skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ehh, are you saying that you can't compare programming languages for their merits? Then why aren't we all using COBOL today? Taste? I'm not so sure.

Also,

> Because your mind is trained to think in one specific language and its ecosystem,

IMHO, someone who can only deal well with one specific language and ecosystem doesn't deserve the name "programmer". My suspicion is that it's people like this who call themselves "Rubyists" or "Pythonistas" and identify with the language like it's a football club. It's a novice thing.

Personally, I'm very comfortable in C++, PHP, JavaScript and C#. Rather comfortable in Ruby, Python and Java. And by "comfortable" i mean "did a significant amount of real work", not "read a tutorial". Still, think Ruby is better than Python on nearly all fronts. I know for a fact that many others disagree with me, but I sincerely doubt that that's only because they're "trained to think in Python" and I'm not.

Except for the Pythonistas of course, but they're not programmers.
Why I'm not on the Julia bandwagon (yet)
Brendan Eich does not oppose ASI.

Error correction simply means "add a semicolon if it's necessary."
DEC Wars
Time to switch to Travis-CI!
I don't think it's accurate to call this a price. You are not purchasing a product when you fund something on Kickstarter. You are investing in them, and if they succeed, you get the thing you signed up for. I think that most people who invest in projects on Kickstarter now understand this, but I'm not sure that will continue to be true as it grows in popularity.
El Paso Times censors FBI probe into DA
Have I fundamentally misunderstood SSL?

How can an ISP or mobile install a new certificate onto your computer? I know how companies do it as they send their IT bud round to do it. Or is SSL far less secure than I thought? Totally exposed to MITM attacks?

The SSL decryption is happening all in one massive centralized place. Running through one legal company. Completely under American jurisdiction. The server doesn't have the SSL certificate, CloudFlare does:

http://blog.cloudflare.com/easiest-ssl-ever-now-included-aut...

I'm more than willing to admit being wrong. But I don't see how CloudFlare being able to inspect all SSL traffic between two parties is anything like ISPs and mobile providers having proxies.

And worse the consumer has no reasonable expectation that a third party is even involved. Will all EU startups need to start putting disclaimer clauses in?

I'm not suggest your CEO want's to become the new go to guy for FBI wire tapping, I'm just saying he could be forced to and given the current climate in America it's a bit worrying that everyone's going to CloudFlare if this is the case.

It just seems, well, all a little dangerous. Imagine someone hacking CloudFlare. Wow, they're really becoming a very high value target.
Take Your Ideas from Start to Finish with Wunderkit
BITS - Business Ideas to Share
Hey guys,

I completed this site for a student organization at University of California, San Diego. They have some amazing and accomplished individuals speaking at this event and thought some of you would be interested. If you're in the area, I highly suggest registering for this event and coming out!

You can check out the speaker biographies from clicking on the individual's portrait or link. Note that some speakers have not yet submitted their biographies yet.

Send me a PM or message in this thread if you want to know more information about event or if you have any critique/feedback on the site. I'll be more than happy to forward your emails or questions directly to the people in charge.

Here is the site: http://bits.ucsdakpsi.com

Have a good day!
Problem in search for a solution? Apple is walled garden - provides the best integrated IDE for iphone development that is a pleasure to use. Language is just a small part of the puzzle. For each task, the best suited environment and language. There is no panacea.
Why doesn't the article have a link? www.boxfish.com
As others here have mentioned, the questions on the jobs page are explicitly designed to not be cute puzzles. If you don't have a Github profile or other code samples, these questions help us get a sense of how you think about programming. But they're also entirely optional - we should perhaps make this clearer. We'd love to hear from you if you're still interested in Stripe.
Here's how I evaluate game engines:

- First, will my target audience be able to play it? May seem obvious but I've seen people fall in love with an engine for technical or business reasons and overlook this.

- Choose a few hypothetical tasks (e.g. I want to add a laser beam effect, or I want a character with dual-wield weapons). Look at the docs and see if I can figure out roughly how to do this. For me, browsing docs doesn't tell me that much unless you have a particular problem in mind. At this point I still haven't even downloaded the engine yet.

- Play some other games written with the engine. If there's no games using it yet, I'm cautious about being someone's beta tester.

- Ok, now take a weekend or so and try to develop a mini-game with it. That's the only way to really get a good sense of what working with the engine is like.
IP address not enough to identify online pirates, judge rules
I'd like to also throw i3 into the ring: http://i3wm.org/
I don't think it's unreasonable at all. I mean, perhaps the word "cool" is used too many times- I don't care if the furniture in my office is cool. But I have switched to a standing desk and love it- so an office with standing desks would definitely be an influencing factor when I choose where to work.
What search query tells you about the next scheduled episode of a TV show?
Don't dig for gold, sell shovels.

30 days of paid vacation? This is easily achievable, say OK, normally for this position we pay $150K and 2 weeks vacation, so we'll cut the pay by 4% and give you an extra 2 weeks. Then it turns into $144K and 30 days.

Most people realize vacation costs money, those that prefer the cash to vacation simply wait til the end of the year and get cut a cheque for their vacation time.
I have always heard it as 'Money can't buy you happiness but it can make you awefully comfortable while you are miserable'.
A real MMO Asteroids
Do you remember that april fools joke a while back (http://seb.ly/demos/MMOsteroids.html)...

I loved it, and it got me thinking... what it would take to make a real MMO asteroids?

This is my attempt: http://mmoasteroids.wildbunny.co.uk/

The client is flash and the server is c#, although it used to be node.js.

Its very early and probably wont stand up to that many users, but its quite fun :)

Let me know what you think!

Cheers, Paul.
Hacktivists Claim Government and Military Systems Breach
EFF Introduces Coders' Rights List [video]
EBay Puts Down Roots in NYC with Data-Focused Tech Center
Tips for Python & Django on Heroku, Testing, and more from a RoR developer
Try Out the New Disqus 2012
"At the end, a RubyMotion app looks pretty much the same as an Objective-C app." ( from bottom of: http://www.rubymotion.com/features/ ).

pretty much the same as an Objective-C app? Anyone have any clue as to why they didn't state apps in the two languages would look identical?
Avaaz website under massive attack, from a government or large corporation?
I suspect quality results also played an outsized factor in most people's switching, even if they don't admit it.

Easy test: are you using Bing now? (with their new clean results pages)
Apartments in Chelmsford Massachusetts MA for Rent
Find apartments, homes, condos and townhouses in Chelmsford Massachusetts while even searching for school and crime rankings....
30% of UK File-Sharers Intend To Pirate More In The Next 12 Months
What a 9-Year-Old Can Teach You About Selling
Revision3 is officially bought
as if we didn't see it coming revision3 is now officially under the discovery umbrella.
Revision3 Acquired by Discovery Channel
I've never understood this logic: The existence of this project is not an attack on Objective-C. Objective-C is not hard to learn and awesome, I agree. But what does that have to do with providing an alternative? There can exist multiple good solutions to one problem. You said it yourself: Ruby is not always the best tool for the job, perhaps Objective-C is also not always the best tool for the job. Perhaps the use of UIKit through Ruby will provide interesting insights that will later be used to make Objective-C better: all the Objective-C 2.0 additions (including the ones you mention) were certainly a response to modern languages that made a lot of things easier for programmers.

As an Objective-C programmer myself, I was initially really turned off by this attitude from the JavaScript community: (Why do we need we need a LISP implementation in JS? It's already a functional language! Why do we need Objective-J? JS already kind of has classes!). Hilariously enough, the only language that was "accepted" by the JS community was the one that specifically promised that it wouldn't add any new features: CoffeeScript. I missed the Objective-C community precisely because I had always found it quite unreligious and practical: to each his own when it comes to development -- I hope that with its latest success it hasn't become more dogmatic and insular.
But you can get the same software on all of them.

Gimp might come from different per-distribution repositories, there may be a different command line app to grab it, but it's there.

In the old days you had Autocad for Sun but not for HP. The 3D modelling package ran on SGI but not on Sun. And our microwave antennea simulation package was only on HP.

We literally had 3 different brands of Unix workstations in a lab, with different unixes dedicated to running a single app. At least with X you could run any of them on your own desktop seamlessly.
The Trust Molecule
Software architecture stories without pictures make me sad :-(
Why is it incorrect? Exactly what value are these sort of people to a nation? If they're willing to surrender their citizenship for a tax dodge, then it seems unlikely they would be particularly useful citizens. If we didn't tax them so that they stayed exactly what value would the nation get out of the bargain?
I've been told (by people from Inktomi who then worked at Yahoo), that yes, the Inktomi technology became the main Yahoo search engine. (How much it changed or not in the process, I don't know)
I know i don't entertain my guests like a housewife from the 50s.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Big+Bang+Theory
Europe's space program heads to Jupiter
I get a 405 Method not allowed after filling in my name. Opera 11.61, Win 7.
FBI returns Riseup server to May First/People Link cabinet
Then color me entitled.

I've had these arguments about how many hours a salaried employee should work. Despite the law saying 40, the lawyer was insistent that they could make me work any amount of hours.

The next two weeks I put in 20 hours a week. Then I explained to her that any means any, and that if they didn't like it they could terminate my contract, go spend a month finding a replacement and then explain to the client why they had materially breached the contract. Or they could be reasonable and let me work an amount of hours that is reasonable (and probably more productive).

Often when employers demand the most ridiculous of hours are the times in which they are in the poorest of negotiating positions.

Businesses use their negotiating position all the time to lower wages, it's not called entitled, it's called business.
I thought they explicitly said that some things, like cars bought to go places, straddle the line between being goods and being experiences. So it seems at least here they were aware that there are things that don't neatly fall into the classification.
I found it interesting how mentioning return policies in advance might actually undermine happiness. Maybe it's better not to have that "30 day refund" text on your product order page to keep your users happy.

"People seek extended warranties and generous return policies in order to preclude the possibility of future regret, but research suggests that the warranties may be unnecessary for happiness and the return policies may actually undermine it."
Finding enough time is always a challenge. Although you can help yourself by pricing appropriately and valuing your time.

There's no easy, silver bullet to presenting a customer with a customized view of their problem. The approach I take, which seems to work reasonably well, especially for someone who is not a sales guy, is to start with a few templates for common projects. These include examples of how I think the project might go, which encourages me to ask questions to make sure I can fill in the particulars for that client. Then, TAKE DETAILED NOTES when you talk to the prospect. Things that seem vivid during the discussion may be hazy the next day, week, or month when you sit down to write the proposal. Then you can take those notes, and plug them into your template, and you have as close to the best of the both worlds (convenience and efficiency of a template, effectiveness of targeting the customer very specifically).
http://gyazo.com/ff5a4a3bfe8780fe8a33695460ab0ad8

http://gyazo.com/67aba0457b1b4a9548487de8c8d0c6b3
clue #1: do not type out "Sigh". Or "Le Sigh". That is something teenage girls do, and it drives people nuts.

clue #2: do not use overused internet trailer trash phrases like "Citation Needed" when you aren't on Wikipedia, or the phrases "Really? Seriously?"

clue #3: try to emotionally detach yourself from the topic and engage the merits of the topic, no need to capitalize words, etc. ALL CAPS won't help you.
Or if it's required by the state you're in, but most small tech start-ups don't need it, I agree.
Would you donate your Twitter following to help startups?
We've just released MVP of what we're calling "the Quantum Startup Project". qStartup shares the influence of startup endorsers, entrepreneurs, educators, and trend-setters to expand and endorse all levels of the startup ecosystem.

We'd love some feedback - try it: http://qstartupapp.com/

How it works: http://qstartupapp.com/home/about/
I strongly, strongly disagree with the Gates Foundation's method for improving education, but I am happy that he's at least raising awareness of the problem, forcing discussion, and pushing changes. He's right about the "what", but he's wrong about the "why" and the "how".

Oddly, I'd expect his parents would know better, too.
The difference is that, as far as I can see, mobiruby is a Ruby interpreter/VM embedded in an Obj-C application. This is in contrast to MacRuby which is implemented directly on top of the Obj-C runtime. So, MobiRuby still has to go through the work of converting Ruby objects into Obj-C objects, whereas in MacRuby a Ruby object is an Obj-C object.

For a practical example of what this means, see the most recent sample code that was released for mobiruby: https://gist.github.com/2577620
Google Apps does this a little bit... if you sign in with your Godaddy (I know, sorry) account, they'll change your MX records for you.

I would really appreciate a service like this, not because it's hard to do but because I do this very often... essentially when I register a domain name I have a template of A, CNAME and MX records that I set up. It would be a great time saver to do this with one click.
Different compilers will generate different compiled code, even on identical input (ie, clang vs. GCC). So the binary will be different.
I'd love to read a blog post on this.
PS: I had someone email me to see if this post was serious. It is - if you know Django/Python and want to live in Amsterdam, please email me.
NEW App Development crowd funding site
I always found the best results on InfoSeek and then they were bought out and went away there was no choice but to use Google.
What's "research psychology", btw? Is it "I do research in psychology" or is it "psychology of researchers"? My googles did not yield useful information.
Wow. That article is eye-opening.

I had no idea that Congress had so much specific direction over the operations of Nasa. Overall budgets? Yes. But to have Congress mandate that they build a large rocket that no scientist thinks we have use for is insane. For them to increase money for a rocket that nobody wants or needs, and to decrease money for SpaceX and programs that are actually working is equally insane.
You'd be surprised...

But actually, fizzbuzz is just the bottom level. You also want to do basic coding exercises for whatever specific area you are hiring for, such as:

- Set up an extremely basic web app that lets the user enter a name and echoes it back to them.

- Make a sprite move across the screen.

- Display a 3d cube with different colors on each side and make it rotate.

- Make it play some music.

- Aggregate the data in this simple database.

- Here's some naive producer-consumer code. Make it thread-safe.

- Debug this code that has memory issues.

- Critique this (flawed) design.

- Update the CSS to make this page look nicer.

Basically, you never want to get into a situation where you've hired someone who has managed to talk his way through life. It's far less headache to just use a few sanity checks on every potential hire.
What I find interesting is that I don’t see other distros or projects picking up Ubuntu’s and Canonical’s novelties.

Upstart was adopted by a few distros, but then those distros left it for systemd.

Bazaar — Who uses Bazaar?

Ubuntu One — Last time I checked it supported Windows but, if you believe it, not Debian.

Ubuntu Software Centre — Debian Squeeze installs it as part of the default desktop setup. I opened it a couple of times when I first installed Squeeze and did not see anything that would make me use it, but I don’t know if it is properly integrated into Debian.

Unity — Has any distro shown interest in shipping Unity as a Gnome shell?

So, what I am wondering is: If all these extras add value to Ubuntu, why aren’t the other distros picking them up? They could add value to other distros too. And if they don’t add value to Ubuntu, why do Ubuntu and Canonical spend resources on them?
I don't agree: Facebook can just make something that's almost exactly like YouTube. Seems like a no-brainer investment for facebook.

But with Instagram, they wanted the name-brand.
Revision3 Has Been Acquired By The Discovery Channel
It is in many ways a sign of the age - the focus on getting money, and the comparative lack of interest in explaining how to be far better at spending it to attain measurable results than the rest of big philanthropy.

Philanthropy done right looks much more like the Thiel model:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/peter-thiel-encou...

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/breakout-labs-ann...

The Gates Foundation would do far more good in the world by splitting itself up into a hundred or a thousand more directed and competing interests, focused on bottom-up change one innovation at a time.

As it is, the majority of its funds will probably eventually evaporate in the grind of top-down existing strategies that have solved nothing permanently - but have instead led to government-bound institutions that do more to perpetuate the problems they allegedly try to solve than generate good in the world, or which have turned into jobs programs for comparatively privileged individuals, disconnected from any need to achieve concrete results.
It's there, but it's a different version, and getting the version you want (if it's the latest version) still requires you to whip out gcc most likely, unless someone on the Internet has already done the work for you.
I'd disagree on a couple of points.

First, engineers very often build crappy products when left to their own devices. The ones that they do the best at are ones where they are also the users and are more or less representative of the target audience. Google's a great example, and so is Firefox. So I think Google execs' perspective as a user was much more important. Consider as contrast Google Plus, which definitely was not built because was an avid but dissatisfied Facebook and Twitter user.

I think your second point is almost right. You should never try to control things you don't understand. It's ok to manage things you don't understand, because good management in that case is not directing the people who understand, but supporting them in achieving common goals.

As a non-tech example, few hospital administrators can perform brain surgery. But that's fine as long as they ask the brain surgeons what they need rather than telling them how to work.
Part of why people channel surf is because they don't know what they want. Search does not completely fulfill that need.
Advice to find B2B beta-testers in tech-startups realm
So I launched my startup a few days ago to help startups offer expensive giveaways to their customers at 1/10th of the cost through our cost-sharing program. With these tempting giveaways, they can create that buzz, traffic and leads that companies like appsumo, zagg, teambuy.ca etc are able to generate.

Currently, I am employing the cold-email tactic. But surely, there is got to be a slightly less time consuming and more efficient method of reaching out to clusters of startups, no?

Any advice would be highly appreciated :)

Adeel V
Founder, www.killergiveaways.com
Objective-C's heritage as a strict superset of C means that it's great for doing high-level stuff while still keeping your hands in the low-level (necessary when performance becomes a main concern).

Objective-C's heritage as a strict superset of C means that, ultimately, it's syntax is limited (why do you think all the new literal forms are prefixed with "@"). Ruby, on the other hand, excelles at constructing DSLs.

I think you'll find that this strength of Ruby will make RubyMotion a compelling solution for a wide range of tasks in iOS development. That said, CocoaPod support is built in, so you really can have the best of both worlds.
even with Light Table it's been a bit of a battle fighting that mentality. I think that's why the physical products are doing so well - it feels like a natural "shopping" experience where what you get is tangible.
I don't really care what I get for my money. I was just glad to have an opportunity to support a prolific developer that is making the Clojure community a better place.
I think he's commenting on why they wouldn't LOOK identical, as in UI.

UI is a finicky thing, but assuming this allows you to use all Apple APIs, there is no reason you couldn't get an identical-looking UI using this.
I wanted to think that way as well. But scratch a bit of the surface and you'll find the same old Microsoft, just wearing some lipstick.
Scientists show how a gene duplication helped our brains become 'human'
I already know both languages — in fact, I've known Objective-C for 10 years and Ruby for only six — and I still see some reasons why this is interesting.

Anecdote: When ARC was first released, I decided to turn it on for a small project. The very first method I wrote blew up with a memory error. The reason? I used the NSFontMatrixAttribute of NSFontDescriptor. For some reason, ARC doesn't handle it correctly. I've never had such a thing happen in Ruby.

There is still a long way to go from where Objective-C is. It's moving in the right direction, but there's still a long road ahead of it. Ruby is closer to being there, though the lack of tool support (particularly autocomplete) makes it a much less compelling proposition than it would otherwise be.

Also, Ruby can be considerably easier than Objective-C to read because there is a lot less line noise. Objective-C's method names read very smoothly out loud, but they can also be visually overwhelming at times and make code sort of melt together into a wall of text. It's maybe a little bit easier to read Objective-C quickly when you're being very deliberate about it, but it's much easier to skim Ruby in my experience.

I probably won't be using this, and I think your criticism of Rubyists is kind of valid, but I think — for this particular project — you're dismissing it too readily.