skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Having read almost all expanded universe books up to the late ninties, yes I completely agree that the books by Timothy Zahn a by orders of magnitude the best source for episodes 7 - 9. Just afraid that they will be completely ignored. If they are using books I asume it will some crap written by Kevin J. Anderson or something based on George Lucas own ideas.

Funny thing is that Lucas Films always had the more or less final say in which stories and books were written only to ignore a lot of the back-story for episodes 1 - 3.

While I'm kind of happy to see some more Star Wars movies coming, I'm actualy scared what they will look like. Propably some of the later New Jedi Order stories (since the original actors are a littel old by now) which will suite much better to the target populace. Tjis doesn't necessarily have to be something bad, but I'm not yet convinced...
You can find the preview video and screenshots of the game at http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=162592
Startup Weekend Next by Steve Blank and Udacity
A big part of the problem is trying to do this with C in the first place.

The explicit memory operations create an extreme complexity in reasoning about a program exhaustively, not far from analyzing generic binary code.

C is so permissive to be overkill for a lot of applications. Would this be more tractable with safer programming languages that avoid "wild" pointers, such as Rust?

Or maybe by extending the C syntax so that the programmer can give hints to the compiler what he means, instead of what he has written so that the compiler can detect mismatches?

BTW props on Frama-C, it's incredible what you guys are doing.
> Ruby is amazingly primitive

What? In what sense in Ruby primitive?
Wedding Dresses Online Blog
Which VPS provider is this?
I don't think the library situation is nearly as bad as some people--not necessarily the author of this presentation--make out.

For one, Haskell actually has a pretty good and growing collection of libraries, probably disproportionate to the language's popularity. Web development, in particular, is well represented: there are several competing web frameworks; Yesod even has commercial backing now. Haskell even has some libraries that are not well reproduced in other languages like QuickCheck and Parsec. I've also been looking at sbv lately, which seems rather more convenient than other languages' alternatives.

Additionally, libraries aren't the only thing that matters. In fact, most libraries are pretty trivial. I remember seeing a presentation by Brian O'Sullivan online about his experiences with using Haskell at a startup. One point that really stood out to me was about libraries: sure, some libraries (like JSON parsing, I believe) were missing; however, it only took him something like a couple of days to write it from scratch. Those days are easily overshadowed by Haskell's core advantages. I would much rather spend a couple of days writing a new library than trying to track down a bug Haskell's type system would have caught. The beauty of this system is also that each library only needs to be written once and can then be reused, making the world better for everyone.

Now, there are some other issues with Haskell. Cabal really is a big one. I just spent quite a while fighting cabal, and I'm not even sure how I won in the end :P. Happily, I believe people are working on addressing the cabal issue.

I'm sure there are other annoyances besides. But no language is entirely free of annoyances. Considering everything, I really do think Haskell is a good choice for a very wide range of programming problems, especially in a startup setting.
Woah.. this may be one of the few times so many hyperbolic adjectives in a HN post seemed justified ;)

Just fired it up now, and can attest it simply blows Siri's UX right out of the water.

Kudo's to the Google team!
AWS Storage Gateway Announces Gateway-Cached Volumes
I do use and like tabs, but they tend to have better window manager integration, as they are more or less a way to consolidate the "old" multiple window paradigm into a different interface, so for example I can cycle through my Firefox Tabs with Ctrl+Tab. For me they streamline the "usual" mode of browsing, but slow down other tasks, e.g., if I want to display something side by side I have to first pop them out into windows and let the WM handle it.

But what Google is introducing seems to be similar to their Google Talk "windows" that are already available in Gmail. They come in two modes: Either I get a small Ajax-y popup on the bottom right of my browser window, which I cannot resize, move or see when Alt+Tabbing/Ctrl+Tabbing. I absolutely loathe this mode. The second mode is where they pop out an actual window. I like this mode, as I can interact with the chat window as with every other window on my desktop. My assessment above is based on this experience.
Here, with the full iMac history for the sake of comparison: http://www.apple.com/imac/design/#evolution
I'm sure there are situations where you need to get someone to the DC quickly, so a Manhattan DC makes a lot of sense for an NYC based company. The current solution already worked the VAST majority of the time too. If they'd hosted it in central nowhere, people would criticize them for not planning appropriately for the times they need someone at the DC.
I don't even know Ruby, but it's clear that the idea that Ruby is an "amazingly primitive" language that people are using instead of Haskell because it has existing libraries and services or because "startups are not technical" is drastically wrong and almost insulting. To the contrary, Ruby, probably more than any other language, has a large community that's highly enthusiastic about its programming style and culture, which is the reason most of those libraries and ecosystems were created in the first place. I know this is just a few bullet points, but vaguely mentioning a few (good) reasons to evangelize Haskell (plus a motorcycle) along with three seemingly random relatively small issues as criticisms of Ruby (plus a horse and wagon) distorts reality almost to the point of unrecognizability.
Wedding Dresses Online Blog
Interesting Blog about wedding dresses online. Help you to find cheap and high quality wedding dress easily.
What will I possibly do if I have to go without Trello during a nuclear armageddon.
I don't see why it couldn't be both. Yes, phones can be very distracting (information when you don't need it), but they can also provide very useful information exactly when you need it.

It can bring interruptions into your life, but it can also simplify and optimize other parts of your life.
Would you pay $5 a month for the ability to downvote?
And then you need to write some serialization code or IPC and static type system is a pain or just makes it plain impossible to do (in which case this is a shortcoming of this particular type system, not the idea itself, but still).

No, I don't want to argue and I'm not religiously in favor of either unityped or typed languages. I have no problem in admitting that there are things that are made easier with static typing. I'm having good time writing both in OCaml and Erlang. On the other hand it worries me that proponents of static typing have difficulty admitting that even most sophisticated type systems are not suited for certain other tasks.
Man, you should see his Yacht!
Or filled with get rich quick scams. That reminds me of a Charles Stross novel, I think Accelerando.
...I know that HN people are mostly *NIX oriented or dislike Microsoft technologies ...but how about F#? ...wouldn't it provide most of the advantages of a ML family language but coupled with the "smoothness" of VS tooling and .Net integration that could take some of the deployment pains away and provide the "accelerated liftoff" needed by startups?

(It's a question, not suggestion... I must admit I've never had the balls to use ML of Lisp like languages in production so far...)
i'm a huge fan of python, and yet, after just the most superficial introduction to haskell i couldn't agree with you more.

i don't think it is the static typing alone that saves time, though. it is the static typing plus type inference.
Exactly, it is social engineering, and I for one would stay far away from doing any "business" with such a kind of people.
He is clearly talking about it from the answering questions side, that is why he is talking about it as a game.

Clearly SO is a great resource.

But I am guessing you never found iphonedevsdk.com, it had all the answers before SO did. Although SO has better explained answers.
> every single NoneType error I have gotten using in the python I'm paid to write would go away with a static type system.

Not true. Java has NullPointerException, and static typing does nothing to prevent it. Java doesn't have Maybe, or Option or whatever you call it, but `Option.IsNone` isn't any different from `if (obj == null)`.

> Every single function I've changed the signature of and then failed to change one caller would go away with a static type system.

Yes, static type systems are great for that. But if you are using Python, use pylint and rope.

> If I had Haskell's good type inference, I wouldn't have had to do any of this time-wasting endeavor.

I don't know about you but changing signatures is very low in my list of pain-points. If it's solved for my environment, superb. If it's not, it will sting once in a while but that's that.
The part about using iStock was more for temporary landing pages, say, to test out interest for a product.

I didn't know it was explicitly forbidden by their terms of service, although I wonder where they draw the line between a "logo" and an "illustration".

To me it seems like their restriction applies to using stock art as an actual logo for a real product, not as a quick placeholder for an MVP or landing page.
Even a cursory scan of the http://urlfind.org/?server-status list reveals scads of porn sites exposing their visitor's IP addresses:

(Note these links go to Apache server-status pages at the time of linking. This may change if the server admins wise up - to be on the safe side consider them NSFW):

http://black-tgirls.com/server-status
http://badexgfs.com/server-status
http://tubepornx.com/server-status
http://lesbianvalley.net/server-status
..... and many more .....

Personally, I don't care what consenting adults do with their genitals. But I think it's safe to assume that the visitors to these sites expect a certain level of privacy that's not being met.
yep, the OP is asking for a flamewar by putting the horse wagon and the "primitive" keyword in there.

...though I like the unintended message he's sending with the motorbike pic for Haskell: it's hot, fast, but it really can get you killed! :)
The hexadecimal numbers in the design on the front panels of the racks appear to say in part:

...Computing Oak Ridge National Laboratory Le...

(not too surprising, I suppose ;)
There is another amusing point. Take cars (again!)—aesthetics are very important there and design of a car is one of the main talking points. However you don't even see it when you use. On the other hand we stare at the computers all day long and some still say that looks of it do not matter.
> It's also interesting that the cover glass was a challenge, since monitors don't need cover glass; it's purely an aesthetic addition.

Screens don't need it, but that's not purely aesthetic. Having glass upfront means you can use whatever you want and clean that stuff, as the material is resilient and there's no leak around the seams. Also it's more robust against people poking their fingers into the screen, and more rigid overall. In D.Rams parlance, "good design has a purpose", and here it's a blend between form and function.
Ask HN: How do you compete with other startups which have more money available ?
Most of the discussions over competition center around startup v/s big corporates, and the competitive edge people cite is the ability of startups to move quickly. That's all fine. But what is the competitive advantage in a startup v/s startup battle, considering that one of the startups has a decent money in the bag. How does the other one go about it then ? What advice would you give ?

There is a Quora question about the same concern:
http://www.quora.com/Startup-Advice-and-Strategy/How-do-you-compete-with-other-startups-not-large-businesses
No, College degree matters. In fact in many cases your resume may not even pass through the filters if you don't have college degree on it.

People seriously need to think before dropping out. What do you plan to do, if your start up folds up? Which is a very likely scenario given how many start ups fold up.

You can do the start up thing anytime. But going to college has always been a young mans game.
It's weird that this is avaliable on iOS, but not on Android yet.

Even if you're lucky enough to live in the US and be able to use Google Now (the voice search like in this iOS and Siri) you won't have the same features available. If you, God forbid, change your language away from US English into something like horrible UK English the features are disabled and just becomes dictation instead.

I'm sorry about being a little bit annoyed, but I can't understand at all why Google put in place extremely stupid restrictions of features requiring their users to hex-edit their binaries in order to get access to the availible features. It's moronic.
Nonsense. People buy desktop computers often to get work done. Function in that case relates to productivity, and productivety often derives from better performance.

I just moved from a Mac Pro to a Linux Box precisely because none of Apple's current lineup can make the power per $ I can buy from a PC box. I just bought a PC that absolutely destroys the best Mac you can buy, and my personal work, be it compilation, digital content creation, or even playing Battlefield 3 @ 2500x1600 on a 30" monitor at great framerates, will be vastly improved. Can you buy a 4.2Ghz i7 from Apple? Can you get a liquid cooled iMac with Dual GeForce 680 GTXs?

If I were to buy an iMac, it's form would absolutely deliver less function. I have ample desktop space, the look of the monitor/CPU combo has zero effect on the function of the software or how I interact with it.

However, the constrained geometry does have a large effect on the thermal/cooling solutions you can pack into it, or whether you can put something like a GeForce 690GTX into it.

Mobile computing, you can make an argument about form and function, since the ergonomics and weight of the device matter a lot. For getting work done on the desktop, its completely irrelevant unless you're trying to show off.

If the iMac were a stand-in for an Apple TV, and the computer needed to be hung on the wall, then by all means, make it a flat panel. But desktop boxes in tower configurations in no way inhibit most people, often the desktop sits under the table anyway, and only the monitor, keyboard, and mouse are above the desk.

Now, I realize this is going to insult a lot of iMac owners, but I am a power user, I've owned nothing but top of the line boxes, until I got my 2006 Mac Pro. I stuck with it for along time, hoping Apple was going to get seriously about keeping up with top-end PCs on the GPU and CPU front, but they never caught up after being briefly ahead. And so, I finally got frustrated with Apple's lack of attention to professionals who want to buy Formula-1 machines. I am not interested in desktop machines that are not much different than laptops.
I'm looking at open-sourcing my DNA at some point. Partially for my own curiosity but also because we are in a time where companies are patenting genes and I'd like to see the open-source community put down a body of prior art.
tl;dr ..but ...where is Python?
"How do I exit a Modern UI app?" is most viewed Windows 8 Question
It looks like they are issuing 50,000 visas this year. Any stats on how many people apply for this?
what about copying other website layouts and designs? it seems like everyone do that, unique design is something very rare

why pay for design if I can copy something(+small modifications)?
It seems a bit contradictory that buying a gift for someone is okay but buying one for yourself is a sin. Both can be joyous experiences. If experiences and relationships are more important than possessions, we should ask for experiences with a person as a gift, and actively discourage all possession gifts. (How boring is an essential gift? Thanks for the cheese-grater dad!).
The rise of platformed creativity in Asia
Although Jobs' negotiation with Disney wrt distribution included the concession from Disney that the Pixar logo would be of the same size and prominence as the Disney one. As far as I'm aware this was pretty much unheard of.
The 80 character wide columns probably have typographic reasons. The general rule is that everything wider than ~80 characters will make it easier for the reader to lose the line when jumping down to the next line, and therefore make the text harder to read.
If you look through the gallery you'll see that their disk subsystem is using a distributed filesystem, Lustre (http://www.lustre.org/).
Still doesn't speak back to me
It's the tenth most used tag on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/tags
OP is suggesting using a new pump to pump from the trucks, in lieu of buckets - not the pumps that are submerged.
> But getting people to believe that is the RDF's power

Crap "design" doesn't mean that good design doesn't exist, and cannot be used to waive the latter away.

https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design
"primitive" is an awkwardly chosen word with negative connotations... I suppose it is in the sense that it doesn't do type inference (or reasoning about types at all, for that matter). Like a Lisp it simply executes what you write without any validation beyond syntax checking.

The idea is that Haskell's type-based, lazy approach allows for a more high-level approach of specifying what you want instead of how you want it executed. I'm not sure it always succeeds in that, but that's another matter. It's an interesting language nevertheless, with elegant code, but if I need to build something quickly I fall back to Python (which is "primitive" in the same sense as Ruby).
Is Facebook becoming the next MySpace?
That's how I saw it. The "no company resources" angle is why so many people have their inspirational idea "while on vacation, and driving a friend's car" ;-)
A million times this.

Diesel is extremely dangerous stuff. I nearly blew myself up a few years ago by not cleaning out a diesel tank with detergent properly that I was welding. Diesel residue vapourised and went boom. Fortunately there wasn't enough in it to create a large explosion but it required new underpants.

To add to that, my only car accident was due to having diesel on my shoes. My foot slipped off the brake and I rear ended some poor guy.
It is worth noting that in Haskell you don't have something like NullPointerException (the type system won't allow for that), and using Maybe actually is a bit different than writing 'if (obj != null)' everywhere, if you are into stuff like monads or functors. Besides, in Java null pointer can pop up pretty much everywhere, but in Haskell you probably shouldn't store all your data in Maybe.
Absolutely loved the title and the thoughts. Pleasant change from all the "How we hacked into YC" posts flooding HN every now and then.
> Like a Lisp

You know about Typed Racked and possibly other efforts, right?

http://docs.racket-lang.org/ts-guide/
I generally recommend watching "black mirror" - a funny 3 episode satirical tv thing which is about this very topic. it's worth people's time
no - that is not a solution.
Say that was my co-worker.
She doesnt want to leave her account open on my machine for multiple reasons - even if it is SELinux locked.

Mobile sites are useful for evanescent logins from tablets.
I don't do databases, for the most part. I am lucky enough to have an application that can do with very little transactional state, which we keep in redis (using instance storage), replicated to another instance and backed up to S3.
well, you got it in the first paragraph - because Windows isnt Unix, and people dont use it for production. F# is in theory nice, but devops'ing windows, I just dunno man.
It's not featured anywhere is my point. It's not in the gallery, it's not in any of the big shots, it's a small shot in a sequence.

The number of angle shots of the computer effectively make it appear as though the computer is 100x thinner than it is.
"[Insert joke about Python being so intuitive and easy to use no one asks questions about it]."

Hey, that must be true of Perl too! :)
"startups arent technical"

I guess YOUR startup isnt technical... But there are in fact technical startups out there. It's just that they make more money than yours, do better and are generally cooler.
Awesome site. Just awesome. The page transitions and text reflow are brilliant.

That big box on the right full of whatever that is (chat/twitter/whatever) is just a void that not only doesn't interest me, but means what I am reading (which is why I would be on the site if this wasn't a well-played usability test ;) is off to the side. I guess you'll iron out these kinks as time goes by, but yeah. That box on the right is just an ocean of who cares, to me.

Also there is a bug: when you are editing text in the chat box, it flicks pages back and forth.

Anyway I'm off to donate to your IndieGoGo campaign. Good luck with the rest of the project!

edit: had another look - I guess that box makes sense when you're collaborating on a story, but pure reading mode might be good as a default?
He probably should have said that then. I didn't know what he meant initially either.
I have some sort of eye/brain issue when reading big blocks of text if the line spacing is too tight I'll start reading the next line down in the middle of a sentence, particularly when I'm tired.

more text left to right (@~90% page width) + appropriate vertical spacing (~1.25 depending on font) = bueno for my eyeballs at all times.

sorry, personal preferences.

I'd actually like to see some metrics/research on that.

I know a few websites (google,etc) have done studies with eyetracking and such and tried to quantify what the user was looking at and make some generalized assumptions.

I'm not sure typography optimizations made based on the typical ADD user scanning for one little blurb of information from search engine results, work as well when the user is attempting to "consume" all the content on the page as in the case of an interesting news article or blog.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the...
> It is worth noting that in Haskell you don't have something like NullPointerException, the type system doesn't allow for that - so while you're point is relevant to Java it doesn't hold here. The closest you can get to something like null pointer is using 'maybe' type, but when you do so, you have to everywhere explicitly handle what happens if variable has no value (or the value of 'nothing' more precisely).

Which, as I mentioned, isn't any different from checking from nulls everywhere. Or if you are so inclined, write an Option class with the desired interface and use it everywhere where the value in nullable. My point is using Maybe is the same as manually checking for null.

case maybeValue of
Just value -> ...
Nothing -> ...

is the same as

if (val != null) {
....
} else {
...
}

If you see the compiler forcing you to always use Maybe for nullable types as an advantage, good for you. Personally, I don't see it as a big deal.
I agree. Plus the visual and mouse distance between the "Compose" button and the lower right corner Compose pane is far and uncomfortable. Ugh.
Ask HN: Could rapid development of the JVM help it beat the CLR?
Oracle, after being barmy for some time, has turned into a good mentor of the Java Platform...

It has started working for the improvement of now fully open sourced OpenJDK, by implimenting the research prototype of the Da Vinci Machine, in the form of InvokeDynamic, for multiple language support. It claims to improve the startup time in Java 8. Is JVM platform of the future?