skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Did you guys forget what pain in the ass was a couple of years ago when IE was the most used browser everywhere?

Seriously, f. Microsoft. Just because finally they made a decent browser, doesn't mean that we should be that grateful. Their business was "make a shitty browser while we can", and now that they can't anymore "ok, sorry guys, here's very nice browser, btw, it won't work on our most used OS version, even though every other browser works".
He didn't say that programming was the only thing that mattered. Of course it's not. However, there are tonnes of business people and not enough talented programmers.

I think this sums up a lot of business types and why technical people are somewhat hostile towards them: http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/websites_stop/...
I always love to piss off my tech friends by reminding them that Microsoft didn't get to where it was by having the best engineering in the world.. Sales, Marketing and making hard deals that put their products in front of the most customers.

I'm not saying I love their tactics but the "Build it and they will come" really is a field of dreams and young engineers are all dreamers thinking Sales and Marketing is a waste of people and money.
Why One of Silicon Valley’s Savviest Investors Has Shut His Wallet
Alex Smola's SML course: Recommender Systems
Daeken, I thought the only thing users could download to their B2G phones were web applications. There is zero support for native apps, like alternative browsers, right?
After the IE 6 pain no web developer will forgive microsoft for the time lost and pain.

They test for IE only because lots of people use it or because their jobs require this, nobody likes IE, it always had bugs, was insecure and most important non standard.

IE9 is closer to normal, but microsoft lost is trust, they had the chance to change something much earlier and they did nothing, they are only acting now because IE market share drops fast.
It's time we separate "full-stack" developers from "front-end" and "back-end" guys / gals. I've met some brilliant folks who write amazing Ruby but say they hate CSS or JS. Those are "back-end" guys. A "front-end" person will write CSS and HTML markup without a problem and will always make sure it's cross-browser compatible.

I've been coding front-end markup for 7 years now and I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. I'm talking about ~450 projects.

So my advice to all the startups calling "not supporting IE a feature" to outsource their markup to a company that will do it right. Remember, 90% of the world ISN'T using a Mac or a *nix flavor (I'm personally on a Mac) and many of them have no idea they can choose a different browser. Saying NO to someone just because they use a browser you don't like is like going around and bashing people based on their sexual preferences or religious beliefs. F-it, I'm still on Firefox, which is now far behind Chrome, will you ban me access in a year?

I keep telling startups, EDUCATE YOUR USERS. Put a banner and tell te to upgrade to IE9 or install Chrome Portable if they don't have the required permissions.
True, and that is probably the case for Paydirt, but there's a difference between not supporting and actively blocking. Less than 2% of Paydirt's visitors use IE, so dropping support is a logical choice. Maybe even display a warning to IE users but don't block them.
"Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity with the OS X variant?"
No. Last time I made a hackintosh running Safari on Win and Mac sometimes produced different outcomes in certain scenarios. Things might have changed though.
great post, and thanks for sharing it. i came across the kalman filter after developing an algorithm to detect worm propagation. it applies equally well in that scenario, basically predictions.
Thanks,
I've asked because I've read somewhere that an average request for a "Miss from cloudfront" object was ~1 second, and I thought that your data was confirming that value.
I don't know about customers, but I think this is a pretty fair relationship Adobe has with pirates of its products.

Pirate. I'll just wait till someone breaks your CS5 copy protection. Then I'll download and install your suite without paying you a dime.

Adobe. If CS5 lets anyone h4x0r you through a TIFF file we won't even fix it with an update.

I'd say that's a pretty fair relationship.

Of course normally a company cares more about establishing a fair relationship with its paying customers, but hey, up to them I guess. /s
The year of the linux desktop?
Once I was talking to some ex-web1.0 "entrepreneurs" (if you could call them that) who wanted to build one of those no-funding accelerators and, get this: they couldn't make the website and wanted me to do it for them.

For FREE...

And these were supposed to be guys with experience FFS, one even had "computer science" on his resume, turns out he put that because his highschool had an above-average computer program.

I had physics in highschool, does that makes me a physicist? of course not.

There are biz-dev founders who really know their shit, can't even code a "hello world" but know a lot about how to get around problems, so they are a valuable asset. I talked to one during a meetup: he could answer any question you could possibly have about financing and banking.

If I were building a payments service I would give that guy a call RFN and ask him to join.

But lets face it: this gold rush has attracted a lot of me-too wantrepreneurs who can't even jailbreak an iPhone or make a Wordpress install, yet have no respect for IT and believe hackers are just the "kids" you convince to work for free and then give a fraction of a fraction of the pie...
I found another good list in quora.
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-machine-learning-blog...

Very useful indeed!!
First experience with mahout as a researcher
I really subscribe to the attitude in this post. We're developers, we're supposed to make decent software. Our users won't care whether it's our fault or somebody else's if the software doesn't work. Just like you don't go blaming the database if your app becomes slow, you shouldn't blame the browser for rendering your page wrong, even if you're right!

Dammit, we're grown ups here. Make decent software! Test it! Automate the tests! Gracefully degrade! Yes, it's difficult, yes, it's costly! Get over it already!

Either make a fancy web app that works, or just make it highly non-fancy (HN, anyone?) to avoid all the headache. Or go somewhere halfway, as long as you're in control.
Large scale environments where real performance matters.

I wrote a system the has to handle 4 Billion transactions a day and a peak of 45,000 per second. And has to respond in 10ms or else the results of the transaction are discarded.

I wrote it in PHP so it would be easier for my team to maintain but it would not scale beyond 4,500qps then I re-wrote it in C as an apache module and it now scales to 25,000qps per server.

Sometimes you just have to write stuff in C. I've been writing in C for 28 years. I write other languages as often as I can but once in a while I have to go back to C to get something done. Right tool for the right job!
"However conferences, meetups and other places where startup industry players gathers to escape the daylight are filled with available marketers and business monkeys"

The fact that we have a "startup industry" is slightly unnerving, and "players" in that industry even moreso. I suspect that both 'developers' and 'business monkeys' who try to get involved in this 'industry' and hang with the 'players' too much aren't the sort of people you want as part of your team.

So, yeah, in one sense you're right to criticize the capabilities of 'business guys' attending 'startup conferences', but the same criticism might be levelled at non-business people at those same conferences. The truly capable - those executing in their chosen fields - probably won't be at too many of those events on a regular basis.
Oh come on. Microsoft is not some horrible uncle who did you a great wrong and needs "forgiving". It's a company. The people who work there come and go, change departments and so forth. Yeah, sure, the people who worked in the highest positions back in the day employed some shitty tactics way back when, but times have changed, many of those people have moved on and much of the company's outlook has shifted significantly.

Holding an emotional grudge against a transient, evolving collective is stupid. I don't think everything they put out is great, I would love to see Ballmer step down and give someone else a turn (someone with some actual passion perhaps), but IE6 was a product of the mindset at the time, and times have changed. Get over it.
Everyone else's job looks easy to people who don't understand the intricacies of it (as you've identified). If you're bitching about how a non-technical cofounder is easily replaced, you probably don't understand what they (are meant to) do.
STOCK MARKET CALLS | NIFTY OUTLOOK | ANALYSIS  10TH MAY 2012
There was actually a great story of the Space Shuttle software engineering team and their development practices. Generally speaking, they wrote code with zero bugs. Like...NONE. For 25 years.

They did it with an almost insane level of attention to detail.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html

So it certainly is possible to do.
HP Cloud moved to public beta stage
A Touch-Activated Ruler that Always Starts at Zero
Wow I thought that South Korea was the land of the future with fiber optic home internet etc. So it comes as a surprise that everyone there is using Windows and IE! What next? There was a government mandate that has cause everyone to use Compaq?
It's infuriating on both sides, and I see where you're coming from with your comments here. I presume the OP wouldn't ever say "you're replaceable" to someone who actually has (and demonstrates) a network of any sort - it's the people who have no network whatsoever, but are seemingly unaware that that's important, and instead want to focus on 'an app!', that are the real red flags.

Likewise, yes, many developers are also replaceable, though few like to think they are.
Yes, but because native applications are here to stay, so it would seem, developers are in for a world of pain: writing your software for multiple incompatible platforms. This has been going on since iOS/Android at least, but it won't get any better soon.
>Testing in IE is too much works… because they’re on a Mac.

To be honest, lots of companies use similar excuses. We won't make/support our product X on platform Z, because the user base is too small, we don't have the hardware, developers are all on platform Y, etc.

And generally speaking (no reference to paydirt example) it is in fact true, there are companies without a single windows machine. Unimaginable 5-10 years ago, but reality today.
> Once building things is truly trivial, and it becomes just a matter of manpower and money, will it still be fun?

I've been building things literally for 30 years and I can still have amazing experiences and excitement with new projects. The reality is if you "stay current" keep up with changes in tech learn new things all the time you can continue to be challenged all the time.

The first project I wrote was in BASIC on a Model 100 and now I write systems that process 4 BILLION transactions a day at 45,000 trx/second in 10ms..

There will always be challenges the real challenge is continuous learning and putting yourself in situations where you can be challenged.

And by the way management isn't as horrible as it sounds, when you have a lot of experience sharing that with a young smart passionate team of developers is very rewarding. Even more rewarding is building that team and solving really big problems together.

Life is a journey not a destination. Don't worry about where it ends, it begins today and that's the important part!
You realize that none of the alternatives are processing JavaScript? Of course the browser that runs JavaScript natively on the device is significantly better than all the
gimpy alternatives, that's no surprise.
Basically this boils down to: If you're looking for a technical co-founder to complement your skills, make sure you have built trust with someone, have done your research, and understand why your building something. So pretty much like every other position.
"The answer is to build a process that catches mistakes. I don't think software engineering has really caught up with mechanical engineering in terms of process."

I agree. I'm not sure it ever will. But comparing software to a car and the relationship between the buyer and seller is too simplified. Software have bugs. Many more bugs than cars. Because it's not tested properly. Which we don't do because no one would buy it at the price which comes from proper testing.

You can accept this and write your contract accordingly or you can sit down, muck and be disappointed when it fails.

I'm not saying it's right - it's just how things are.
Hold the shift key while resizing a rectangle, and you can make your own line :)
"We" simply prefer to base our decisions on the current state of affairs, not on the way things where years ago.
If your business requires you to support IE, do it. If not: don't. But please don't make it sound like you have some holy war to fight. Thanks.
As one data point I was always the next upgrade until about 2006 or so when budget PC's hit a point that they would do everything I wanted as fast as I wanted. I mainly use a mac now, but my PC is probably 5 years+ old and does everything as fast as I would need.
I haven't read this one yet, but I've been noticing a big improvement on the quality of documentation around Squeeze. Maybe I'm just being subjective here, but I don't recall Lenny's being as well presented.

Extra info around the book can be found here: http://debian-handbook.info/
Exactly. I was not saying software should be theoretically guaranteed -- the responder just assumed that.

Adobe has a fix to a serious vulnerability. Not releasing it when the cost to them is tiny is essentially criminal negligence, especially when they say the fix is available to those who are willing to pay...

This is the same company that owns Flash which runs on >99% of the desktop machines connected to the Internet.
Ask HN: How to rescue trapped domain name?
So when I first started hosting my site many years ago I used grokthis and I registered my domain name there too. Now the domain name is expiring and I need to renew.

But grokthis is out of business and I don't get any responses to my emails!

I'm panicking, I only have 10 days until the domain expires. Does anyone know what to do in this situation? The name is utilitymill.com.
This is quite likely an exception. Browser JavaScript engines are faster than Flash's ActionScript engine, and WebGL is older and more mature than Flash's 3D support.
the article seems to suggest that they help companies lower their mobile bills, which seems significantly different than becoming a virtual network operator

The article also suggests that the biggest obstacle to becoming a global virtual network operator is plugging into the billing systems of (non-virtual) operators. If Alekstra has already covered that for their current business of lowering mobile bills, that means they have a big advantage.
Writing a simple lexer in PHP
A regex-based lexer in PHP.
It probably isn't difficult to get around such laws in light of the fact that you're actually purchasing a license to use the software and not in fact buying the software. The license-purchase paradigm usually means the vendor can do whatever they please, up to and including pulling the software right off your machine should they feel like it. Examples of the aforementioned include the kindle book scandal and sony pulling games out of their online marketplace that people had already paid for.
Simonoids. It's 'Simon' in an Altoids can powered by Arduino
I think this might be the end to the open web.

It's clear that more and more people will use devices like iPads

So when both Msft and Apple ban other browsers and their app stores are making a ton of money for them. The next logical step would be to make even more money from the app stores and slowly drop support for the browsers to do this.

I hope that Chrome OS takes off.
I wish that Google and Facebook would team up together on this and make it happen.
I like the look of those, but I did laugh when I saw the cell phone with an antenna on the top.
It's out?! AWESOME! I've sponsored the translation (30euros) and plan to read/learn the entire thing. This is GREAT news for Debian and Linux in general.
Silk launches smart search, data visualization tool in open beta
They're not lazy. If you've ever used Fireworks in the Macromedia days and compare it to the massive behemoths of slowness they've added to each subsequent CS version, I can only conclude that they're not lazy. An effort this concerted to make no progress in ten years and add naught but a twenty second startup time on processors that weren't even conceived back in Macromedia Fireworks 8 days cannot be a product of laziness.

Just like I think that this here thing doesn't have anything to do with laziness. It's that Adobe wants you to pirate the crap out of CS6, because they know they won't get money from you anyway. They do know, however, that every cent they don't get directly from you is a cent they'll get from your future employer or customer or small business which is forced to buy Adobe CS6. It's not laziness, it's doing exactly what they need to to make sure that they keep their repeat customers upgrading.
Digg Engineers Are Joining Washington Post’s SocialCode
When you start to experience some break throughs with your SaaS you'll want to quit your job even more than you do now.

When I left my job, in hindsight I did it probably 1 or 2 months too soon. Which makes things difficult. When you feel you've got better things you could be working on - it's all too tempting to just stand up & quit.

The main things I would suggest are

1) Having a solid quitting point and make it realistic. That could be number of paying customers, savings in the bank, whatever fits your budget. When you're having a bad day at your day job, just keep reminding yourself you're still there because it's all part of the plan

2)Use your bootstrapping time wisely. Always plan in advance what needs to be done before you get your bootstrapping time. Whether that's making a list before bed, in your lunch hour etc you'll get the most out of your evening work times.

3)Stay social, bootstrapping time and family time should be of equal importance. Often you find when you're stuck on a problem, taking a break means you come back to your product with fresh eyes.
If you really need to get stuff done then there is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dOM3p-80HI&hd=1
Sorry for the late reply :)
It feels like this was written out of frustation.

I understand the problems and points you have raised however, this post is probably not a very good idea if you value your reputation.

When people google your name they might interpret this post as coming from someone rather arrogant.

Just sayin' :)
I think a general problem with "webdevs" is they have "year zero" mentality - anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. You see this in particular in the Ruby world where they are forever reinventing the wheel, but it's certainly not limited to them.

IE6, because I am old, and remember, was the first browser that you could build real applications with desktop feel in (e.g. Outlook Web Access). Lots of in-house developers jumped on it, and wrote millions of lines of code. You might think it's too much work to support IE6; they think it's too much work with too little reward to rewrite everything in whatever's trendy this week, because it basically does what their users need and they have real, actual work to do.
Bruno Marchal's Combinator Chemistry
Hoping it will approach the quality of the formidable FreeBSD handbook. That would be great!

One comprehensive quality source of administration information. Yes please!
> Software is infinitely more complex than even space shuttles.

That is not an inherent property of software, the problem with software is that it makes it all too easy to hide complexity, and that some of the costs of complexity are not superficially apparent.

Add on top of that how in the name of 'reuse' we pile more and more layers of complexity, and you end up with systems that are humanly incomprehensible.

But this doesn't mean that writing simple yet functional software is not possible, it just requires much more care, thought and self-discipline.

The two top quotes listed here are worth remembering: http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/

"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." — C.A.R. Hoare

"The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making."

— E. W. Dijkstra

Most software complexity is of our (programmers) own making.
Whoa, I follow the B2G project and this would be news to me if true... are you saying someone can right a browser for B2G that JITs JavaScript to native code?
I use PHP. /cowers in shame
I'd pay for a not-shit Gimp for OS X. In fact I kind of already so (sans Open Source) with Pixelmator.
Steam Support refund request
You don't get the same "quality" of answers from DDG. That's by design. Since Google tracks your searches, you always get what Google thinks you prefer, or what Google knows makes most benefit for them. If you use DDG this is different. Thats the whole point about it IMHO.

With DDG, if I am not sloppy and really try to find the best search string, I usually get my answers on page one. Not as the first item though. This only shows that the net is much more diverse than big G makes it look like.
Sorry, I was suggesting that it's extremely unlikely it'll ever gain any traction when it is released.

People don't want windows running their tablet/phone/media center.
Friendica 3.0
Clojure Gazette 1.9: Clojure on Android
When the Windows ARM port was announced, many people had hoped for general purpose ARM devices that could replace their cheap laptops. This is not the case, so people complain. Also, the fact that Apple does it doesn't mean it's right. People complain about the Apple situation all the time as well.
> ... have lost almost nothing whereas I have lost months of intense work

Well observed. The problem with good developers these days is that they have too high opportunity costs: a good developer earns as contracter easily between 130K und 180K USD, even more. Compared to a non-techie this is remarkable because there are many high priced offers in this range and developers don't need to present such a polished CV like their business counterparts (they can have white spots, breaks, stayed just few months somewhere, etc. and still get easily high paid dev jobs because of the shortage). And business people usually cannot do contracting work that easily.

This paired with a generally more risk-averse attitude leads to statements like "If we fail fast you have lost almost nothing whereas I have lost months of intense work".

I remember those days when I had a high salary plus a full packages of perks—I was lethargic and haven't followed great biz opportunities because I thought they are too small and will never reach my current income. And comparing opportunities as a founder with your current income as contractor or employee is fundamentally wrong. Even the best brands like Google, free fruit and 180K+ salaries will never give you the same feeling and confidence as when you build own thing. But the most will never make this experience, they even won't realize that they are wearing golden handcuffs all the time.
How Clojure got me banned from Google