skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The alternative at the time was to buy an mp3 player with no way for normal people to load or buy music. It's precisely because of the lack of hoop jumping that iPod took off. Don't confuse the customer experience with the developer experience. Apple has always considered ease of use for end users a top priority and ease of use for programmers to be a distant nth.
Sorry, you're just wrong. The feature in iTunes that lets you stream your videos to an Apple TV is called AirPlay and uses the same protocol as iOS devices.

AirPlay actually has its origins in AirTunes, which was originally only accessible through iTunes. These days there are even third party senders and receivers for AirPlay, so in principal you can use AirPlay without actually using any first-party Apple software or hardware.
Did you mean: period?
Installing xcode is staggeringly more pleasant than installing eclipse in my experience. The developer certificate song and dance is a total pain in the butt, but note that you can test and build your hello world for iOS without a device at all, no hoops to jump, and it works really well.
Quora's $50 million
When has college not been about party and romance?
From all the open source contributions, we know Kenneth enough that he's not trolling. Thus I say assume that he misread the Linus discussion and leave it at that. He was trying to make a point and picked the wrong example.

The core of his argument is what's important. He has contributed countless open source tools and libraries, many of which are highly coveted. This is the sort of individual the Python community should (and does) treasure. The other day however he released a tool and was then essentially "teased" about the quality and size of the contribution on Twitter.

I think the person doing the teasing realised later this was a mistake as that whole discussion is gone now (from both sides) but I'm sure for a day or two Kenneth was downright depressed. The person doing the prodding is well known and was someone Kenneth respects. Constructive criticism from someone you respect is amazing but non-constructive criticism from that same person is debilitating.

The core concern is that words can hurt and prevent future contributions to OSS, especially if the unkind words are from someone you respect in the open source community.
Founder Swap: Like Wife Swap For Startup Execs
I did a little bit [just a little] research on this, and I believe the main reason those things are slow is because Apple refuses to provide an API to allow 3rd parties to use the GPU for decoding video. Apple itself provides a codec for h264 that uses your graphics card, so that one performs well.
Irrelevant. The point is that getting pirated video onto the Apple TV is at most one extra step. A lot of torrents are already mp4, in which case there is no extra step.
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Not on Jython, which has no GIL by virtue of the JVM. Work on Jython has recently resumed and the new work is focusing on adding InvokeDynamic support, which I think is really exciting.

(I say this all as a Rubyist who as seen these same problems on the Ruby side)
> What I'm trying to point out, as we start migrating our presentation tools to the web, is that we don't need to copy all the useless inheritance.

Why didn't you name the article that then? Title confused me and made me think you were actually proposing a solution.
I read the original story and thought it was ridiculous. The followup has rendered me speechless. Facebook needs to respond to this asap.
Cool class. Well done you!

I took "Programming Languages and Compilers" in my CS couse because I had to get a few more points for my degree. I thought it would be dull but I really loved it! And I've used that knowledge in my work life - I've created a couple of mini languages - one interpretted, one compiled and run on a custom VM.

That knowledge allowed me to solve issues that could be solved in no other way. For 99% of IT problems, a custom language is NOT the right solution but the 1% of the time where it is the right solution, it has been the only solution.
What are the other four things?
Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Most of this post was written before the Linus incident, and he was just being used as an example.

I removed the stuff about Linus until I can find an accurate example.
Most of this post was written before the Linus incident, and he was just being used as an example.

I removed the stuff about Linus until I can find an accurate example.
JPMorgan's investment report on Lehman right before Sept 08
Really? The App Store makes Xcode installs fairly easy (though upgrading from pre-App Store Xcode breaks things in my experience), but what could be simpler than downloading Eclipse's zip, and then unzipping it?

Or do you mean it's a pain setting up the Android SDK within Eclipse? This could certainly be more stream lined (though I think it's fairly simple to setup as well).
Oh, I agree that some people are being a bit cavalier about the new shiny. These folks are migrating away from MongoDB for a reason.

On the other hand, even if half of that 1 MLOC is still relevant to new ways of building systems (and given that SQL databases are a 70s tech, I doubt it's that much), that still leaves half that isn't.

The only way we'll find out which part matters is for people to try different approaches. So I fully support experimentation like this. If we don't rediscover for ourselves the good parts in the tools we use, then we're just stuck honoring the traditions of our heavily bearded ancestors.
Google Shuts Down Conservative Blog
Hi there, I'm working on a similar actor library in Ruby:

http://celluloid.io/

The main thing I'd like to say is that there is a well-researched way to combine actors and object oriented programming. After stumbling upon this particular combination myself, I discovered it had been done a decade and a half earlier in Python:

http://python.org/workshops/1997-10/proceedings/atom/

I believe the original source code has since been lost, but I would strongly encourage you to read their paper.

Actor-based concurrent object oriented programming makes using actors as transparent as using objects.
For WP7:

- Download the SDK (free), which includes Visual Studio (For Windows Phone) Express IDE. It also includes an emulator tool. http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started
Obviously only runs on Windows.
- To deploy to your phone, you'll need to become an app hub member ($99 per year). Or there's numerous ways to unlock your phone for app deployment (if you search hard enough). And then you can just deploy from within Visual Studio to a USB connected device.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff928362(v=vs.92).as...

There's probably more to it, but I personally have yet to deploy a WP7 app to a device. I've written a few test apps though.

Also, found this blog (first in a series of a few) that attempts to develop an app using Visual Studio (for WP7 dev), Mono Touch (for iOS dev) and Mono Droid (for uh, Android dev)... Might be of interested to some: http://nicksnettravels.builttoroam.com/post/2011/04/04/Windo...
And the rest of his articles are easier to get to via the archives - http://nicksnettravels.builttoroam.com/archive.aspx#Mobile
Also, you are 100% correct about the context of this post. All is well now though :)
But finding a way to do it without offending people is a perfectly fine solution, since the only bad thing that happened was that people were offended. I made that point in a previous comment.
It seems I picked a poor example for my post. Sorry about that — the Linus stuff is removed. That wasn't the point anyway.
Well, darn, I guess I am. Sometimes I think I know something I don't. Thanks for the clarification, all of the commenters. Sorry for the noise.

As i386 said, I don't think Torrent -> HandBrake -> iTunes -> Apple TV is a path many Apple users will take. But I guess it's AirPlay. :)
Calling socket bind results in Windows bluescreen
similar ideas are announced every few months and have been for the past decade+

most recent:

http://curatorscode.org/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/business/media/guidelines-...

there are two real and practical solutions to this problem:

1. what you are witnessing in this very thread. it works.

2. an idea that I am advocating which is that sources are marked up as microdata:

http://schema.org/CreativeWork

Google and other search engines then take this into account in rankings, as do social media sites, etc. creates a machine readable hierarchy of attribution

this gets discussed endlessly and i've switched off from the conversation, I am more interested in getting google, twitter et al to support the microdata, the publishers and CMS providers will fall into line thereafter
I had the same impression, which is some of what drove me away from it. I'm okay with meritocracies, which StackExchange seems closer to, and is especially the case with e.g. math forums, but Quora seemed to be much more class-based, where there were lots of people without any particularly strong skills who were part of the "elite" community due to wealth/lineage or something.

More problematic, though, was that there was increasingly a lot of "soft spam", answers that were more somebody promoting their tangentially related startup or book than actual answers. I'm not even against relevant self-promotion, but it feels like it's more of a problem at Quora than here; HNers tend to stick to more relevant self-promotion, and there's stricter community policing on popping into a thread with a pile of buzzwords and a link to your webinar that's sort of vaguely related to the thread's topic.
Sigh. This meme.

1) plenty of non apple browsers in app store, try searching. No HTML rendering engines because that's a security issue.

1a) Microsoft did a heck of a lot more than bundle IE. They made it impossible to remove or avoid or even hide. (you can hide Safari on the tenth home screen in iOS -- IE was locked onto your desktop). They also did similar things to screw around with Java, QuickTime. Borland, Paradox, etc. etc. all of which is on the public record. And all while owning 95% of the desktop market and even more of the app market.

Apple simply has some fairly clear up front rules about how to play on its minority platform.

You. Have. No. Idea.

2) iOS was incredibly open compared with predecessors. It's less open than WebOS was and Android is precisely because they came after and used "open" to try to compete.

Again, people coming after iOS and trying to set competitive terms to attract developers are meaningless. Where are the guyS who were nicer than Apple when they were in top position? Amazon pays much less to writers than Apple, is the dominant player, and cries to the government.
I think otherwise he might not realize the breadth and depth at which this community disagrees with him. He is not merely expressing an unpopular opinion, he's demonstrated an inability to grasp certain basic concepts. Don't think of it as punitive; think of it as a wake-up call.

Also, according to pg, it is and always has been perfectly fine to downvote people for disagreement:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
The speech was given to the freshmen at the academy. They still have 4 more years until they become officers.
Interview Heuristics
If Quora got the adoption that Yahoo answers did, it would end up with answers like Yahoo answers has and similarly talented engineers. The only way Facebook holds onto their talent is that the idiots typically don't make friends with the rest of us. Even reddit looks childish these days.
It's not so much an issue of picking up Perian in that the new Quicktime 10 API doesn't work anything like the old Quicktime API.

Perian just made open source codecs work with Quicktime's API. Quicktime X however demands much more that makes it impossible to do without rewriting all the codecs. Those same codecs are directly embedded in other players (like VLC) so it's not a big issue. Quicktime X is pushing towards hardware acceleration, better battery life (with a few tricks), and multicore processing that the old model just doesn't work with.

Right now when you run older codecs, Quicktime X actually runs a little host process in 32bit that actually does the decoding using a fork of the old Quicktime 7 code. Native codecs run in 64bit using multiple cores and hardware acceleration.
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Ok, I'll be the slow witted one in the room - When creating your own language, what did you write it in? If you're using Java or C, are you still using it's compiler but coming up with your own syntax? I'm a little confused how it worked.
Statutory damages for copyright infringement: minimum $750, maxiumum $150,000 per offense. Sue them. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504
> painfully easy.

It isn't taking off though. I showed my brother that he has internet built into the new TV he bought. he was interested for the novelty factor for 5 minutes and then gave it up and went back to his ipad

Sales figures of apple tv's and google devices etc. also suggest that for some reason the TV -> Internet bridge devices are just not working with consumers

The more I see and think about this the more I think it will be built into televisions, and that television companies suck at making software so it will be somebody new who will own the entire market (Apple).
Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
what? no... Accelerate.framework is available to everyone.
where did you get (2) from ?
There's MPlayer...

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html
I think Kotlin has much more chance of being a Java++ than Scala. Kotlin is simple, pragmatic and powerful - which will appeal to the average Java developer. Scala is powerful but complex which is far away from the territory that Java was good at.

You have to remember, that Java succeeded against the background of dominant C++ because it was much simpler and helped tame complexity better than C++ (less obscure ways of shooting yourself in the foot). Unfortunately, Scala returns us to C++'s days of making it easy to do something wrong (with the type system) without it being particularly obvious what.
Can use the following link to sign up: http://nreduce.com/#signup

Sorry about the super cute hipster homepage :) We're cleaning it up and making it a bit better organized.

Thanks for the support!
your fault for not prioritizing actual learning and understanding

How do mandatory pre-reqs fit into this? 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".

You want to know what kills the desire to seek harder things? When you have to complete a mountain of tedious bullshit that you largely already know to get anywhere, and there is no getting around it. This is a real problem with computer science degrees. 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.
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Pasting the entire contents of copyrighted material is illegal. The top article on HN right now is about plagiarism. What you've done here is literally a crime. Please don't put Y Combinator in this kind of position.
While SSDs will undoubtedly be faster that spinning disk, LevelDB is designed to address slow random writes by batching and writing sequentially.
This made me laugh. Nice one. :)

It's opinion not fact. No citation needed for opinions of the author.

Nevertheless I will rephrase for anyone who might confuse opinion for fact:

In the author's opinion, Duritz is, with respect to this decision, being smart.

Smart means smart in a business sense.

Time will tell if he is truly being smart in deciding to do this.
I optd opt of the beta due to this reason and mentally filed it under "WebM performs poorly"

Thank you for appropriately assigning the root cause. I would have never linked the two.
Haha great find. Thanks. I agree, I think it would have been important to also say just how quickly Node.JS has developed.

I'm a firm believer it has a very bright future, but this is not a zero-sum game.
USDA Releases API for Mandatory Livestock Reporting Data
Oh, Quora the product hardly matters. This is just a simple case of proven founders being able to raise whatever money they want.

Sure, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever didn't actually start Facebook, but they came as close as anyone can be short of actually being Mark Zuckerberg.
I'm glad to hear all's well. Your original point is incredibly important and I'm glad you made it.

Years ago when I was 13 or so I pointed out a bug in Blender to Ton Roosendaal[1]. My knowledge of C was ... let's just say I could probably cause memory leaks by staring at the code. He not only attempted to hunt down the bug but he made a 13 year old kid feel welcome in the community even though I was of next to no help in hunting down the bug.

Although bad interactions can stay with you for a long time, kind encounters like these stay with you too :)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton_Roosendaal
Clearly you did not read the answer detailing nearly every instrument in a plane cockpit, or "What are the most mind-blowing facts?" In fact, clearly you have not used Quora.
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Doing A Startup? Get Ready To Screw Up And Start Over
How Apple became a cult in Hollywood
Here’s why the Facebook iOS app is so bad (UIWebViews and no Nitro)
Yes... so instead they accept people who superficially differentiate themselves and pretend to be non-conformists which then becomes another "admission strategy."
Although that's the most likely answer, it's also the stupid thing to do. And by 'stupid' I mean it in the "because of things like this, all of us will get fucked in the long term, even the short-term winners" sense.

I just hate this idea that you can create a company without any kind of realistic approach to making money, value it at in millions without any kind of basis and hope some rich (and dumb) buyer bites. It's opportunistic at best and dishonest at worst.

It makes everyone in the milieu look like he's trying to pull this stunt, although there are plenty of honest (and profitable) companies out there not getting millions in investment because they don't try to sell something shiny.
This is already possible though. Or you mean just purchasing the hardware with no OS on it to start; which would be a savings of $30?
An article is not a legal opinion.
Yahoo Answers tried to be the One Q&A Site to Rule Them All. I don't personally consider Quora to be a general purpose Q&A site.

Its possible that they launched as a general purpose Q&A site and then they may have switched when it seemed prudent. Or its possible that they may still be trying to be a general purpose Q&A site, but in that case their branding doesnt match their ambition.
Garden Stores
I like the idea (as someone who knows few other techies/entrepreneurs in his small town). But, the 'Update your profile' and 'Post tweets for you' requirements are huge red alerts. If you are going to require such an invasive twitter feature, you need to first explain exactly what tweets and under what conditions it would auto-post. Facebook login at least has the advantage of making permissions optional and you get a little box so you can explain. I'd say drop these requirement for new users. You can always request them later right?
A collection of design contracts and other useful documents
While some might say I've missed the point of the article for making the following comment, I think it's somewhat relevant to the whole concept of the author's argument:

USE SPELLCHECK.

I don't disagree with the sentiments of the author. The tech industry is one that is very much male dominated, and one where women are very much underrepresented. Some of the brightest people I have worked with in my time in the tech field have been women, and I welcome the opportunity to work with them; or anyone regardless of race, creed, color, background or sex, as long as they're intelligent and can do their job and do it well.

But when I read something put up for public display on a high-traffic blog such as this, and the author forgets to use spell check... I can't help but point it out.
Apple has provided the "Video Decode Acceleration Framework" for Mac OS X since 10.6.3: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2267/_in...
Scott Thompson’s short stint at Yahoo earned him a mere $7M
My take on this is that it is more about getting the MVP out with "whatever" (in this case Node), than anything else.

I do this all the time. Some ideas get mocked up in python, others PHP, some in C#, etc. Then if it sticks, I look at the needs it has and pick the best tool for the job. Sometimes it Rails, others its .NET.

Though it is quite interesting to read about it from someone else's point of view.
On ending discussions and painting bikesheds
I'd agree with this, but I think the reason that more .NET developers don't revolt is because there seems to be limited uptick on some of the newer features.

E.g., generics were introduced in .NET 2.0 around 2005, but it was very common to find .NET shops where you didn't see them used in the code even as late as 2009. Same goes for Lambdas in .NET 3.5, and Dynamic objects in .NET 4.0. The corporate install base just tends to be more conservative with picking up new language features.

I think it's more likely that a big redesign will come and a new language will get introduced in a few years.
To be boringly practical: The contract would almost certainly be determined when you first signed up for the service (i.e., when you were still alive).
Woz was never very good with the user experience / selling things to non-experts side of things.
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Eh? AFAIK, Accelerate.framework doesn't do anything with the GPU -- its "just" a set of highly optimized functions for math/DSP/image processing operations.
This is no Babbage-style mechanical computer. I found the BBC's title a distraction from the amazing revelation that ancient Greeks were building such complicated mechanisms.
Hiring experiment: hiring experts in 20 minute chunks
This is about how I feel also. I use MPlayer when I need to watch a movie, VLC when I need to play anything weird (like streams or anything).
Nailed it completely. Great comment.
What will be the likelihood of NReduce accepting single founders?
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Well, two of them are probably VLC and The Unarchiver.
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Overall I enjoyed reading the article and the specific tradeoffs you had to consider when comparing Riak to Mongo for your specific use cases. I'm curious if you had any problems w/r/t the 3 items you highlighted above when using Mongo, as none of those were mentioned in the linked article.

(these points are for MongoDB 2.0+)

1. Adding a new shard in Mongo will cause the data to be automatically rebalanced in the background. No application-level intervention required.

2. Node failure (primary in a RS) is handled without intervention by the rest of the nodes in the cluster. Network partitions can be handled depending on what the value set for 'w' is (in practice it's not an isolated problem with a specific solution).

3. Using mongos abstracts the need to know what node any data is on as each mongos keeps an updated hash of the shard keys. Queries will be sent directly to the node with the requested data.
I use SBCL -- it works :) sorry about your eyes..