linearly and others don't; see here: http://www.creativeclass.com/_v3/creative_class/2007/05/26/c...:

Quantities related to a city’s infrastructure, such as the number of gas stations and the length of paved roads, did scale "sublinearly", meaning that the larger the city, the less of these were required per capita. But measures of economic output and innovation – the number of patents, total wages, GDP, even the pace of walking – scaled "superlinearly", showing increasing returns with size (see Graphs). "The scaling laws say that on average, as a city grows you can predict its output and input, its energy consumption, its wealth creation, its level of crime," says Bettencourt.
Build your cardboard dream
Normally I get this kind if post but this one not so much. Some knowledge isn't something you just "pick up". I'm a software engineer now but my degree it's in mechanical engineering. If I were going for a M.E. job that required advanced knowledge if thermodynamics, heat transfer, calculus, statistics, etc, it would be ridiculous to say that I had started and run a few car repair shops and even ran a high end racing team where we built our own custom off-road truck and won the baja 1000. It's amazing experience but totally not applicable and doesn't mean I can just pick up the requires skills. Am I misreading this? The recruiter doesn't seem clueless.
Ask HN: Why don't people use Lua more often?
It's dynamically typed, it's really cool, it has some neat features rarely seen in other "hallmark" languages. I think it needs more attention. I'm not a guru code monkey though, and I'd like some exposure and opposing opinions.
>You either want gift the code to the world or you want to do it conditionally. Do tell me which one comes across as a more genuine gesture.

Making a moral judgement as to the license I release my creations under? This kind of idiocy is why I don't want anything I do to be associated with Stallman and his ilk.

"What's that? I'm evil because I sell software and don't give away the source code? Go fuck yourself."
That question is open ended. Good SO questions have a narrow focus. The question doesn't have "an answer".

So, SO say it doesn't fit on their website (fair enough, their server, their rules) but it's a great question for someone, and there doesn't appear to be anywhere to ask it. (Maybe HN??).
I think US anti-trust law, and various promises that Google has made to the authorities in the past as part of M & A deals, prohibit them from crossing the line.
Even if it's not a religious issue, or subject to one mod's whims, it can still be a cultural one. Maybe this just means there's room for a Metafilter-type programming community where subjectivity is a larger component.
It depends on what you are looking for.

Are you looking to make a big difference and make lots of money? Be an entrepreneur. Who was that famous entrepreneur 80 years ago that said, when he was being questioned by an expert in court, that he didn't know the answers himself but he could easily hire someone who does?

If you are looking to get a job, then get the credentials AND be able to help them with what THEY need. Just like you need a product-market fit, you need an employee-job fit. If you are applying to a high speed trading firm, you'll probably need to know C++ and Java and low level concurrency mechanisms (this is what I was interviewed on), and if you know math and stochastic calculus you can make more money as a quant. I didn't like those jobs, so I got out of it. But you can still make a lot. Chances are though, you don't want to make money that way.

If you are looking to understand things better, then LEARN. It doesn't have to be in school. Personally I learned a lot from Wikipedia. Before that, I was coding on my own.

At 17 I enjoyed math and computer science. Check this out: http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Theory_Practice-Issue_00_In...

It has a lot of math in it, but in an accessible way. Why? Because I liked it.

So to summarize: it depends on what you want. If you don't have what it takes to help THEM and back it up with information, then do something else. Finding and picking your opportunities is often the secret!
"Public key crypto algorithms utilize prime numbers extensively; indeed, prime numbers are an essential part of the major public key systems" http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/vpns/prime-numb...
Interesting ideas. I'd love to read some good sciene fiction novels based on this.

It has the potential to be very relevant. 3D plastic printers are interesting, but too limited at the moment. 3D concrete printing has existed for a while though, that can definitely allow software to be/create the walls of your house.

For medicine it's just a case of getting the simulation down. It'll also be interesting if robots get better. There's a lot of boring lab work in the natural sciences, if this can be automated and controlled by software... Your testing can be done by software... Genetic algorithms could be used to find cures to things. (Although using robots to physically test would presumably be much much slower and more expensive than a computer simulation. :( )
I think the point is: don't go through recruiters to find work. Even if the company says "we only accept applications through recruiters" that can be short-circuited if you have an acquaintance who already works there.
I don't follow this war so I don't know if "anti-gpl" is a known, identifiable group that actively fights the gpl, or if it is a term you are using to describe dissenters in threads like this. If the latter, be careful: people like me aren't anti-gpl, it's just not the right tool for everything I do. I am working on software that may have some "magic sauce" on which my business thrives, and for this I wouldn't choose to give it a license that says I have to give it away for free.

There are those who think I shouldn't be able to make something of value (known because others are willing to pay for it) and not give it away at all. Or rather, I can, but not software. But let me give you an analogy.

Suppose somebody sold a camera- a very nice camera- that came with the terms of use that said, "Any picture you take with this camera must be made available to anybody who wants it at full resolution and downloadable from your website (etc etc)." Furthermore, some versions of the license state that any work which includes any picture from this camera has to be made available for free. So if you make a poster, or a collage, or anything else with the picture you have to make to poster, collage, etc. downloadable at full resolution for no charge.

My guess would be the not many professional photographers would use the camera for their professional work. It might be great for students, or for artists trying to make a name for themselves, for personal use, and/or perhaps a slew of folks I'm not thinking of right now. But not for pros. In fact, if all cameras started doing this it may seriously harm the field of professional photography. I wouldn't pay a professional photographer to take pictures for a branding series of advertisements that my competitor could simply steal and reuse to devalue my branding. Parents of small kids would give serious consideration as to whether they want the pics of the kids on the web (I have to sign a release for if, for instance, a school or camp wants to use my kids' picture in its promotional material, for example- so it's a concern for some at least).

So the idea that all software should be gpl is not correct, in my view, although I am not in any way anti-gpl.
What about the rendering backend made it so brilliant? I'm a graphics guy and that piqued my interest...
Livable, walkable, affordable cities are dense. That is the primary factor in whether or not you can afford to live within walking/biking/subway distance. The rich people that want to live close to work are going to get first dibs on usable housing, and unless you build more than that, middle class residents don't stand a chance.

So much of that "hyper inflated city real estate" is not especially dense. So you get lots of rich people living in 4-6 floor, beautiful, historic buildings near the center of the city. That type of housing does not lead to livable, walkable cities.

If you want real estate prices to drop, and you want cities to be livable, you have to build an excess of dense housing. Right now it is near impossible to increase population density in the city, due to zoning restrictions, existing tenants, etc.

I don't know a solution to that, but I think it's the root of the problem.
A statsd client written in PHP
Offer HN: Make a humor site with my domain names
In a fit of ridiculousness, I own repuglicanparty.com and democaticparty.com. Who wants to make two awesome lolcat (and pug) sites for the upcoming election? Send me a message (@tectonic) if you're interested in taking them.
That's a poor GPL analogy. I think most of us know what the GPL says, and it does not restrict what you as a developer can make with the code (or regenerating bread in your analogy).

You can make all the regenerating ham sandwiches you want from the regenerating loaf of bread. The GPL only restricts what rights you have to pass along to anyone you give ham sandwiches to, basically ensuring that you do not have a monopoly on regenerating ham sandwiches.

You might consider that restriction to be just as onerous as restrictions on what you can make with the bread, but I think there is a categorical difference. The GPL only affects transactions with other people. You can use the loaf of bread for making ham sandwiches or biological weapons and the GPL has nothing to say about that.
Cryptography, the project for children -- have fun in cryptoclub
Strange suggestion: Mods should be required to view and consider search engine traffic when locking or deleting topics.

I've noticed lately that a Google search brings me to SO as the top result, but then the post itself is locked and marked off-topic or (the one I find more puzzling sometimes) "not a real question." If it's not a real question, why does it have a real answer which seems to answer my own question? Can't we just edit the question to make more sense, if it wasn't clear to the mod?

I'm not saying that locking or deleting posts isn't appropriate. But crippling or removing SO questions that appear high for particular search queries seems like a silly way to run a website, unless the question and answers really wouldn't be helpful to the incoming search traffic. (In which case, better to not show up at all than to appear but be unhelpful or incorrect.)
I'm not sure if this article is saying people with more CS theory and math do better than people with more work experience, or if it's saying it's hard for everyone to get hired.
Ha! Indeed it is :)
"You know that Herman Cain was widely ridiculed for exactly this line of thought?"

What's your point? The current system is widely ridiculed, too. Hey, I'm ridiculing it now.

"It should be complicated to reflect the complications and nuances of our societies. Enough of us obviously think that there should be special cases for certain situations that special cases will arise."

I agree, special cases will arise. But I think we have to aggressively limit the number of those. I'm suggesting a way. If there is a hard limit on the length of the tax code, there will come a point when to add Special Case X, you have to delete Special Case Y.

Law is like code; indeed, it's called a legal code. One of the best predictors of how many bugs your code will have is simply how much code there is. Our legal code is massive bloatware, and it's buggy as heck.

Want a working tax code? Make it short.
Why do you say it can't be enforced?
What do you mean by ticking time bombs? For all the shenanigans surrounding the GPL, its terms are pretty easy to comply with.
This looks great IMO. Good job
I started contributing to the Literature Stack Exchange when it launched last year - which quickly became not fun. Most of the decent questions were closed as off topic, answer quality declined because the remaining questions were too narrow, new users were put off by the attitude of mods.

It was explained to me, in detail, that this was to preserve the focus and quality of the site.

So I left. It says a lot that 6 months later I am still the #6 user by all-time karma.

The few trickle of questions they have left deal mostly with trivia.

I think SO/SE's moderation policy has gone a step too far. Once it lightly highlighted quality. Now it stamps on most questions.
You got that right. It's strange though that most programmers are never taught half that stuff in college. Hardcore computer science may be different but related degrees basically walk you through C++, teach you some OO design patterns and let you loose in the world. In my experience every single programmer I've ever met that relies solely on their college education for their work doesn't know half that stuff! Now I'm talking about people who "specialize" in web development here to be clear. They know some HTML, JavaScript or ASP and that's about it. The command line is mostly foreign to them and they rely on a lot of pointing and clicking to create anything rather than digging into some code and settling in with a cozy text editor.

Then there are the ones I've met who picked up some books, read the tutorials, and got their hands dirty with some code completely outside their degree which was in something totally unrelated and those are the ones who totally amaze me with their skill. Even a lot of the big web development companies around me are WYSIWYGing their way through client work!

It just totally astounds me and your comment and this article are making me ask myself (again) why is that? Is what I describe normal? I'm in Chicago and maybe outside the Valley things are different? Has anyone else seen what I described or is my experience just a fluke? If its anywhere near common I'd be a little disturbed.
Thanks for the reply! China sounds like an awesome gig. I did some time in India with my last gig but China would have been the preferable option... at least for me.

Anyway to be honest I sort of like the idea of honesty about being hierarchical. Sometimes SV's claims of flatness feel like propaganda and rub me the wrong way when they're not realistic.

I can imagine what you mean about most people not being on the really cool stuff: I can see that IBM is keen to develop really awesome stuff that doesn't necessarily make money but which ensures IBM's brand is synonymous with innovation. Better than splattering coke and pepsi signs across the world's cities after all :)

Cheers!
Well, my opinion is that the Internet will just get bigger than ever. Opportunities made up by huge platforms (like Kick Starter) will mean that you'll have the advantage of making money faster and more than anyone else.

You'll be able to leverage your entrepreneurial knowledge with such platforms. Think of Facebook, Twitter and the AppStore. How many times they made it easier to make money starting extremely small and almost at no cost.
I'll answer that - because only the developer can enforce it. Let's say you're an end user and you know for a fact that a library in a proprietary app is GPLed and the seller is not complying with the terms of the license by not coughing up the code.

You don't have the legal standing to take the the seller to court and demand they comply with the terms of a license between them and the original developer of the GPL'ed code, even though you're technically a party to it as the release of the code benefits you.

Law is a funny thing.
but they cannot use "biggest" primes because, typically, security relies on the prime being unknown.
Honestly, CS is not that hard, it's just that a PDF/textbook isn't as sexy as 1080p Rails tutorial. If an experienced developer spends 2-4 months working through a quality textbook (Skiena, Cormen etc), then he/she is already significantly more qualified than most four year CS degree holders.
I know how easy it is to enable, I was the one who disabled it in the first place!
The Garden Gates carries Campania International renowned brand Outdoor Pottery
This document is revolutionary.

How well does it reflect what actually goes on at Valve?
Facebook For Android App New Features And The iPhone's UI
This is one of the examples I use to explain why higher-level functional languages can be more drastically optimised than lower-level imperative languages. These fusions are also sometimes called hylomorphisms.
The HTML anchor never reaches the server in the request, it's for local use only. Of course, malicious JS on the page can always send it anywhere.
And for all you fantasy advocates, you won't be able to tunnel to work like DigDug either ;)
Foresight.js offers a smarter way to serve hi-res images
The LGPL addresses these concerns, and is in the sweet spot, I think: You can use the library without opening the code using the library, but any changes to the library itself must be given back.
Badoo set to help facilitate hookups across the U.S.