skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the things that appeals to me is that Java doesn't have all the extra crap piled on some other languages (yet).

I think there's a lot to be said for picking which features to leave out.

Maybe I'm alone with this viewpoint though.
And how are you supposed to measure performance? Many jobs are just not susceptible to doing that. It is well known in the software industry that attempts to measure programming performance result in programmers skewing their efforts in order to make the metrics look better. Teachers in the UK are measured on students' grades, so for some <sarcasm> totally unrelated reason </sarcasm>, students grades have gotten better every year for the last 20 years.

Proven ability to do your job is one thing; measuring your individual performance whilst doing it is another thing altogether.
Don't forget Clojure! .NET has F#, which is pretty interesting too (more than Scala in my opinion). And IronPython/IronRuby.
I think sites like that are great!

It's great to see people experimenting with new ideas around sharing music, and while I'm not sure which of them will provide the ultimate successor to the current music industry structure, or which combination of them will, the more experiments we put out there the faster we'll find out.

Ultimately, whatever does emerge as the best solution will be one where artists and listeners are much more connected and in control than before, so while there may be short term losses, I think we'll get to a net win in the end :)
It's a pretty common for anyone who is not at least a casual student of Economics to think a magic wand should be waved to make people prudent, kind, and just.

If I could offer Scott one Economics paper, it would be Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society", found online here:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

I think it would help him appreciate the complexity of the coordination problem that is addressed by decentralized means in the market.

The sad thing is, as simplistic as Scott's analysis is, it is probably much more sophisticated than the opinion of the average voter, who is ready to believe whatever an authority tells him.
Future of Medical Tourism in USA
Medical tourism will flourish in US in the coming years, though there will be short-term setback due to events like Mumbai Terrorism and Thailand political crisis. Following are top reasons why people from US will travel to other countries to get medical treatments. Even if the president elect Obama and his US Health and Human Services secretary Tom Daschle comes up with Universal Health care system for US people,
You should start being a bit more trusting and less cynical.
Not only does it bring massive swings in expectations, but I'm assuming that it brings massive swings in product development cycles, too.

Better to bring new products out when you think they're ready than according to a pre-defined conference schedule. (Apple's prominent enough that they'll always get media attention for any significant new product launch.)
Hmm, another exaggeration from Jeff Atwood. He's getting good at these.

In my experience the metaphor doesn't stretch to RIAs. My start-up's main application is precisely one of those "RIA that pretends to behave like a desktop app", and thanks to Flex we've been able to get a good enough approximation. Result? Our users don't feel uncomfortable about it (although we have had the odd user who seemed to expect that everything would be instant even though it was a web-app). On the contrary, our users love it, and have commented on it positively many times.

I guess people care less about that last 1% when looking at a web application than when looking at a humanoid robot. Which means stretching the metaphor in this direction doesn't quite work.
How about a better idea - only enable adblock for sites that annoy you with their ads.
"Agile Development with Ruby on Rails" will be a good starting point.
I believe that tweeting is a form of short, instant communication that it should, due to it's nature and form be current, direct and personal.

It certainly doesn't make sense to set up a tweet for Christmas today and have it fire off automatically. I either remember to tweet it later, or not. If not, I'm sure no harm's been done, and if I do, so much better for me and my christian followers.

I tweet sparingly, when I have something to say. I believe that's the whole point.
A good school doesn’t just give you a degree. It’s the whole experience that makes it worth going to a great school. A reputed school does a very good job at bringing smart people together. You get to network with future CEOs, innovators, and innovators. And when you spend a few years with a bunch of other smart people around you, some of it rubs off on you and you become smarter.
Is the proportion of adblock users actually high enough for the ad-buyers to care about their impact?
Actually, more important to the deteriorating economics of outsourcing: the dollar is down substantially since 2002.

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/US/M
I can relate about wanting to move on after mastering an activity. Sadly, in many cases it doesn't take the fabled 10,000 hours or otherwise becoming an expert. When what you do is in essence the same thing a lot of other people do, when you're not blazing the trail, staleness is reached much more quickly, and with it the need to rock the boat a little. Hm, I wonder why this has been in my mind the last few months...
Gosling didn't leave out features because he thought you didn't need them. He left them out because he thought you weren't smart enough to use them.
Moreover, a great school doesn’t produce great minds out of a dumb soul. Rather the people who attend these schools are already smart to begin with. Just as birds of a feather flock together they decided to go to the same few elite schools. The successful people who are alumnus of Ivy Leagues would still have been just as much smart had they attended a nondescript school. Likewise, a not-so-smart person wouldn’t go very far even if he made it through (somehow) to a great school.
Ouch. I would not feel interested in writing a keygen for that app.
In states with at-will employment your job can be terminated - by either side - with no notice (hence no obligation for severance), with some exceptions against illegal discrimination (e.g. being fired because you're black).

Most companies will offer you some sort of severance - or at least won't ask for their signing bonus/relocation/etc back, but that's out of goodwill, not legal obligation.
Interesting to compare the 1971 and 1979 pages describing the future of computers: http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/computer/027.html

One has microcircuits with 10s of components, 8 years later there's the microprocessor with thousands.
To be fair, at the end he states that he's not advocating this plan, but that it's what he thinks will happen as people overreact to the economic crisis.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was uncomfortable with that assertion.
What amazes me more than anything is that we've gone from no computers to computers in everything -- in less than a single lifetime! That truly is incredible.
Uh, sure it does, near the end.

Some bean counters will be tempted to take it a step further. Why not outsource Django and Ruby On Rails work to low skilled low price developers?
Its not worth the risk.
Isn't that what happens when you write (poor) safety critical software in C++?
It's not just about being smart. It's about overcomplicating things, making things harder to debug.

Did he leave out unsigned types because he thought we weren't smart enough to cope with them? No, I'd say he left them out because it makes everything simpler. If a programmer wants an unsigned type, he can do it himself.
It'd be hard to do without catching the schizophrenics too. They're about the same size as the recently unemployed.
Trust in advertising? I don't know...

How many "get 10% off" offers can there likely be? When I shop for products, I usually check with price comparison sites anyway. They usually have shop ratings, too. What good could a random "10% off" offer do? If they are really cheaper than the competition, why wouldn't they just register with the price comparison site, so that I could find them that way? And if I go to their site through an ad, I don't have any ratings for them.

Ultimately I prefer to shop with Amazon anyway, because their customer service is reliable...

The chances that an ad pushes something into my face that I really, absolutely need but simply forgot about are rather slim, I think. In conclusion, all good an ad could do to me was to make me buy stuff I don't really need.
I'm not sure... as a single data point I measured usage on the Mibbit main client for a while (Mainly early adopter fx3 tech types), and it was 8% or something for the main client.

Of course it isn't too important as adblock is useless in blocking all but the most simple adverts.

In the general population the % is probably much much lower though, so you're right - probably not worth worry about until you're a very big site.

It's more the antisocial attitude I disagree with.
I realized the examples I used were not indicative of what I want to achieve. I actually have Agile Web Development with Rails somewhere in the house but I don't recall it covering the info I need. I need to create an application like Weebly, in which users are able to create a 'site' with it's own database. I'm primarily concerned about the database architecture of the site and how the user properties should be treated - basically some references for best practices in these situations.
Isn't that a bit like giving money to beggars? I mean not that one shouldn't donate, but I think economists recommend donating to causes you actually want to support. In India beggars can get their limps removed to get more donations out of pity - by giving to them, one gives them an incentive to cut off their limps???

That was a bit sidetracked, I guess one should also help the occasional beggar. But switching off adblock would give more sites an incentive to put up ads, which is definitely not something I would like to encourage. TipJoy to the rescue?
Yahoo to scrub personal data after three months, anonymize "user log data"
Stocktwits.com Closes Series A
Inheritance taxes eliminate the persistance across generations of power and wealth. However, since the bush administration chose to repeal estate taxes, they intended to return the US to the sort of nation with a hereditary aristocracy.

In IT, we saw the problems with "credentialism" in the problems with "boot camps" and the "paper engineers" who came out with CNE/MCSE credentials who also were basically useless.
I haven't tried WebMynd yet (will do so). But, from the FAQ,

"Some people call the WebMynd browsing history a DVR for the web - it saves and records the pages you see online so you can find what you have seen before faster:"

This sounds very similar to what InfoAxe is trying to do. Has anyone here tried InfoAxe? How different are these services?
A good explanation on why it is harder to outsource Django or RoR development is because it's so close to outsourcing the conception of the application. There are things you want to do in-house.
I'd actually say the reverse is true. By using adblock you're decreasing pageviews for certain ads, which may make some websites put more adverts up for those not using adblock.

I really don't get the 'tipping' idea. You seem to see adverts as an evil begging tool rather than an extremely useful device that connects an advertiser with an interested consumer.

Advertising is supposed to be useful to you. If it's not, then it's just bad advertising. But don't assume all advertising is bad.
This just in: Windows is popular, Linux is for hardcore geeks. News at 11
You do realize the price comparison sites are essentially large adverts, and they get commission when you buy through them?
No. This is normal in the US. Severance pay is rare.
> All you have to do is write the documentation very specifically

And that's where most software projects fail. If there's one great thing about the agile development movement it's the involvement of customers in the process so that they get the software they actually want, not what they thought they wanted at the beginning.

How much does fully specifying a piece of software cost? Now compare that with a loose specification and an engineer who's in contact with the customer and refining the application as requirements are discovered.
Or finance-Wall Street. Maybe not, as the vast idiocy taking place there has been exposed recently. But memories are short.
Ah, the "human nature" argument. Is there anything more insidious? This idea, like all others before it, is one of those that rule. "Greed is good" is the creed of our epoch. Before, in feudal society, it was "We rule because we have divine right". In the end, it's just justification for the actions of a ruling class.
Bug tracking software, like other tools for programmers, often travels as a virus with team members. You hire some guy, he says "why are you using this horrible crap we used fogbugz at my last job and it wuz not teh suck", and so you try it.

Maybe we can call this resume-viral: products that are passed around by virtue of become recognizable bullet items on resumes.
Unfortunately Java has a lot of extra crap already. I liked the language and was competent in it once, but when version 1.5 added generics and autoboxing, I left for greener pastures. Same thing almost happened to JavaScript this year with ES4, thank god it was cancelled.
That's true, but my experience of Linux on the eee pc has been horrible and I eventually switched to Windows so that basic stuff would work:

1. I'd like to totally disable screen blanking

2. I'd like the built-in wireless to work with a WPA2 network
A different type of VC holiday card
Yes, but at least I only get to see the advert when I want to see it.

Not sure if the commission is more than other costs for advertising, but I guess it shouldn't be.
I still have a copy of this :) The ladybird books were just great at this sort of thing.
I find the linux they tend to put on these netbooks is crippled and streamlined to do only a few basic things. Perhaps that's making people think linux is useless?
Advertising is first of all supposed to be useful to the advertiser.

In theory it would be fascinating to create useful advertising, but I don't think the technology is quite there yet.

That is why I watch Google, because in my opinion they compete with themselves. On the one hand they want to be the best search engine, on the other hand they want to live off advertising. But if their search was perfect, there would be no more need for advertising.

OK, even if there was perfect search, it might still be interesting to get interesting cross-references (ie you are looking for cars and get adverts for car insurance). But then the problem remains that there would only be advertising for commercial things. The perfect search engine would also cross-reference me to non-commercial things.

As for begging, I don't think ads work that way (less ad viewers implies more ads). In the long run, the ads would go away if nobody would be watching them (beggars can't go away if they truly have no other choice, so here the analogy falters). Maybe along with the ads, many "free" services would disappear, too. On the other hand, if ads weren't an option, maybe other payment schemes would suddenly gain traction.
I don't think he was making the point you think he was making. Or rather, I read it that he was in particular focusing on the visual interface side rather than the functionality and application mechanics.

I clicked on your profile and I assume you are referring to your website http://woobius.com ? I didn't try it out but I did checkout the screenshots. See, to me, your app looks like a web application. It borrows some of the visual metaphors of a desktop app, but the actual interface skin looks very much to me like a web app.

To take Jeff's metaphor, your app to me is like a C3PO. He's got all of the functionality and parts of a human (face, limbs, speech, etc.), but on the surface he looks like a robot, so it doesn't creep you out when he hobbles along with his stilted gait.

Anyhow, I thought the article was a bit long winded to make such a simple point, but for me the point resonated in the end.
Creative Date Ideas
Are you getting ready for a first date? You must be under tremendous pressure as the special day draws closer. First date is always one of the most difficult parts of one’s love life. If you are not careful, your first date can easily be turned into a clumsy date. When you are on a first date, both you and your partner are trying to impress each other while both of you know very little or nothing about the other person. The regular conversation starters do not work with first dates. Often silence engulfs most part of your date dinner.
And how you'd handle money creation? And what about UST and bonds? They're loans as well. How you'd finance the govs debt? With taxes?

You have the point, though, that less money would make the assets cheaper. But this is monetary 101.
720 hours, nice. That's a decent chunk of work right there.
Microsoft to Issue IE Patch | TechJaws
I think the worst thing you can do as a webapp is start with emulating the O/S - dragable, resizable, minimizable emulated windows and dialogs.

I hate the idea of having "emulated" windows within a single browser window. It looks messy and confused.

So on that sort of point I agree. I'm not sure what other examples there are though.
I don't think you should get too worked up about what Atwood says. He's like the Rachel Ray of computer science.
I, for one, don't like automated tweeting. I tend to tweet interesting articles, links, quotes, and the occasional ramble, but one thing I don't do (and is frowned upon) is responding to people who start to follow you.

The service is certainly useful, just not the automated end of it.
The Sophist and the Open-Source Baking Farce
Sure it's an exaggeration. The uncanny valley is a visceral biological reaction in parts of our brains that have spent millions of years become very finely tuned to identifying human beings. We have no such location for user interface. That said, I think there is still something to be said for the concept. If you are trying to mimic something, and get it 99% of the way there, that last 1% _can_ be source of frustration. (Jeff goes on to say because it _can_ be, it therefore is a bad idea, and you shouldn't do it. This is a poorly supported conclusion.)

For example, stupid cnnsi.com has a "main window" that has some things at the bottom that look, feel, and act like links. Yet I cannot middle click them to open them in a new tab. This annoys the bejesus out of me. Another example is desktop-emulating applications who don't have a fully-functional right-click menu like I'd expect.

By emulating other things, you put expectations into your user's mind about what sorts of functionality it should have. In this respect, it is analogous to the uncanny valley. The mimicry alone has created expectations that can cause frustration. But, that doesn't mean, that mimic'ing is inherently wrong or bad. It just means you have to do it right. You have to meet those user's new expectations.
Don't you have to have an iphone and a newish mac to develop for the iphone?

That barrier will keep costs high because not many 2nd or 3rd world programmers have access to these tools.
"But if their search was perfect, there would be no more need for advertising."

A percentage of their revenue is from adverts generated from searches, but a ton is generated from adsense on peoples websites, in gmail, etc etc

I really don't put much hope on other payment schemes taking off. Advertising is a pretty good proven model, with premium options for the smaller set of users willing to pay.
Dugg for being a top ten list!
But wouldn't it be awesome to drag a window generated within a webapp and toss it some place onto your desktop? (to the degree that the browser is just an extension of the OS -- kinda like a file explorer with more features)
They have a comparison to different caching solutions, but don't really have an explanation of it. For example, they say that they handle any size data (vs. memcached which allocates specific size blocks stopping at 1MB). I know that memcached does that because using a normal memory management structure that would give them that any size flexibility would cause the operating system to have to deal with the fragmentation that comes with that and dealing with that fragmentation takes a lot of time.

Likewise, storing to disk takes time rather than just storing in memory. Even if you store the objects in memory as well, writes are slower even though reads should be the same. A caching server shouldn't need its data to survive a crash since the authoritative copy should be in the database.

They're also quoting 20,000 transactions per minute depending on hardware. That doesn't seem that good. Considering that memcached handles 50,000 requests per second in its stock form or 200,000 requests per seocond with Facebook's modified version, 333 "transactions" per second doesn't sound so great. Maybe "transaction" is something other than a request for an object (maybe it's saving objects which sccache isn't optimized for).

It looks really cool, but before I would consider it I would want to know more about how it allocates memory and why they made some of the design decisions they made. I know that memcached put in its limitations in order to make it ultra fast and ultra scalable.
Time to fade that gap.
Don't forget about the added sting of having worked on Flickr from the beginning. She was an employee of Ludicorp before being an employee of Yahoo.
There is a gap between what an item costs and what it's worth to you. I have a copy of Vista Home that came bundled with my machine, I would pay 20$ for a copy of Vista Ultimate 64 bit, but that's about it.
Sketch of a New type of Automata.
I'm still waiting for the next Game Neverending beta.
The "full responsibility" thing means I will never introduce anyone, save possibly my own children.
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

I'm a Java developer - naturally I think Gosling (for the most part) drew the lines in the right places.
As one of their competitors, I can say I went into the business in the first place because of ESPN, Yahoo, CBS's, etc. inability to create a usable interface for fans to navigate.
No, there are serious deficiencies in the language, and I've had to work around them in fairly lamentable ways. The only disadvantage of amending it (from my point of view) is that it will obsolete my work-arounds.
Same here, generics are so ugly! I used to think Java is cutting edge with annotations and aspect oriented programming, until I realized that dynamic languages don't even need to add extra "features" to support most (or all?) interesting programming techniques.

Any new features that make it into Java or C# will only make the tutorials longer and the learning curve steeper. Not a good thing.
Rhodes: A Tool To Bring Ruby Apps to the iPhone
Road warrior workstations on a power trip
Jobs to Macworld: Bite me
What sort of deficiencies? I think all in all java (the original spec) was a pretty well thought out design.

It's not like several other languages that have to go and add unicode support on later as an afterthought.
Krop? Authentic Jobs? 37 Signals job board?
I think the new design is a vast improvement -- also, it serves a legitimate business purpose by letting them serve more than twice as many ads as before on highly trafficked pages.

I actually wrote a blog post on the top 5 improvements of the new design: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/top-5-improvements-of-...
Java has a lot of crap, actually. Take a look at Java Puzzlers sometime.
Virtualization is a good thing, but it's not a slam dunk when it comes to saving money