skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How much more does it need to mature? The Android VM is not very mature and it isn't nearly as performant as Sun's Hotspot compiler. I would never throw out the "Java" language but having Go as an option might be good for developers, with its near instantaneous compile times and concurrency model. It could be used instead of the NDK, for example.
Bootstrap actually makes some sense when you're toggling in a loader on a machine that has a bunch of switches, it certainly feels like you're trying to lift yourself up by your laces rather than that you're loading an initial program.

http://oldcomputers.net/imsai8080.html

Oh, and one bit wrong and you can start all over again... the scary thing is that once you've done it often enough you start to remember the sequences the same way you remember how to play a piece on the piano, in your muscle memory.
Facebook acquires mobile photo sharing startup Lightbox
I wonder what will be the tipping point when 'companies' stop trusting SAAS companies. I understand this is not a business critical function or anything, but my point is about services that could impact businesses due to talent hiring & subsequent shutdown.

In the purchasing department of enterprise companies, there is usually a questionnaire to assess the business continuity aspect.

Unless companies make an upfront commitment establishing their seriousness to run the business without affecting those using them it is quite hard to build the trust in the long run.
Please Don't Become Anything, Especially Not A Programmer
Lenddo Raises $8M To Use Online Reputation For Lending In Emerging Markets
Would you rather have him claim to die as a marytr and have his friends and family claim he is in heaven with his 70 virgins. His rotting in prison sends a stronger symbol that the state can keep a man down. At least in prison he can be humaliated rather than elevated to the level of a hero.

Its one thing to die a hero another to sit in a cell for forty years in your own filth.
This article is newsworthy IMHO. I have yet to hear of a case of wrongful execution where the case for innocent was so clear.

The previous best-documented instance was the Willingham execution in Texas. for me http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_....

YMMV.
Yeah! To show this guy that killing is wrong, we'll kill him!
It's very rational for you to avoid privileging any single one of my copies, but for me it's very rational to privilege my own instance. And likewise, I wouldn't care which one of your copies thrive, but I would expect that you would hope your instance is the one that survives.

And I don't see how linearity has to do with self-preservation instincts. Maybe you are arguing that once we have several diverging copies the self-preservation instinct will change and be content as long as one copy still survives? I just can't imagine it.
Yeah I'm excited about it and it's getting me to finally take the step from traditional web app development (vps, php, etc.) to more easily scalable app development - and it's all open source, no vendor lock-in, and hopefully affordable pricing in the future.

Look forward to seeing more tutorials & code samples online and on their site. For example has anyone tried out meteor (w/node.js & mongodb) with it yet. Also, hopefully it will integrate with some of the browser-based IDEs out there like cloud9.
if you don't pay for a product, you are the product.
With the American justice system it would have been cheaper to keep him in prison for life than to execute him for murder, due to the number of appeals allowed.
Items the Dart team has on their radar
Congrats to the Lightbox team.

Admittedly, I never used Lightbox (nor Instagram for that matter), but it seems like Facebook is really terrified of photo-centric startups, and gobbling them up as soon as they show any promise. Why is that?
You have some really great suggestions here. You've got my support.
More salary guides from the same company http://www.rhi.com/SalaryGuides (covers legal, tech, and others)
Thanks! This is exactly the sort of thing that I suspected that I was missing.
It's newsworthy but not hackernewsworthy.
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond.

From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google services and whether and what the side-effects may be.

This may merge somewhat with some of the comments that appear regarding Adsense, et al. Different services, but the outsider observes (and perhaps incorrectly comingles) that when there is a dis-continuation, a clear description of the nature of the problem and/or any communication to resolve it, can seem nearly impossible to get.

Nothing I'm sure you haven't heard/read before -- and, no, I am not qualified to speak to it with any authority, not anecdotally much less from any professional perspective.

I do think there continues to be a... "missing element", from some of Google's current perspective. Or from whatever warped version of that is currently being presented in the media.

Google, users, and advertisers used to be pretty much, for lack of a better perspective, "on the same page". (Yeah, that might also be a pun.)

Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for business.)

I'll stop now. If you've read through this, I've chewed up more than enough of your time.

Regards

P.S. I haven't looked at Pages (I'm approaching feature overload -- taken across the Internet as a whole).

I will say, to that, that sometimes the simplest approach to avoiding co-mingling is simply to establish and maintain separate entities. The old, "no one knows your are a dog" situation and approach. Some people just want to KISS.

Added: Perhaps I am contradicting myself, in this last. And I've seen some of the gamesmanship that (ab)users can created out of unbridled anonymity. But, if I'm going to investing in learning and curating a complex, private-party-platform identity, I guess I need some reassurance going in that the features I need -- e.g. control of scope and identity -- are both present and inviolate.

Rightly or wrongly, some of the initial controversy around Plus and identities there did some real damage to this.
It's not comprehensive, but there is a page in this guide that has survey data for Toronto.
On Learning to Code - How do you define Code?
Show HN: DailyDo.it - a better way to manage your day
This is my first web app, so there are bound be to be a few kinks that need to be worked out. That's why it's here, in hopes that some of the awesome people I read about on HN can take a minute to offer some criticism.

http://dailydo.it/

DailyDo.it is meant to replace the canonical to-do list with a do-it list – a list of things that you will actually do.

My monetization plan is based on team do-it lists, where you can see your teammates' do-it lists and assign them tasks, while keeping the individual do-it lists totally free.

Please let me know if you find any bugs, what the pain points are, what you like/don't like, and anything else that comes to mind. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!
I'm the founder of WP App Store and would love to hear first impressions, suggestions, etc. from the HN community. Happy to answer any questions as well.
Ask HN: Would you read this blog?
If there was a blog documenting the customer development & lean experiences of 3 companies as they happened, would you read it?

As we'd identify, and ask our customers if they’d pay for our products before we build them, we’d share what we’re doing, what's working, what’s not and what we're learning.

Of our 3 contributing companies, one would be b2c, one would be a b2b, and another would be c2c.

Assuming the content was occasionally valuable, would you read it? If you might read it, what would tip the scale? Votes sufficient, comments appreciated.
Probably a much better idea with the gift of hindsight. However, Objective-C is more than 28 years old, and Go is just 3 years old at time of writing. The Go language has changed and continues to change a lot, and tying such a large platform to it before it is ready would make backwards-compatibility a huge concern for Go, and stifle its innovative growth.
This is the entire reason people petition against the death penalty.

No, it's not.
I knew a Jewish guy who wanted to teach his son so he could manage programmers.

God says...
C:\Text\WEALTH.TXT

s no more than a single storey. A
tradesman in London is obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the
town where his customers live. His shop is upon the ground floor, and he
and his family sleep in the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of
his house-rent by letting the two middle storeys to lodgers. He expects
to maintain his family by his trade, and not by his lodgers. Whereas
at Paris and Edinburgh, people who let lodgings have commonly no other
means of subsistence; and the price of th
Python FFI: building a better ctypes replacement for Python
There were some excellent criticisms posted earlier, but this is the one that pretty much overshadows the original post. Thank you, Zed.
I should have made this more clear, but exactly as you say I had the Mint/Intuit deal in mind. I didn't include it because it was a software company acquirer.

In other words, the case I was thinking of for the medium exit was a success case not a failure case. The big co would take the success off the table and try to incorporate it into their internal processes.

I referenced an earlier post on the failure case, which was geared towards small exits for talent acquisition.
WikiLeaks Hit by DoS Attack
How long does it take to burn off Christmas dinner? (Infographic)
OP here - apologies to the folks who don't think it's HN-worthy. I usually shy away from posting anything like this on HN, but IMHO the death penalty stimulates my intellectual curiosity. Usual politics and "gee whiz poll numbers" not so much.

The death penalty is a deep issue, and I posted this on HN because I'd like to hear what the thoughtful folks in this community have to say on the topic.

Also, since I see a lot of people misquoting the Hacker News submission guidelines here they are in full, emphasis mine.

"Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
The result of the "Grep the Web" that was requested somewhere in that is available:

http://blekko.com/webgrep?page=view&id=8638947e26c2cf16e...
Standardization of Web Experience
Google Yourself to Death
I and my copy are the same only in the instant the copy is made 'alive', the second after that we will not be equal, and every second that passes we will diverge more, unless there is some kind of metaphysical connection.

The virtual world copy will of course be (just like) me the instant it wakes up, but I (the original) won't experience the virtual world. I don't see how the original could wake up in the virtual world.
Lenovo refreshes its ThinkPad T, W, L and X
Flickr launches new 'liquid' layout
I've been here over 4.5 years, and I can say that HN is not turning into Reddit. The quality of the front page has not declined.

The volume of stories submitted has grown dramatically, making it harder for the good content to get on the front page.

But this article definitely has no place on the front page. I flagged it, hopefully it will be gone soon.
I upvoted you for your reply. I appreciate that you didn't downvote me for something you read that you don't agree with.

I would say that condition is 100% impossible to meet, and would present that as an argument against the death penalty.

Exactly my point. So it'd be so rare that you'd never hear of it happening.

Regardless of people's moral/religious/practical stance on capital punishment, it is never a black and white issue. If anything, there exists only a grey area. I can always find someone who vehemently disagrees with capital punishment, but then makes exceptions to the rule in the most heinous of violations (killing of family, children, cultures).

My Google skillz are failing me but there is a famous quote from a judge ruling on obscenity laws. It went something like: "I know obscenity when I see it". For me, this is the same issue with capital punishment. The worst part is that you can't write laws based on that type of subjective judgement.
I'd add that it also works because nobody ever says "foo-bar". What "foo" and "bar" actually are, plus context, lets the (human) reader know what's going on.

Even if I don't know what programming language you're talking about, if I see x2-x1 or margin-75 I know you probably mean subtraction, and if I see last-name or message-id you probably mean a single identifier. I've seen plenty of Lisp code that says things like x2-x1 in docstrings (because it is shorter) and I've never found it to be confusing.
I understand your point, but I am having a hard time accepting use of the word "smarter" to describe ignorance.

Perhaps there is value in a blank slate, but that is definitely not being smart.
Here you talk only about the most basic 101 level topics taught in CS:

When I went to school, I had about 10 years of programming experience already, but no java. That got me out of exactly zero classes, because the first two classes were effectively java syntax and apis. It also made the first two years of classes completely trivial, and was also unavoidable. At one point, I got accused of cheating because "it's impossible to learn C without attending lecture".

...

I did not need to sit around and hear what if statements and looping constructs are, or watch TA's that don't really understand memory management try to explain it.

What about graph theory? Complexity theory? Machine learning algorithms? Cache-aware and cache-oblivious algorithms? Randomized algorithms? Numerical computing? Cryptography? Scientific computing (fitting data, doing simulated experiments)?

I certainly learned some of these topics in undergrad CS, although only at a basic level considering each domain is quite deep.
If "a little knowledge can be dangerous", why learn anything ever? That's a really pisspoor reason to tell people to be ignorant.
Hmn, erm... I guess that didn't quite have the comical impact I was hoping or expecting.

My sincerest apologies to whomever this offended, it was absolutely not my intention!
Reddit still has some life in it if you remove all of the original subreddits and add things like http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub and http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit
While a little crude, this is why we all love Tesla (link to The Oatmeal):
How many mainstream browser developers were involved in the group working on the PICTURE element? Isn't it a little backwards to have the standards group dictate to the browsers how new features should work? I thought these things were supposed to start with working code.
Google Yourself to Death: Adventures in Ego Surfing
> I'm guessing that the other engines don't yet know about the site.

Didn't he say he submitted sitemaps?
Damn.. Here, I was hoping you actually knew of an alternative, because I, for one, wish I had choices for system-level programming.
Iterating quality and scope
Its disappointing in the short term, but look at the big picture. All this extra interest and purchases from the private sector if handled correctly will let them buy in bigger bulks, twist more arms in manufacturing, and find and fix more bugs. In the long run getting this boards out to a wider audience will give you a more stable, feature-rich and cheaper product.
People are saying lots of things about the death penalty, with which I wholeheartedly disagree, but IMHO the really bad thing is this:

DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman

Eyewitness accounts are proven to be wrong again and again. They should not be used to convict anyone. Much less to the death penalty. The brain has this amazing (if a little buggy) capacity of sometimes being completely wrong and at the same time being absolutely sure that it is right (like it happens, for instance, when you see an optical illusion).

I believe there was a time when they were useful (but even then, they were used to falsely accuse - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). But now there's enough technology to make me think convictions should be made based only on material evidence. Eyewitness accounts should be used only to give context to the material evidence found. If there's not any, tough luck. I would have a very hard time reconciling if, for instance, being accused of rape/assault like it happened to this guy: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-accused-...
I've often considered that a HN style politics page would be interesting if you could somehow keep it from turning into a flaming mess.

That said, I don't believe this is Hacker News and I flagged it. It's going to devolve into politics in about 8 seconds and we try to avoid that.
Some free advice to the kids (and then get off my lawn!)...

Remember that Buffet quote -- he has seen a few bubbles: "... try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."

Edit: If it isn't obvious -- the meme "everyone should learn to code" is the largest top-of-a-bubble signal I've ever seen.
Very few people look at a medical problem and decide to "hack it" themselves without seeking treatment from a Medical Professional. Neither to many people seek legal solutions without the aid of a Professional Lawyer.

Software development is a highly skilled discipline. Sure, you can teach your accountant to code fizz buzz - but what use is that to them? Are they going to spend the thousands upon thousands of hours to become proficient in development before realizing it would be cheaper just to hire it out?

Again, focus on teaching a coder point of view - a way of thinking.
Wholeheartedly agreed.

Good writing can change just as many lives, just as profoundly as good coding (think of that one book or that one blog article that really made us reflect upon our own lives).

We all have great things to say: "Please Learn How to Write"
The effect of this post to me is that it makes me realize how vast the body of knowledge and skills is, and that is quite humbling. I must admit that I have tried around half the things on your list, but, as you imply, there is a larger list.

... learn to fly a plane; learn to fight with a sword; learn to design cars; learn to write novels; learn to make shoes; learn to design clothes ...

So in that respect, why should I decide that one of my skills is the most utile on the planet and thus, everyone ought to be familiar with it. We all wear shoes that only a minority of humanity know how one can be built from scratch, and virtually no one can build one from scratch without requiring input from professions he/she doesn't understand.

IMHO, this whole "Learn to code" thing is a bit egotistic.

[EDIT] Changed "profession skill" to "one of my skills"
shitty app, it crashes every couple minutes and if it doesnt it laggs, its not fun to play, the controls are weird and the graphics are bad. I tried on iPhone4S and on my iPad
I may concede it's not citricsquid-newsworthy.

But the guidelines say that anything gratifying one's intellectual curiosity is fair game. Isn't a quantum leap in the quality of documentation regarding the execution of an innocent person gratifying intellectually?

Note that not every article about death penalty gets posted here.
That's actually not very interesting. He was talking about hyphens, but calling them dashes, because normal people do that unless they are talking about typography.
This is why Tesla rocked
"Stop upvoting this, folks!"

Why would you sound so alarmist?
You can do your stuff (flagging, upvoting, downvoting, expressing your opinion, discussing, pointing to rules and what not) without telling HNs what they should or should not do.
What Are You Paid To Do?
If I were king of the world, I wouldn't sentence Anders to death either. It's sad that he turned out a madman and did what he did but surely you can't kill people who are mentally ill for being so.

There's a big difference between somebody who's medically declared insane and a member of a terrorist organisation who killed people as his masters wanted for the sole purpose of creating terror.
Stonebraker's research and commercial ventures the last several years have been focused on building specialized variants of existing database systems. Vertica (C-Store), VoltDB (H-Store), Streambase (Aurora), and SciDB are all specialized DBMS systems designed to overcome the one size fits all nature of things.

Further, he's been critical of NoSQL/MapReduce recently: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1721654.1721659

Regardless, there's always going to be a balance between specialized systems and platforms, but my point is that we should be willing to trust the platforms that have proven themselves, avoid reinventing the wheel (poorly), and not be too quick to throw them out in favor of the new shiny.

I agree that programmer/analyst working together is a terrific pair, but the beauty of software is that we live in a world where we can have 1 programmer write a platform on which 10 programmers build 10 systems that 1000 users use to get their jobs done and make society that much more efficient.
Back-end build systems and toolchain: Adam Simpkins
Ohh netflix!! Think we have the solution for your problems....

Didn't mention what side of the traffic you do this on :)
There's a usefulness to coming at a problem from a completely new direction, but it's orthogonal by virtue of being orthogonal. Why is the alphabet the best way? Couldn't we express ideas better? (And I actually keep an eye on the constructed language space, so I actually know people who say, "Yes.")
Intel Small Business Advantage is a security nightmare
Actually, you can get pretty close by coding in Semicolon:

http://pksunkara.github.com/semicolon/
I learned to code from your book Zed. I was disappointed by Jeff's article (Who is usually a nice man).

You wrote this post at a right time with right points. My appreciation is triple-folded. Take a bow, Zed.
How mid-density housing can help Cincinnati
Would it be better to be poorer in ignorance? If you're worth more go out and get it.
From the article: "we [Facebook] are adding support for next-generation protocols like SPDY"
Lenovo announces ThinkPad X1 Carbon, "world's lightest 14-inch ultrabook"
>That claim is not true for Java, Perl, C, C++, LabTalk, or Tcl.

Sure, it's not true for any of them, even Python, but it's meaningful for any language including Java, Perl, C, C++,...

It's easy to forget that computing is a huge field and that hackers diverse in their tastes and fetishes.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHT_SalaryGuid...
Well, I used my [flag] button about 4-5 times in a single day (I didn't do that everyday - it just happened that I saw 5 stupid stories on a single day) and now I've lost my shiny weapon :-). I think one of my flags (which I've forgotten what it was) was incorrect and I shouldn't have done it so I don't blame it entirely on mods.

And I'm also guilty of sometimes submitting un-techy (but vaguely related to computers) stories on HN - a practice I decided a few days ago is best to abandon.

And I up-voted this submission too. I'm sorry, I usually don't vote before reading the linked article. I thought it was about a case where they wanted to execute Mr. X, but accidentally executed his jail mate, Mr. Y.