skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is exactly how I describe this idea to people. I tell them to complete the following sentence. "Applying this change set will...". I've recently become less averse to verbs like fixes, updates adds, etc as I feel the sentence "The change set..." is still pretty good. The key, obviously, being you're describing the change set, not your actions.
I still cringe at all the "would of"s and incorrect "your"s and "their" on the Net. As an English speaker from outside the US, these aren't mistakes I commonly see in my country, and they grate. I'm like you - I find it arduous and irritating to read a passage littered with them, because each one pops up and distracts me.

That said, if I were hiring programmers, I wouldn't go by grammar. Business concerns and core capabilities come first. If the person makes mistakes but does the job best, no biggie. It all comes down to the situation in the labour market - does demand for programmers exceed supply, or vice versa? If I were flooded with good potential applicants then I'd weight grammar more heavily as a differentiating factor - but since good programmers are hard to come by currently, it's just pointless to do so.
We haven't had anyone ask for it- but we're open to all sorts of ideas- feel free to drop me an email (info@pwinty.com) and we can discuss.
The fact that it was without intent indicates to me how poorly many people understand the effects of comments that objectify women's bodies. If there wasn't already a pre-existing culture in which women expect to find themselves judged for their bodies more than for their aptitude at their jobs, then 0xBI6B00B5 wouldn't matter so much. As it is, it serves to reinforce the existing perception (and unfortunately, the existing reality) that women are judged by different criteria from their male colleagues. Combine this with stereotype threat [1], and you get that the effects are decidedly harmful, even in the absence of sexist intent.

I doubt that removing the specific magic number in this case really helps much, though. Rather, I think that it is important to establish a standard that this kind of thing is not in keeping with professional standards or with human decency towards one's colleagues. Given that most people really do seem to mean well, having that awareness and empathy about the direct and indirect effects of seemingly innocuous choices like this can only help make programming a better career choice for all involved.

[1]: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freethoughtblogs/butterfliesa...
If I read the grandparent correctly(and I do agree), the best destination is not Apple, Google or anyone for that matter but rather to stay in the game as an independent.

Where are the small companies that are building for sustainment? All of these product disappearances do have a long-term effect of causing users to hesitate before signing up to use your offering.
It's to keep in form with some automatic git messages (like merge) that output in that tense. Also that is the tense the Git project committers use themselves.

See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3580013/should-i-use-past...

Also the past repeats: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079612

For a good laugh: http://whatthecommit.com/
There are some companies that, when acquired in similar circumstances, you are not sad to see subsumed into a larger entity. Either their product wasn't that revolutionary, they didn't have a good strategy, whatever.

However, Sparrow does not fall into that category.

I think it is a massive mistake to sell like this. They clearly had the product and following (IMHO) to become something massive. Selling early when you are just getting started seems silly to me.

I'm sad that I won't have the continuing evolution of their fantastic product to look forward to.
Based on the Futuba engine from 2ch with plenty of Japanese influence still prevalent.

Mincing words.
Hahahah what a joke. 1,500 for a laptop like this
What if you don't use Gmail?
What problem is this solving? Do people not know what to pray for? Is their really a need for me to get prayer requests from whomever is the most popular? Would the site being trying to get people off the site(and into prayer) or is the goal of the site to have people on it, browsing, etc(and not praying)?
As someone who bought Sparrow on the day it was released - and is in love with it - this feels like a big middle finger to the customers who have been supporting them.

The core of my disappointment is the expectation of future development that comes with buying into a relatively new piece of software. I didn't buy Sparrow thinking I was paying for a piece of software that was feature-complete. I bought Sparrow mail as a piece of innovative software along with the promise of lots of great future updates to come.

Now, those future updates are done, because Google killed them by acquihiring the Sparrow team.

It feels like more and more, when buying into a new exciting project, the risk is less that the project will fail on its own, and more that it'll be destroyed by an acquihire. Some day, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a barrier to startups acquiring dedicated new users.
Bravo!

Poor grammar is the telltale sign of other impediments that hinder the practice of any activity that requires good attention to details.
Although it used to come with programs like VS, I now believe it is just out there for anyone to take
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1787...
>i7 2GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor

A what?
If you don't care equally about grammar and programming, then you aren't wanted. You can no doubt latch onto a dev shop that doesn't care about that.

I don't see the problem and I admire the attitude. Use of the written word is important and, aside from the exceptions mentioned in the article, I think significantly less of people who don't write or speak well. It's important to me to work with good communicators and you can't be a good communicator if you can't speak and write well.
So there is no problem with the hex string, there is a problem with the culture. I know, lets fix the hex string.

Introducing new gender discrimination, regardless of intentions, generally causes more gender discrimination. Also, doing it as a matter of policy could leave you open to a lawsuit.
"Developer profiles"? What does that mean? It will install node && jshint && vim for me or what?

What I want out of a linux ready laptop from Dell (or anyone):

1. Make the hardware and OS play nice.
2. Nothing

I can do the rest just please make the display, media keys, battery, drives, etc. work flawlessly. Profiles & all that stuff are no selling point at all.
i really like clojure. for me, it's not about the lisp - it may sound crazy, but it's a better python. lazy sequences are nicer to use than generators, and i don't need to worry so much about mutation.

seriously. that's how i am describing it to co-workers: a better python. that should have been scheme, i guess, but it lacked the lazy sequences to get over the "ewww parens" hill. if you're a python user that's starting to appreciate the power of generators you owe it to yourself to look at clojure.

the one thing that drives me crazy is the state of libraries: finding the right library for the right version, and then finding where the pom is. i wish that could be clearer (less confusion about versions and more direct pointers to poms/repos/IDs).

[not sure if it's relevant, but python never had a killer app. i guess it is an "unconvincing" language too...]
Anyone here noticed the 'API vs "Platform"' issue again? Sparrow is essentially for gmail which means it will become eternally linked to it. And depending on the owner of gmail, either blow (like in PUFF) or become a part of it (instagram is still alive because it has not been bought YET factually).

Looks like in this case Sparrow is going the way of the Dodo.
>In the .NET world, for all the database adapters I've used (MSSQL, SQLCE, Oracle, MDB), individual statements are implicitly wrapped in transactions when no explicit transaction has been specified - not sessions/connections.

That is how the postgresql API works as well. Most high level language modules built on top of it also work that way. Unfortunately python's DB API is not one of them, but you can just set a config option to "act like everyone expects".
Take any "meta-analysis" with a large grain of salt (or better yet, and industrial size vat of salt).

Meta-analysis suggests that men under the age of 26 have a 60% chance of being sex offenders. This same type of meta-analysis is also the reason that all sex crime offenders (including drunk people pissing in a park and amorous couples getting it on in a dark parkin glot) are lumped together for sex offender registration purposes, because the meta-analysis suggests that the recidivism rate for "sex offenders" (regardless of actual offense) is greater than 90% (without regard to the actual recidivist offense).

TLDR: Meta-analysis can be used to support any claim.
1366x768?
My old P4 laptop had 1400x1050 (or something very close)

At least 8GB RAM , 15" 1600x1200 screen , a proper mechanical keyboard and a blank SSD. Now that would be a developer laptop.
Was talking to a dell rep the other day at OSCON, (they gave away 3), they are looking to get the vendor specific drivers upstream but don't have a timeline for it.
Sparrow was the only native app that managed to offer a better Gmail experience than the Gmail web app. Google's desktop and phone gmail apps have been generally, not great. Sparrow's was.
Palo Alto Networks and Kayak Surge in IPO
I don't. I use my own IMAP4 server with Sparrow.
The parent's point was not that these concerns are invalid but rather that HNers are severely biased since they only apply them to women. To counter, you proceeded to repeat the same concerns in the same bigoted manner.

I've been there.

I am a working, breastfeeding mother and I strongly disagree with your post. Does my opinion trump yours since I am higher on the been-there scale than you?

About 10% of women suffer through postpartum depression.

Up to 25% of both men and women suffer from post-partum depression. Wikipedia it.

Being a high-flying exec has no correlation with the biology behind [postpartum depression].

Numerous studies show that working mothers are less depressed than stay-at-home mothers.

Now please disclose your experience. How old are you? How many children do you have?

The Yahoo board, who made their decision with full knowledge of Mayer's pregnancy, are collectively (and often individually) older than you, with more children.

Solid biological reason that women get pregnant, go through child birth, have associated hormone shifts, and produce milk.

Please, enough with science and biology as a means to justify frankly bigoted opinions. The same biology gives most new mothers a noticeable increase in energy that makes it possible to switch to a polyphasic sleep schedule to accommodate constant nursing and other demands of motherhood. The same biology makes us different so that there are women like your wife, who finds Mayer's plan laughable, and women like Mayer herself, with her two comp-sci honors degrees from Stanford, famously long hours, etc.

Since you like un-PC, factual conversations about hormones, let's turn this around and talk about you. Fair is fair. Have you ever thought how remarkably ill-suited you as a male are to system design and coding? How do you, a highly-hormonal young man who spends an inordinate chunk of his time thinking about sex, ever get any work done, in a profession where continual focus is paramount? And is it fair to your two children that you spend so much time on HN and SO, the time that could instead be spent furthering their IQ?

Edit: FWIW, I know you are an intelligent guy, based on your HN and SO contributions. If above seems like a personal attack, please consider that your opinion that a woman has to choose between motherhood and work is very personal to female HN readers like me - and the fact that you are clearly intelligent only makes it worse. I'd like to think that it's possible for me to nudge your opinion in a more equitable direction. If nothing else, please consider that dismissing a set of beliefs as worthless PC garbage is most often a euphemism for "other people's problems". I'd like to think that most male hackers don't think of female hackers in "us vs. them" terms implied by the above, despite the apparent misogynist demographic on HN. Peace :)
Sparrow had a $4.99 (half-off) sale last weekend (https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849). Borders on fraud, if you ask me - scamming people into buying what they had to have known by then they were planning on turning into abandonware a week later.
Have they announced when this will be available for purchase? I was considering getting an XPS 13 Ultrabook now, but it sounds like it won't be a long wait for the Sputnik?
This makes me sad as a user, but it seems to be the trend that smaller companies that make great products get acquired by big companies for talent, and those great products disappear.
Anyone see a price of how much Google paid Sparrow?
> once you take a prescriptivist stance you're either making an appeal to popularity or you're entering an arse-kicking contest with a seven-legged monster with no arse.

That's an extreme and unjustified dichotomy. The article is written in an informal linguistic register, not in the voice of a 19th century naturalist writing for the Royal Society. (Is my use of the passive voice in the previous sentence also "incorrect" because style guides frown upon it?)

Still, the article's language is clear, precise, and suggests that the author takes pains to accurately communicate his thoughts. We haven't seen the author's grammar test. I would suspect that it tests the kind of linguistic economy I'm talking about, not whether the test-taker has memorized obscure passages from Strunk and White. As such, the test is probably effective at eliminating candidates who don't give a damn about correctness.
As in using Joda-Time, Joda-Money (or JDK Money)?

Would there be any other way to represent them in Clojure? (i.e.: the more Clojure-way as opposed to use JDK classes?)
Console numbers shouldn't be a metric here - I own all three consoles, only use the Xbox for gaming.

What should be counted is actual money spent inside the platform's online ecosystem - kinda curious myself how PSN is doing compared to Xbox Live. I'll have to look this up when I get a chance.
Now imagine if you'd bought it last weekend in their half-off sale. https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849

"Let's make as much money from our abandonware as possible before we have to tell everyone it's abandonware."
And I just purchased that app yesterday. I'll try and pursue getting a refund from Apple, although I'm not sure how successful I will be in the process. It's aggravating seeing potentially amazing start-up companies get purchased by a large company and then everything they've done seemingly ceases to exist.

Also, how many companies that Google acquires eventually just die off?
Verizon Hints at Fall iPhone 5 Debut
base 21, why not use base 32?
First Thunderbird then this, what's a native-email-app user to do?

I wonder what ever happened to that Letters email app for OS X that people were wanting to build? There was a flurry of activity and complaints about Mail.app and then nothing.
I can vouch for Tom at Pwinty being great to work with. A few weeks ago I asked if their printing api could be extended to more options. Tom said yes and got me a quote in 24 hours. They are very flexible.
And thus, my dream of finally getting a Sparrow native client for iPad is crushed, like bug.

Who wants to build a really super good Gmail client for iPad? Both Google's web-based version as well as their native app are pretty feature-light, and slow, so it seems like there's definitely a market there.
Congrats on building a fabulous software product then commercializing (abandoning) it. I'm excited for my stale future ahead. I only hope the team was well compensated in this acquisition.

- selfish consumer
This is sad and frustrating, guess I'm going back to Mail.app.
I know. But since I know that that kind of language is not ok my appreciation circuits are fried.
How Can You Manipulate The Media To Promote Your Self-Interest?
Like when Microsoft bought Lookout?

edit: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/12/24.html
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/
So that was pull, not push. Push notifications was exactly the solution to the problem of apps constantly pulling in the background. Sparrow couldn't do push because they didn't want to have our emails on their server. Now that Google owns Sparrow, we can hope that they'll provide push. I wouldn't get my hopes up though :/
I disagree with this romanticism that a company should always be built for sustainment. A small company has only two ways of being successful - either disrupt and be radically different or fill in a piece of the puzzle that a bigger company has not achieved. If you look at the nature of the product the Sparrow team developed - an iOS/Mac client - it wasn't radical. So being gobbled up by an appropriate bigger company is natural course for that startup.
Well said. We're seeing a lot of "ship and dump" from startups these days. I'm to the point now where I don't recommend a startup to friends and family or use for business purposes unless their product is self-hostable(and release of source code upon an acquisition or corporate dissolution) or open-source. As you can imagine, the number of products I recommend has dwindled to almost nothing since I've been burned so much myself.
Oh man, I got really excited because I thought somebody had picked up work on http://jsterm.com/ . Maybe not the best idea to call this one jsterm as well.
Just get me a laptop with better battery life and a higher resolution screen. Give it a better keyboard (none of that chicklet crap). Make it play well with open source drivers. And that's it.

I don't want extra software. I don't want profiles. I just want something that works out of the box with any recent Linux I throw at it.
Anyone interested in building a new simple and beautiful iOS email product? I think the market's just opened up.
Email is Dead. Long Live Email.
They won't ruin it, because they have announced their intention to stop development.
Curiously enough, I recently (within the last month) emailed Kayak with a query, and Paul answered. Turnaround time: 54 minutes.

So he's still doing some customer service, at least a little bit. It is really seriously impressive.
Hmmm.

What I, in particular, would pay for, is for Dell to have a repository of reliable & tested drivers that they maintain for that particular hardware setup. That way I could simply install a (relatively) standard distro (gentoo, debian, red hat, arch, etc), and have a very high confidence that the drivers worked seamlessly.
This reminds me of Yahoo's purchase of Konfabulator.
> Gmail is pretty much perfect

There isn't any room for improvement in Gmail? Really? It's still using the same basic design of every email client since forever (labels/mailboxes at the left, inbox shows a time-sorted list of messages, click through a message to read).

Meanwhile Sparrow showed what was possible if you sit down and at least tried to rethink the email interface -- with things like gestures, or by shifting towards streams rather than lists.
Great software for half off doesn't seem like a scam to me. The app still works.
You can also enter command mode in Vim with ^[.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to give you this feedback before I saw your comment here. Maybe you should list an email address or have a contact form somewhere on the site. The only thing I found was a Twitter account, and I'm not on Twitter.
You seem to be using the word funny in a sense with which I am not at all familiar. Again, consider the non-native user of English, and the likelihood of encountering him or her on a site like this. "Ironic" grammar policing without an irony indicator isn't at all funny.
Sparrow isn't iOS only, it also runs on the Mac.
"Do you have an example of something that can be more comfortably expressed with a monad, even in a language with imperative constructs?"

STM.

And it may not be immediately obvious that it does need to be a monad, if you don't deeply understand how it is being used. There's more to it than meets the eye at first.
We need to be reminded that once we did great things.

I worked at MIT Instrumentation Lab on a compiler for the guidance software for the moon missions. My contribution was insignificant, but I am still proud to have been part of it. My only regret was that I never made it to Florida to watch a Saturn V take off.
> guessing Fedora will run just fine on it as well

hmmm...not sure about this assumption. i would def assume so w/ debian or derivative distro, but fedora?...not so sure about that.
Your assumptions are wrong but your imagination is accurate.
Sedo Publishes Analysis of Performance of .CO Domain Names
RethinkDigg.com
You need to chill out. Nothing screams "hyperbole" than "a middle finger to the customers". Did you expect them to lay out their strategy to the public like "Hey, thanks for investing in us but keep in mind that one day we'll probably join one of the bigger players. You see our product effectively brings together the best email service and the best OS in the world and presents them in a sexy way. So you don't think we will be seeing enormous growth just on the shoulders of that, do ya?"
What makes some VC firms great
Steve Job's game plan was also to sellou.... oh wait, it wasn't.
I'd imagine so - there's very little incompatibility of this sort between different Linux distros, and when it happens, it's almost always because of bad developing practices (ie, system-dependent compilation of a closed-source binary... statically compiled binaries are binary-compatible, and if it's open source it can be patched).

The only thing that could be a problem are the drivers, but if those are open source, you bet there'll be a patched package for any mainstream distro, and even closed-source drivers on Linux these days are very good. I can't remember the last time I ran into driver problems. What's more likely is fundamental limitations of the hardware itself, rather than the drivers, but that won't be a problem here.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution), shall be eligible to the Office of President.

Neither shall any person be eligible to that Office [of the President] who shall not have attained to:

- the Age of thirty five Years, and

- been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

There, fixed it for you. It's not that difficult to understand when you know how legal parsing works. In this case, the use of two subordinate clauses at the end of the first sentence indicates that the first subordinate clause is subordinate to the phrase before it, while the second subordinate clause is subordinate to the ("super") clause preceding the third clause. The super clause consists of the first and second clauses, because they are joined by a coordinating conjunction.
Smart TV makers forming alliances out of fear of Apple
Behind every good developer is a good mentor - coderook.co
Hopefully developer profiles will come to mean something like a developer version of Ninite to configure and install common apps, frameworks, and libraries in literally just a few clicks. This is often a long, painful process that is all too familar, and should be totally automated.
Dude it's his job to form coherent and well structured sentences in ad hoc interviews, it's in the job description. My thoughts were this guy doesn't take his job seriously, doesn't know jack about the field, or isn't cut out for that line of work.
Timing a sale right before an announcement you're well aware will drop sales numbers off a steep cliff looks pretty deceptive to me.