skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They did kill it. VB.NET is nothing like VB 3-6, their popular offering through the 90's. VB.NET is just C# with VB-like syntax, with the addition of a couple of VB-specific retardations. I truly believe it's entire purpose was to entice VB 3-6 developers to transition to the .NET platform instead of Java, a more open and cross-platform language than Microsoft's .NET offering at the time, as VB would no longer be updated and developers had to find another language.

The other reason is they likely wanted to have lots of developers use their language, so by killing VB off, the most popular language in the world at the time, they thought they would be able to claim a lot of .NET users very quickly. And of course, Java was being used as an alternative to Microsoft's stuff and C++. Both of these show stupid standards.

Python and Ruby, for example, were created with the idea of having a beautiful and useful language, and not by Microsoft for enterprise use, nor become popular as a big company enterprise alternative to Microsoft's offerings. Learning an open-source, beautiful language that isn't run by a big corporation for enterprise use is just refreshing.

See Java's Cover: http://paulgraham.com/javacover.html
Yeah I agree. I never tried to whore my site out with ads either though, so I can't really say I tried to make much money off of it. Now that I might be more reliant on it, that might change.
OTOH suppose a driver has a cyclist on his right and another cyclist on his left, and only the right one is wearing a helmet...better not to wear a helmet in that case I think.
Upvoted to help you out. Good luck!
I agree, we should be discussing why this is still possible and the failure of the search giants to evolve their rank approach.
Are you a "code ninja"?
How much do startups pay their developers?
i always see threads for a developer needed on some startup here on HN. How much can a startup developer expect to make (even though they are most probably joining for the thrill and passion for the company)?
I just graduated. I don't think you're going to hurt anyone's feelings if you accept any email address and let folks specify their school. This is a great idea though and I hope it gets use.
And suddenly, with a certain Proustian rush in vivid 8-bit color, I recall long hours spent repeatedly pushing my little teal Cessna off Meigs Field only to crash into the Sears Tower whilst attempting to land on top of it. The point of such a feat, you ask? To savor the pleasure of taking off again, of course.
I appreciate your remark on this post.

In general I have to say I am sick of people using the "F" word so lightly on this forum. I have an 11 years old very curious daughter that I adore, she get on my laptop all the time and is very interested in what I do. I have been very concern about what will happen if she sees that I’m reading stuff with such language in it. We should all do something about this.

Demod me if you want but this is a real problem from the concern parent that I am.
> There was one particular type of bicycle I'm not sure I understood why it was so popular, but really stood out as a trend.

(talking about bicycles with small wheels)

You can fold them and take them with your on the train for free (you have to pay for big bikes). Some of these bikes can fit in a bag.
The type of bicycles most popular in America all have a very forward-leaning riding position, compared to Dutch bikes. If you get into a crash at speed there is a good chance you are going to be pitched over the handlebars. A good friend of my brother was in a coma for 3 months after crashing into another bicyclist, flying over the handlebars and landing on his head. An ex girlfriend had the same sort of crash, but she had a helmet on and managed to avoid brain damage.

On a Dutch style bicycle, a headfirst over the handlebars crash is nearly impossible because the riding position is completely upright, and laid back over the rear wheel.

Helmet necessity seems like more of a factor for the type of bike you are riding vs. cars. In all the cases where I've seen bike/car accidents, the person was wearing a helmet, and they were dead anyway.
It's the ideal feedback for usability... stream of consciousness and laying off the "you should" or "i would do that if..."
Can I view the schools without logging in?
My point exactly when I commented on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446378
You can get away with less than the media. For example a pivot guaranteed to lie between the 25th and 75th percentile is good enough and can be found faster.
So what you're saying is that Guido van Rossum bought most of those DVDs?
I like it, though more than just schools would be good in the future. It is a little frustrating that I can look outside my startup's window and see NYU but since I'm at another school so I can't meet the person who signed up from NYU. I think you will ultimately need a Facebook like network setup if you want to go seriously with this.
But won't that fan base be expanded?
Indeed zipcodes are quite beautiful. Check this, Population Density by zipcode:
http://www.uuorld.com/gallery?image=89
Apologies if this gets mentioned elsewhere, but I suspect you'll have trouble dealing with two functions in separate languages that do _almost_ the exact same thing, but differ in some tiny way that screws people up. Maybe they return different values on an error, one does it in-place while the other returns the new value, or even worse are the really tricky differences like what happens if certain variables are/aren't static.
That's a perfect example of the type of thinking I would worry about.
Don't you mean upper bound?
I really like this, so here are my suggestions:

1. When a user joins, if their email address doesn't match an existing school, immediately prompt them for what their school is. It took me some head scratching to realize I had to add my school.

2. When I try to join a school, don't give me an error saying "fill out your profile first", let me fill out the profile at that time and show my school as selected. This part confused me.

3. Your form validation must die! I put in Dec. 2008 for graduation and then it spit back "must be 4 characters", consider putting something in parentheses to let me know this and shrink the width of the field.

4. Consider letting folks add links to their personal homepages, facebook or linked in profiles.

Good idea, I only point all this out because I like it enough to care.
Why Reality Will Bury Digg's Profit Dreams
Beautiful concept. You are definitely targeting a market made of people who like to spend on nice stuff. The nice aspect of such people is that they are spendaholics, and will buy nice stuff before they take care of rather important matters.
Probably a new category, templating languages, along with things like jsp, struts, etc. Python, Ruby, Perl are really general purpose languages.
I don't think you're going to hurt anyone's feelings if you accept any email address and let folks specify their school

Agreed. I attend a Jr. College that doesn't give email accounts to its students (or if it does, I was never informed).

Please ditch the .edu requirement.
Holographic Discs to Store 20 Times More Than Blu-Ray
Ah, now I understand what you're getting at ...

Indeed, this is a great idea. Would love to see someone like Joel Spolsky implement this as part of StackOverflow.com.

I'd be interested in doing this in Rails ... if anyone wants to collab with me, let me know (email in profile)
In many ways these are more interesting as windows into the minds of the writers than into the future.

Part of the exercise should be imagining things that are contrary to one's beliefs and expectations.
Because it's greener than buying some other gift. It's greener than most things you could buy. But, anyway, it's not really a "green product" so much as "to be marketed as green."

I personally think the whole green thing is ridiculous. People just need to stop making more people.
The great things about bicycles is that it doesn't matter if you've got a 2grand plus bike, and then go on a spin on a crappy 30 year old bike its still great fun.
"Still, Microsoft office remains the supreme software suite for the office, I don't see anything on the horizon that is challenging this."

I do. People realizing that the office suites aren't really contributing that much to their productivity and learning to use them much less, to the point where they can be replaced by commodity suites.

The real killer for getting off of Office for BigCorp is that they wrote apps in Office. This was dumb. (Excepting spreadsheets, which were actually designed for this to some extent.) These apps are moving to the web, probably with Microsoft web technologies. This is also not necessarily a brilliant move, but it's much less dumb that actually trying to write a Word document that is also an app.

Secretaries passing around press releases don't need Office.

Office suite usage has been very warped by being the only game around, in much the same way the web is getting warped into an application platform, only more so. As the Office application platform is eclipsed by the web application platform, it becomes easier to get off of office.

What Office will be replaced by is simply... not Office. Not OpenOffice per se, just... not buying Office.
What about a user who is a student or faculty member who prefers an email address without a school-related top domain?
I lolled
I wouldn't write off carbon trading yet. Trading of emissions now may not be enough to do any offsetting (only shift monies around), but as the trading system grows to be accountable and based on harder science, then why not, as the article points out, include Lovelock's idea of burying charcoal as part of the "carbon trading" market?
If an employee on your payroll starts a business, they're not doing so with your best interest in mind...

Ah...I see. You're looking for employees whose primary interest is enriching your life, not what's in it for them. Good luck with that.
Subversion? Dude that is celebrities!
Hmmm, I missed the clause in the employment contract that said "every life decision I make must be in the best interest of The Company".
Why don't you wear a helmet when you walk? Exactly the reason why we don't wear helmets on a bike.
Ah... how about this twist:

Now with seeds! Everybody loves seeds! Basically you take the pouch and toss it somewhere and see what you get.
I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle
If Twitter begins to charge for API access and reports even the slightest success in doing so, expect the rest of the social web to follow suit in the fashion of the economic bailouts.
Just what the web needs... more fragmented and derivative ideas.
The real winner out of all of this, day in and day out, is Amazon.
All I'm seeing is a beautiful "Java required" message.
Does the startup have funding? Does it have appreciable revenue? Are either of these things on the horizon?

Does the developer have applicable experience? Is he willing to take increased equity in exchange for a decreased salary? How many other people on the job market have the same skill set?

Where is the startup located? What is the cost of living there? What is the median salary for the area?
Google "too many choices": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22too+many+choices...

A very interesting set of top results.

There is also this 2003 book on the matter:

"The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less": http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/006000...

There was some buzz and a number of articles on the topic published around the time the book came out.
Google & the Future of Books - The New York Review of Books
This kind of news has come out every month for my entire life.

Where is my solid state hard drive?
Thoughts on Google and Apple's Earnings
StreamFocus.com is looking for one. We just got a new CEO and are planning a major UI redesign. Our backend is all in Lisp, but the frontend is going increasingly toward javascript and ajax. Let me know if you're interested: fred@streamfocus.com
Slate throws Apple a $100B idea, suggests iBank
This is exactly why when we wrote the CAPTCHA code that protects the creation of SpiderOak 2gb free backup accounts (well commented GPLv3 code here -- https://spideroak.com/code ) we took the approach of not making them 100% human readable.

Supposedly it greatly increases the cracking difficulty at the relatively small expense that humans may have to click Next a small percentage of the time. If we notice abuse, it will be easy to tweak the code (it's just a python gimp script) to produce a radically different captcha for a few hours work.
I've yet to read a single real-world example of a person who has a full-time employee on staff working on their own business, or who is a full-time employee working on their own business while being paid a salary by another company.

You're clearly not reading carefully, because I pointed out examples where I've done this, and I'm sure many others have as well. Most businesses are started on the side of something else, including most successful businesses. While it's likely true that you can't indefinitely work as an employee while building a business, you can certainly start a business that way, and it's been done many, many times before.

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't have the right to fire someone if you don't like them working on something else on their own time, just that your mindset is indicative of a larger management problem of viewing your employees as assets that you own 24/7. Why would anyone of value want to work somewhere like that? There are plenty of people out there who value output over input and understand that an employee's personal life is none of their business.
That's a pretty broad generalization. I'm actually working on building a business on the side of my work, but I do my job. I focus on my own thing when I'm not at work. I also get my work done, and take time to test it.

There will in theory come a time when my side efforts will require effort enough to get in the way of my regular job, which is in fact the goal, but I have the integrity to face that -- and when I reach that stage, I'll leave the regular job.

If you're running a small business where everyone working for you has to put in 80-hour weeks in order to keep up with their work, then the fault is yours for your poor management -- though to be honest, I'd never consider working for you just because of your attitude toward your ownership of me.

Get it straight: you don't own your employees, period. What they do when they're on the clock is your business. Everything else is not. If you can't get that through your head, you shouldn't be attempting to run a business that requires employees. That's not an opinion, it's actually law -- don't forget, we abolished slavery.
The question is whether those 4 hour or so in the morning reading the guardian newspaper and then the articles on hackers news are worth it.

Learning is generally worthwhile. Four hours each morning puts a lot of pressure on your schedule to be efficient in other activities, like running your start-up or caring for your family.
I rode in Denmark and never wore a helmet. I now ride in SF and always wear a helmet. My justification is that I'm shit scared of being hit by a car here - a problem I didn't have there.

Once cyclists reach a critical mass, I imagine that motorists become accustomed to it and accidents with cars becomes less of a problem.

Whether a helmet actually helps in those cases is another issue, but at least it makes my mom happy :)
HN Toolkit: Several bug fixes and improvements
For anyone using this GM script, I just wanted to let you know that I made several fixes to it today (splitview got broken and there were some quirky UI annoyances). If you updated/installed in the last 24 hours, please upgrade again to get these fixes. If you haven't updated in a while, you might find something new!

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
I'm going to admit that I barely read any of your post. I'm just going to answer: Your question is like asking "Is the Internet a Waste of Time?" It really depends.

The stories are generally titled in such a way that I ignore stuff that I already know, don't need to know, don't care about, etc.

Conversely, I read the stories that seem interesting or relevant. There's a lot of cutting edge stuff discussed here and I like that. I haven't been here long enough for any one particular thing about HN to piss me off yet, either.

So, yeah.. it's a waste of time if you waste your time. And it's not a waste of time if there's a takeaway. So make a point to learn something each time you go on HN.
I hate owning DVDs. I'd much prefer a file I control or open access to a streaming file I have unlimited authorization to watch.

Amazon won't win in the streaming / file space unless something changes.
Ask HN: Ad Agreements, Strategic Partners and Business Development?
I know the focus is mostly on development around here but is there anyone that can share some of their business development experience?

I'm interested in learning to identify opportunities and want to understand the process of building "strategic partnerships".

How does something like CNN or Microsoft/Facebook, Digg/Microsoft come about? What type of justification is needed to get something like this pushed through a large corporation? Is it mostly about traffic and as a result revenue?

How do you argue against the "Why don't we just do it ourselves?" when you're not at a Digg or Facebook scale?

I'd be interested in hearing what everyone's thoughts are...

thanks
Just an update on this... the additions I made last night broke some stuff (and I apparently didn't test it well), so please update (as of now) to get fixes.

Specifically, splitview got broken and a couple other little things were acting funny.
A few points:
1. 4 hours in the morning reading anything is quite a long time. Perhaps if you were to reduce the number of hours, this would force you to reduce your intake and be more productive. This is based on the assumption that you have a vague feeling after morning reading periods that you have 'wasted' your time, possibly due to the numerous other things you could have accomplished in half that time.

2. Certain interests (e.g. awareness of a recession and industry news) may help you to prepare yourself in case war, famine or other problems that may appear to be global start to affect your neighborhood, job, family or friends. This point is based on the assumption that you, your family and/or friends you care about could be affected by these issues.

For me, interesting is good enough. I'd like to point out that my interests have been changing recently as I think more and more about scenarios involving a loss of income, and taking appropriate investment/skills actions.
The Top Videogames Set To Take Off In 2009
>Lately, I've noticed that some really good submissions aren't making it to the homepage

This could simply be a direct result of the change in the "new" section's S2N ratio. There's simply a lot more crap in that queue than there has been previously.
I'm wondering the same thing. One of my spare time projects is to design such a protocol (and if for some unforeseen reason I should happen to finish it I'll post it here for all of you to tear to pieces).

Another thing I don't get is when "everyone" claims that Jabber is a Twitter replacement, they're not in the same ballpark feature-wise :P
So that explains all of those "Congratulations! You're our 1,000,000,000th user! CLICK HERE FOR A FREE IPOD!"
Ask HN:  CSS vs table based layouts
I'm working on my own site, and I was able to come up with a decent layout in about an hour or two using tables. I then had a pang of guilt, and started re-doing things in CSS, and but it's taking me forever.

I know that from time to time, PG gets crap for using tables for HN, but it seems to work rather well, and it renders the same across all the browsers I've used, including my Android phone.

I'd love to hear an educated discussion on table based vs CSS based layouts. Please discuss.
Rated up for the awesomeness of the app. It's cool to see freebase put to use like this. It gets my cogs moving about other potential uses...
At least they're not reliant on Hitachi et al paying the electricity bills to keep the drives spinning... I'd say that's a rather significant difference.
Dude, you're hiring contractors for temporary work. Of course they have their own businesses!

Put someone on your payroll full-time with benefits, paid vacation and sick leave and then encourage them to start a business on their own time while you pay them full wages. Then you'll have something to crow about.
Carbon trading makes me realize that my idealism is waning as I rapidly approach old age. I agree with Lovelock in that it seems like a gigantic scam. However, rather than outrage, I'm thinking "How can I get in on the ground floor of this gigantic scam?"
I'll tell you why I won't wear a helmet:

- I've got big hair. If I wear a helment, I have to fix my hair when I arrive wherever I want to be. This implies that if I had to wear a helmet I just would not use my bike

The risk is not relevant to me. It's risky to travel to egypt, I'd still do it. It's risky to walk alone in a dark street in a dangerous part of town - I'd still do it. Why do I do it? Because staying safe is great when it does not directly affect my lifestyle or my fun at life - and wearing a helmet has a very direct consequence - it makes it almost impossible for me to ride a bike anywhere important. I can't always arrive and go look for a mirror to fix my hair.

Wearing a seat belt of a car on the other hand does not have that consequence. A seat belt has no cost, but a helmet has a heavy price.
I'd like to see him do a video response to any of Pat Condell's videos...

http://www.youtube.com/user/patcondell
a 30 second review:

tables: easier to design with and more intuitive for people who aren't well-versed in css.

css: much greater flexibility, smaller code, separation of design and information
Perhaps they want to be gamed?
What about for children?
Apple Settles for $22 Million in Longtime iPod Nano Lawsuit
well a ballpark average for a software engineer right out of college is around the tune of $60K.
Yes. But they are used in different contexts.
the winner:
http://www.hung-truong.com/blog/2009/01/22/i-won-a-facebook-...
If you walked in traffic, it might start to make sense to wear a helmet...
Sugar Inc (popsugar.com, shopstyle.com, etc) is looking for a kickass frontend developer to help make 50 women editors happy.

We are at 111 Sutter. brian@sugarinc.com
You can always hire mercenaries.
NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records of U.S. Citizens
If you're not happy at work, do whatever you have to do to change it -- even if you need to quit and build up a portfolio for a few months. I left a stable but miserable existence at IBM a couple years ago, and now enjoy every single day I'm working with my startup colleagues. Life's too short to be miserable.

We are looking for another top-notch front end dev here at Zivity. Feel free to email me at kevin@kev.in if you want to grab a beer at 21A some evening.
What can be done with a Wii remote
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=444759

No, I didn't get confused. NSA is evil and I hope the Obama administration will fix that. For your own sake mostly.
Zune Death Watch: Microsoft Zune Revenues Plummet
Cringely suggests job losses at Microsoft should be ten times greater
Thank you to everyone who has contacted me, commented here, and started following me on Twitter. I REALLY appreciate the outpouring of support from the HN community. I will be getting in touch with everyone who has contacted me ASAP!
The only information that should come into play when making decisions about the firing of full-time employees should be their actions between the time they start work and end work every day. Your preconceived notions about how an employee's outside activities affect their job will not apply to everyone, and are irrelevant to the question of continuing their employment.