skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But NoSQL is pretty much based on the idea that you store data from your application in a way which is close to the internal data structures, is it not? Since you aren't dealing with the ability to do on-the-fly, ad hoc transformation (the RDBMS and ORDBMS model) then you are limited more or less to a transactional state persistence layer, which is what the OODBMs's were intended to be. It doesn't really solve any of the problems that beset the OODBMS and other app-specific storage layer. It does solve all the problems that OODBMSs solved and a few more.

I can't see why one wouldn't see NoSQL as essentially a continued outgrowth of the OODBMS movement to be honest.

In essence for complex data it seems to me you have two choices:

1) Insist on rigidly mathematically defined input, allow ad-hoc transformation on output. Input is rigid, output is flexible, or

2) Be flexible with input, and allow some transformation both in input and calling on output. Input is flexible but output is pretty rigid.

the first is an RDBMS, and possibly the array-native databases in the NoSQL world, while the second is the OODBMS, and the vast majority of NoSQL products.

I think this fundamentally gets us to Stonebraker's 4-fold division, where on the left hand side you have simple data:

With query = RDBMS
Without Query = Filesystem

On the right hand side you have complex data (nested structures and the like):

With query: ORDBMS
Without Query: OODBMS

I don't think there is any question that the key problems of operating without declarative queries that can transform data reliably on data output (and this requires fixed schemas for data input) are the same whether you are dealing with OODBMS's or NoSQL db's.
Many (most?) vinyls are pre Loudness War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war). But CDs are mostly post Loudness War, where all the sound has become wimpy due to bad mixing practices driven by marketers. This also affects digital music, no matter how it's compressed.

So in general, many vinyls actually do sound more dynamic and clear. It's not because of the media, but because of how they were produced at different times in the industry.
Thomas Kuhn: the man who changed the way the world looked at science
I just saw a TV comercial for a new album by a popular band, where they said, album available as digital download and LP, no mention of a CD.

(I am from Denmark, not the US but still...)
I couldn't agree more, I waste countless potential working hours 'learning' on HN that if this site closed down, I would probably cure cancer, invent "the new X" and single handedly save the world in the first week with the spare time I would have.
Not to be inquisitive, but I wonder how they make money. From the website it seems they only sell Fitbit [0]. Amazing how one such stream of income can support the whole enterprise and generate revenue.

This model (free service/soft + hardware) reminds me of sports-tracker.com [1] (one of few sites I simply love). They service (app, site) is also free and they sell heart rate monitors.

With same model (do free service, sell hardware), there is one difference which is interesting. Sports-Tracker sells their own hardware, MyFitnessPal just resells Fitbit.

[0] http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps/show/fitbit

[1] http://www.sports-tracker.com/

Added: I just hope they (MyFitnessPal) do not sell their databases.
Well, there are several people who make 2000-3000$ per month off of a couple of apps. Not a great salary, but I could live off that.
Computer Vision App
Someone else posted some stats. It's fairly widespread and the growth rate is rather strong, but it's still, of course, rather niche in comparison to the total market.

Fred Meyer started selling vinyl recently due to an ordering error, they ordered the vinyl instead of cd version of REM's "Accelerate" album, most stores realized the error, some put the album up for sale regardless, and sales were so strong the chain decided to start carrying a limited selection of vinyl albums. Currently vinyl album sales are still maybe 1-2% of CD sales, but at the rate vinyl is growing and CD is slipping that ratio is likely to increase.
"So I'm not sure how complex all of these to grok, granted if you need to do something out of the ballpark, you may have to learn a bit more of each individual component but to get started and be productive seems quite easy for me."

It is so easy only if you don't try to write some serious production level stuff using it. You must be insane to start a project in JEE knowing only some basic tutorials and without deep understanding how the full stack works. I worked for a company that do JEE trainings. It was near impossible to teach a team using full JEE stack in 5 days (7 hour / day) - no, actually each single component is like 1-2 days of training, given that everything is preconfigured and ready to go. And after training they usually ask for consulting, because they still have some technical problems with it.

This is similar to Scala. You have to probably have someone on the team with deep understanding, but most of the coders just need to know how to do basic things in it.

We used Scala for a project in the company, and the only concern then was poor tooling (that was 2 years ago - it is much much better now), not the language itself. Most programmers just jumped right into it as a Java with slightly simplified syntax - "oh, I don't need to know when to use Integer and int, cool!".

// Errata: I meant EJB 2.1, not JEE 2.1, sorry for the mistake.
> Although I hate snarky, nonconstructive comments as much as everybody else

Sure, I sorta agree, but ... there's snark, and then, well, there's snark.

Sometimes snarky, non-constructive comments can be really funny and/or satisfying. I don't want them to dominate the conversation, and a lot of snark is just sort of stupid, but ...
At this moment in time, App.net is a service which I can't afford, an expensive girlfriend and a little sister who is dependent on me forces me to have to save my money very carefully, which is fine, because I don't mind advertisements too much anyway.
Why don't they have the right to control how third parties use their APIs? It costs money to maintain them after all, they can do what they want.

I'm not saying it's smart. The level of legitimate FUD they're creating around their developer products is tantamount to sending Guido to kick down your door, point a meaty sausage finger one inch from the bridge of your nose and growl "Fuck You."

Personally I think they would have more to gain by being a better citizen of the open web development community, but clearly they've decided that they can't run the risk of anyone else finding a way to extract more value out of their users than they can. Is that wrong because in the beginning we thought they were fluffy?
The point of the codes isn't to fit it into the Hacker Dojo's budget. The point of the codes is to make buildings safe, accessible, etc. I'm sure every business would like to not pay for wheelchair accessible bathrooms if they could get away with it - calling it a 'MVP' or just not being able to afford it. That is no excuse to not making your place accessible and safe.

How are we even debating this? Do we really think people in wheelchairs shouldn't be able to use the bathroom? Pretty much every fire/accessibility regulation seems like something I'd want from every building I step foot in.
It does seem kind of fucked up that investors have a three month lockup while employees have six. It should be the standard 180 days for everyone; if anything, employees (who have more of their net worth tied up in FB stock) should be more free to sell than funds.

The whole deal with FB effectively being public for 18 months before IPOing (via second market) is new and messed up.
Topic Pages & Future of CMS & Content Publishing
From William Thurston: On proof and progress in mathematics
Which is hugely ironic as the major advantage of CDs over vinyl (at least, the one that was touted back then) is their wider dynamic range. Which we now use all of 5% of.
Ask HN: Is this a solid idea for a Startup?
Would you backup your contacts with a free/premium cloud service?

Users can upload their contacts info for free up till 500 contacts. They will export their contacts list as a CSV file, upload the file, then they will be able to edit / add / delete contacts, and download / export once again as CSV.

They can access their list from anywhere, specially when they lose a phone or format their hard drive.

Yes, Gmail (and others) has that feature, but in Gmail's case, every Tom, Dick and Harry you reply to are added to the contacts list by default, so you end up with a huge list with people you emailed once or twice.

The idea is to appeal to marketing and sales companies, which rely on a fixed list of contacts, which they share with sales and marketing teams. Instead of sending new contacts to each team member, they upload them and everyone can later on access those contacts from anywhere.

If you do not want to add contacts to your list, you can gain access, put the info to good use and go on with your life.

Is this a feasible idea? Can I make money out of it?

Cheers,
The Emacs Lisp emulator is necessary, otherwise it won't be Emacs. This part will work similar to how shen.clj[1] works.
This is itself an interesting project, but as people have said, "why?"

Because new extensions can then be written in Clojure (or other JVM languages) against the same core API (with shared concepts like "buffer" and "window").

Now the line of what's core and what's extension can be blurred, and while keeping backwards compatibility, one can evolve the entire architecture in Clojure, free from the constraints of the old Emacs code base.

But, easier said than done!

[1] https://github.com/hraberg/shen.clj
He says his company has zero revenue but is being sued by a patent troll.

That doesn't make much sense without some more details.

What does the troll want?

Maybe it's not cash upfront?
No, you need the codes. The world is not just you. If your building starts blazing, it's not going to just stop. Those people called firemen have to go and stop it, put themselves at greater risk by saving your rickety building before it destroys the buildings of others that did bother to follow codes. Now the firemen have to go, the ER gets full, etc all because you didn't think much of the regulations. Now, we the tax-payors have to foot the bill and the firemen potential male unnecessary sacrifice, etc. You can't pawn off safety as assumed risk because society has to deal with the repercussions (you can get out paying by just going bankrupt or shooting yourself, whatever but we still have to pay).

Now, I think for Hacker Dojo, there potentially is a bit of unfairness going on but this is about a larger point.
It seems to me that the US patent law is a system for transferring money from those who actually do stuff to those who don't.

This is huge burden on business. Fear of getting sued to death is not the best motivation for creating new and exciting things - are you not afraid that start-ups will start to move out of US jurisdiction?

I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for start-ups and whatnot... but is it still worth it? Seeing lawsuit after lawsuit... I would never incorporate in the US - would you?
What happens if you've got an office with 15 people and then one becomes disabled, or a strong candidate (who you'd otherwise hire) is disabled? Retrofitting may or may not be feasible; moving offices sucks. I'd be tempted to do wfh/offsite, but that may not be adequate for ADA reasons or civil lawsuits.
Ask PG: Do you check HN usage patterns of YC applicants?
I often wonder if pg or other partners check HN usage patterns of YC applicants - ability to focus on work without checking HN every ten minutes could be an important trait of a successful startup founder.
Can Nexus 7 Tablet Survive Tablet War?
Given that it uses US data and Orkut is not used much in the US, probably not accurate at all. You need the Brazilian stats...
One of my biggest disappointments in life was buying CD after CD that sounded absolutely muddy compared to my old vinyl. At first I thought they were just hiring, you know, lumberjacks to do the transfers. I'm still floored that was done on purpose.
I never, ever had a ClassCastException in Scala that I wasn't warned about by the compiler. Maybe in theory you are right. But what counts is practice.
>Camping used to be the go to ruby microframework until _why's disappearance. Then dev stalled for a while and Sinatra took its place. It has since been revamped and is actively maintained.

I don't recall there being any stalling when _why left? Camping was already a community entrenched project well before _why disappeared.

> Neither Camping nor Berliner are meant for professional use, obviously.

I think the Camping developers & users would disagree.

Here's an HN Post which highlights why they think Camping is better designed than Sinatra: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532178
Isn't that backwards? I'm in favor of making things easier for startups in most cases but here, I feel like people should bias towards making things safer and more accessible, even if that means a bunch of startups can't find a place.
They're completely valid brackets to use in writing. You don't tend to see them much but using different forms of brackets can add clarity to nested brackets (i.e. when you feel the urge to expand on your text in brackets [which I frequently do {and according to Wikipedia, others do too}])
Perhaps there are, but in over 20000 lines of Scala code I haven't encountered any. So this is a non-issue in practice.
You'll need to do research into this yourself but I believe that most marketing and sales companies uses CRMs, e.g. Salesforce, to manage their contacts. As you've mentioned, Android/Gmail syncs contacts and I believe that iCloud does too?

As for "every Tom, Dick and Harry" being added to your contacts list, this is a good thing, though I agree it leads to a messy contacts list. The contacts search on Gmail (via the "To" field on a new email) is so good that it doesn't really matter if you have a huge list of contacts - it will single out the contacts that you email the most and put them top of the list.
Why your Startup Needs a Mentor
> Signed: a frustrated Lisp programmer.

thanks for the laugh :)
I'd rather have Typesafe reimplemented Hadoop using Scala (Akka) and wrap it in Hadoop API, than having Hadoop wrapped in Scala API. There are so many things wrong with Hadoop implementation internally, that a complete rewrite would make it good. ;)
I can't type underscore on my "British" layout MBP keyboard.

I wrote a typing tutor a while ago and this is a somewhat common pitfall, to manually handle characters by pulling key codes. Instead you should let the O/S tell you which character was typed (and also check key codes, for things like backspace) which then handles different layouts / locales etc.

Edit: Ok, it works in Chrome - so it's not working for me in Firefox 14.0.1 on OS X Lion.

Now that I can use it, I love it, but I have one request - I'd like to be able to go back and see my stats, please!
Tips for Creating an Effective Sign-up Form
ColdFusion security
Security is especially important in web-based applications, such as those you develop in ColdFusion. ColdFusion developers and administrators must fully understand the security risks that could affect their development and runtime environments so they can enable and restrict access appropriately
What the fuck is wrong with you people
Quora and my facebook friends. Maybe a little bit of twitter with a select set of people. A few private mailing lists. Some private IRC channels.

Same/better discussion (on the private lists), but not generally driven by media articles.

Probably would come back after a month, but not after 3 months.
I fall back to reddit/programming when I don't find anything interesting here. I'd go there waiting for HN to come back, as I find r/p to be of lesser quality than HN.
Helium3.js - experimental lib to create JS-only apps
A workplace sure as hell should be "don't ask". I don't know what leap of logic you used to get "don't tell", though.
/r/programming and /r/technology
Create basic implementation of library based on idea of "blocks": each block is separated, interaction by message passing.

After I created it I watched Nickolas Zakas presentation and I think he described something similar.

Suggestions, critics? :)
Thanks!

I actually had a quick look at this, and Kickstarter funding is for US residents only. Indiegogo seems like an alternative (guess there are a lot of opinions on what crowd funding platform to use).

Also, I'm not sure what "rewards" I could give, "listed as a contributor, in a file hidden deep in my git repo"?

Anyway, more code first, then maybe revisit this!
I'd like to know how many are solely focusing on Android development, with no website or iOS app to drive synergistic use. (Facebook app is worthless without the network effect from the website, and I wonder how well Angry Birds would do if you erase iOS success)
This doesn't seem to work with keyboard layouts that are different than US keyboards.

My german keyboard didn't work :(
If you want to sell on Amazon's KDP, you probably want to sell at a price point between $3 and $10, because that's the "70% zone". More, or less, and you only get to keep 35%.

Of course, if you sell on your own site, you get everything. But Amazon has a lot of customers.
This is one of the most fascinating HN posts I've read in a while.. nothing practical, just fascinating.

PG says somewhere that there is a direct correlation between the length of a comment to its quality.

This is the perfect example.
Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
How to Get Rid of Acne Scars Overnight · AndreaMarkel · Storify
I have this in my vimrc which provides 90% of this:

noremap <C-h> <C-w>h
noremap <C-j> <C-w>j
noremap <C-k> <C-w>k
noremap <C-l> <C-w>l

You can then jump between splits with Ctrl and the navigation keys.
The author's argument is based on the emotional appeal of vinyl and the experience of purchasing from people who care about the music they sell. I'd tend to agree that in the world of music company profits and MP3s (notice there were no references to CDs in the article) that this has been lost and in some ways this is regrettable.

A high value experience for people who care passionately about something is always going to be at odds with mass market appeal - the article could also be written for bookstores - and it is entirely possible that the value the author put in records and record stores was purely an accident of change, the same way that listening to early radio broadcasts on a valve-based, bakelite set was or people sitting around a piano to share songs.

I like the imperfect translation from Spanish to English it greatly adds to the style and appeal of the article.
At least they're just swapped. I don't know where it thinks " is on my keyboard :(
Can I ask my own question? Is this more than a hypothetical inquiry?

> Would you come back if it shutdown for a month?

1. Yes.

2. That's not what "shutdown" means. "Suspend" is closer to the apparent meaning.
Louis Vuitton Men Bags Outlet Online
The numbers matter. Look at the article above (http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207).

They were quoted a charge of $150,000 to add three wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. Do you think that is really the best use of money at inception? Can't they say "we'll add that when we get to 1000 members, we can't afford it right now, please go to the Starbucks next door, here's a map"?

It's pretty damn hard to raise $150k. That is easily more than a year's income, after tax, for a highly paid engineer in the Bay Area. Even with national publicity from the New York Times they've raised about $50k. And it's sort of difficult to raise $150k for the bathrooms.

This is a gold-plated feature for a garage group without money, it's not a reasonable early feature. And that's before the traffic studies, concrete enclosed dumpsters, and other things the city wants. The ironic thing is that several people in this thread support the regulations while also saying things like:

For the record? I'm absolutely for the Hacker Dojo and
wish more existed around here (and / or that I had the
time / ability to found one).

But the reason that more don't exist around here is the price tag: more than $250k for a simple coworking space that attracts negative attention from city bureaucrats. For comparison, that is 22X the average YCombinator investment.

We must thank god YC itself hasn't attracted their attention. I guess pg could pay them off now, but might have been touchy in the early days.
Me too with '-', also with Firefox (Nightly) on OS X (10.6.8). However, it seems to work fine with Safari.
Same here in Sweden. ; is mapped to ö here :(
The closing of American academia
Is it to bypass DNS? With all the moves to control the internet around, then an encrypted peer-to-peer decentralised system that can deal with any kind of data would allow for DNS-less email / websites etc etc...

Though the main point of DNS is it manages a namespace, and you wouldn't want clashes, so websites would probably have to have urls like thttp://{some 64char hash}/

(Where the h stands for telehash...
this is what i meant as side job , but if someone doing it for full time it will be great to hear , also the technical side of things
Bcrypt, Salt. It's The Bare Minimum.
What centralized web? Barring DNS - which is not mandatory for the web - there's no such thing. The web is completely decentralized. Using the web essentially means, "when making a request, use a client-server model and communicate using HTTP", nothing more, really.

Tor hidden services, being outside the centralised web, are the right idea

But most Tor hidden services are as much as the web as normal web services! They talk in a server-client model using HTTP - that's the web, right there.

I don't want to make the connection through an all-purpose application like a web browser

Using the web doesn't mean using a web browser.

written by some company (Chrome in all its complex glory is trying to supplant your OS's DNS fer chrissakes, wake up- in the end, it's all about control).

...and it certainly doesn't mean using Chrome or other browser written by some big company; there's Amaya, Arora, Camino, Dillo, Dooble, ELinks, Flock, Galeon, GNU IceCat, K-Meleon, Konqueror, Links, Lynx, Midori, Firefox, SeaMonkey, Shiira, Uzbl, Luakit and more.

I want a very small and simple open source app that handles the connection to my peers and which works via the OS, not "the web". It makes the connection, keeps it alive and otherwise stays out of the way.

Which is completely feasible using HTTP - the web - as a core protocol.
Yes, but if it was $12 they'd have to sell almost 3 times as much to make the same money. If less than 66% of the customer base would not care if it's 12 or 34, then they get more money! e.g. if only 20% of people are like you and say "erk $34 no thanks, $12 is ok", then they'd make oodles more money.

Sometimes you don't make it up on volume, but on profit.
Although trolls are lawyers, there is still a "cost", and in this cost is time and the opportunity cost of spending time elsewhere. Going to court, getting a judgement and collecting fees is a huge time sink. Patent trolls are not dumb. They will litigate when you are a big fish.
Isn't this the same as Plaxo?
Roll your own Dropbox
Who Wants to Start an Important Startup
I'm more interested in seeing if there is something else out there. I haven't figured out why I haven't really found anything else I like so I'm asking what you like.
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes."

So let me get this right, I pay £170 per year in license fees for you to refuse me access so people in other countries who haven't paid the license should be allowed to access this for free? ^.-