skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm jaded, but the first thing I thought when I read this was:

"If I asked this question, 5 minutes later it would be closed as subjective"
@hatetobethatguy, you're spot on. In an effort to keep the reading list concise I skimped on the historical literature. Do you have a good "first" reference on map reduce? Lisp?
YMMV. I'm also working part-time along with full-time school, and my average school day doesn't end till around 3. This ends up with me not home till 8 usually. I would never be able to hold to any kind of schedule like this, since my days vary so wildly, both in amount of school work and work work.

Personally, what keeps me from procrastinating is that at this point of my school career the work I have to do at home is mostly project based, so I actually find most of it somewhat interesting, unlike the busy-work laden gen-ed courses I was in the first two years (when I did have a big problem with procrastination).
For the developer, or the bug reporter?
pg,patio11,swombat,edw519 to name a few.
Interesting how similar this is to http://www.brainworth.net/. I wonder if they had some interaction?
That's a funny defense of ASCAP. Keep in mind that ASCAP is a middle man that Pandora is replacing.
Furthermore, those things were all created by (wait for it) people.

I guess we can appreciate the maker, but not the things they make?

Or perhaps we're oversimplifying this whole "materialism" thing and people are more complex than what they make, or buy, or why they did either.
It is worth remembering that Pandora payed all of the money it made plus $20mm in investor dollars beyond that for royalties last year. Pandora has never been profitable.
I think we have seen more and more companies marketing the 'idea' of perfection and effortlessness rather than measurable improvements, because we're so tied to the emotion of being stress-free.

And what could be easier to market as this than the "magic" of modern technology? I helped a friend out with setting up a Mac, and to describe how time machine worked I found myself speaking about it in anthropomorphic terms "It knows. It works. It will do that for you." And the same thing is coming with so much machine learning coming into our lives "It learns. Don't give up, it will get better if you train it." And then there are the personal assistants "It hears you. It sees your eyes close. It knows when you've fallen into deep sleep."
Bonus points: if you A/B test, you'll also learn to make improvements which go against the advice of the experts... and the "experts."

The first example which jumps to mind: "Sitewide navigation should be consistent" is a common UX bromide and is provably suboptimal with regards to conversions of interest, including signup to SaaS trials and success with checkout at e-commerce sites. (n.b. those are my results, and I've repeated each multiple times with consulting clients, but they may not be your results, which is why you want to A/B test.)
Why on earth would I waste...

I think the point of his post was that to "unreasonable people" like him, it's not a waste. Or at least, that was his experience, and he wanted to share.

I don't think he's making the metaphysical argument on life happiness that other posters seem to think he's making. He's just sharing something that worked for him, and suggesting that people who are like him give it a try.
wow! what a great read. This article confirms the anti-semitism in USSR, which has been described by several others.

I am surprised there is no mention of Grigory Perelman[1] in the discussion here on HN. The genius mathematician who proved PoinCare Conjecture, a problem standing for 100 years. And then later on refused the million dollar prize which was to be awarded for the proof[2].

The reason, this article reminds of Perelman is that he also faced similar kind of discrimination, in the USSR. But it was more subtle in Perelman's case. And he was able to get what he wanted from the USSR system, in terms of going to the university he wanted.

Masha Gessen has written a biography on Perelman in her book 'Perfect Rigor'. The book also serves as a commentary on the Russian Math culture (which is very very impressive by the way) and their education system.

Now reading this article, I want to read Edward Frenkel's book as well.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman

[2] - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/grigori-perelman-re...

Edit: typo
Way to go guys! Keep killing it :D
A fantastic deep-dive. If you want to know just how deep you can take the craft of presenting beautiful type, this is a great example.
It's the same story every time someone posts one of these.
1. Be Motivated
2. (optional) Use (1.) to be healthy, and therefore increase your ability to be (1.).

Yep, that's been the story for as long as people have been thinking about success and communicating to others on how success works.
The rumors of Java's death are, indeed, greatly exaggerated.
ambivalent; simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action.
JVM is a wonderful thing.
Yeah, actually this wiki is a good one. Just added my summary here: http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422658/FrontPage
> None of this will be welcome news to the army of fanatical Ruby developers who believe the language's syntax, its high developer productivity, and its overall philosophy far outweigh any performance disadvantage it might have compared to other languages.

I'm a relative newbie to the Ruby world, but as best I can tell, the Ruby and Rails communities both accepted long ago that they weren't made for Twitter levels of traffic.

Fact is, almost no one has Twitter levels of traffic besides Twitter. That's why Ruby and Rails are still so popular, because for ~99% of performance needs, they're more than capable and also extremely pleasant to work with.
One thing you have to watch out for on Intrade-Betfair arbitrage is the not insignificant risk of not doing the trades you think you're doing. I know Intrade has rules that various events will cause trades to be stopped and completed trades will be undone. Betfair might as well, but the two markets don't have any synchronization on when or why.

Since you'll constantly have many times what you expect to gain in a day at risk on the markets, a single rollback event could put you very deep in the red.
Would have been nice if the title was "Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-Scala move", since that's what actually happened.

(They do use a bit of regular Java, but the majority of the core code is Scala, and it's Scala that should be getting the top line credit here, not Java.)
Their diagnosis of why normal form elements faired better than the faux (custom) elements is lacking:

(1) There is no evidence to suggest the reason people didn't like the faux elements was because they weren't they defaults. They could have just been plain inferior. For example, the second faux element approximates a multi-select element, which opens when clicked like a familiar select dropdown, but which also allows users to select multiple choices. Whether this was done with a faux element or a native one, I can't imagine it ever performing better than checkboxes.

(2) One of the biggest differences between the faux elements and the default elements was the fact that, with the default elements, they included black labels above the elements. I know the point of the faux elements was to save space, but I can't help but wonder how they would have fared had they included labels as well.
I'm sorry but I can't see how this is applicable for my situation. What kind of studies are you talking about? University (First degree)? Second degree ? High School? I've just started my first year of computer science and mathematics. I study all day long and still don't find time for anything else. Also, try adding a girlfriend or a spouse to the equation. With all the positive sides of it, it adds a lot of distractions during the day that you can't control.
The novice programmer says: "My language is better than yours."

The wise programmer says: "Use the right tool for the job."

Please HN, we're wiser than trending stories would suggest.
Patent suits target Google, Intel, hundreds more for encrypting web traffic
Starbucks Offers Square Wallet Beginning Today
Evaluating a Software Vendor's Resume: Part-Time Help or Full-Time Hire?
Square Wallet Now Live In 7,000 Starbucks Nationwide
This move marks the beginning of the end of a four year long effort for Twitter to rid themselves of Ruby.

History will remember the entire Ruby industry as a series of compounding failures.

The de facto formalisation and specifications.

The black-box behaviour of core development.

The broken-linked, un-versioned docs.

The rampant cargo-cult mentality.

The arcane exceptions.

The meta-frameworks.

Gem hell.

1.9/2.0

Rails.
It's interesting that when it comes time to scale to serve enormous loads, you have to be willing to change fundamental parts of your stack which you've made a huge investment in. Ruby holds up well enough on the majority of the sites that use it, but when you have traffic the size that Twitter does, it's just not good enough. And it turns out that Java provides a nice tradeoff with high performance and high-level code.

It's also interesting to see different companies approach this problem differently - Facebook famously recreated a way to run their PHP source code (by compiling it to C and then running it natively) instead of actually rewriting the source to a different language. I wonder if something similar would have been possible for Twitter, or if they weren't happy with how their existing code was structured in the first place which may have made the rewrite more attractive.
Twitter's better performance is because of a better architecture than Java language. Further, the performance is from JVM, so you can use any of the JVM language including JRuby to get similar effects.

This articles seems more like link-bait to me.
Ive heard that Java is DSL for turning large blocks of XML into stack traces. But it does it fast and reliably.
I agree. I think I could write a scalable Twitter in mostly Ruby. And I've never written a line of Ruby in my life.
I'm sure many could afford to reduce the items they have to invest in proportionally more expensive alternative. My biggest worry is the time and obsessiveness behind this blog post; that, by the title alone, it's not even about "better quality", but rather the pinacle of all that is holy.

If you wear the Socks from Gammarelli and drink beer exclusively from the smallest and oldest abbey you can find, you may feel like you rule the world with every step and every sip, but you will certainly lose grasp on reality and find yourself alone.

>Last year, I met a Swiss dude with a taste for luxury. He smoked expensive European cigarettes. Drank the finest spirits. Attended opera by himself on evenings when he was enthralled by the program but could find no suitable companion.

via http://www.slate.com/articles/life/shopping/2012/04/like_my_...
Well put. People also don't seem to get that Square is not becoming Starbucks's payment processing provider.

edit/correction: This article reports that Square will become their processor, but none of Square or Starbucks's actual releases seem to mention this. Interested if anyone can actually clarify.

edit 2: Took a while, but I think I figured it out. Square actually is processing SB's payments. It's a big win for Chase Paymentech since they are the actual entity behind Square's processing and a big loss for BofA and First Data. Interesting. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/square-starbucks-chase-bank-o...
No. It is the JVM that should be getting the credit.
Medical dispensaries are opposed to legalization for recreational use because they currently have a state-enforced near-monopoly on Cannabis sales.

Unintended regulatory consequences in three, two, one...
Yeah, that line feels like lazy reporting to me. Any involvement at any in the Ruby community over the past few years and they would know that very few Ruby developers are concerned about the performance issues past a certain scale.

Seems like a no brainer that something that is a lot more strict and static will outperform something that has to deal with many more possibilities at runtime.
Magnetised needles and steady hands.
Facebook also has many more features, which probably means more code, which probably means larger switching costs. Take anything: photos, privacy logic, news feed, etc., and Facebook has the more sophisticated feature set.
Counterpoints:

Emergency Supplies.

Gifts.

Medicine.

Pokemon cards.
I don't think so. Java outperforms JRuby, probably because of typing. See: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=al...
Passport. Credit Card. The rest is gravy.
Quite simply: all else being equal they will take a non-Asian candidate on the margin.

Or if you meant you'd never heard about anti-Jewish discrimination in the admissions process at Harvard and other places, you should read http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...
I'm not a Ruby developer, but I still can't help thinking, "WTF".

No technology stack is perfect, but I've yet to meet a stack that was pure evil. There may be some cargo-cult personalities in the Ruby community, but, if there is, it's only because there is value in it.

An infinitesimal number of sites have to deal with Twitter's scale problems. The rest can work on getting crap done instead of worrying about Maseratti problems.
Thanks for that, will definitely add them to my list of resources to work through.
Ask PG: Why does hackerne.ws now redirect to News.YC?
I much prefer the hackerne.ws URL - it's shorter and more descriptive. Any chance of getting this change reverted?
very nice. I would've wished for an even more pulled back interface. I tried to do prototype something similar some time ago, but never finished it: http://jsfiddle.net/dirkk0/MySJf/show/
No, it's a designer with an interest in all design.

I know Dustin sometimes alienates people, but it makes me sad to see such a mean comment in reply to a thoughtful essay. In fact I'll coin a term for it: strawmean (strawman + mean) because you've had to invent a position he didn't take in order to attack it.

What makes me even sadder is the huge mob who upvoted this comment. Because that is the decline of HN embodied right there.

Illegitimi non carborundum, Dustin.
In my experience the English spoken in Singapore is as good as that spoken anywhere, although my time in Singapore wasn't that long. My earlier comment has obviously taken somewhat differently to how I meant it.
Yeah, it's not about the literal details, but how the user perceives the details.
Yeah, I think i'll start off with Android as I do use that the most, but I have an iPhone as well so I can tackle that later.
I want native apps more so I can sell the apps easier. Until there is an easy way to package/sell web apps or monetise them better, I think native apps are still the way to go.

Plus everyone I know whinges/complains about the apps that "wrap" a web app, because they're usually slow/clunky/limited, so that's another reason native apps win for me.
PhoneGap looks interesting, will look into that, thanks.
As someone who hasn't been able to finish their degree...it has been one of my biggest regrets in life. Graduate school will only expand on your opportunities. I urge you to continue to go to school before you join the workforce. You have until you're 65 to retire, that's a very long time to work.
I call bullshit. This doesn't spell the end of anything. Ruby isn't the right tool for the job and hasn't been at Twitter for a while. This is old news. Ruby has a place in a lot of other scenarios.
Not to be confused with FLCL (Gainax going insane).
> History will remember the entire Ruby industry as a series of compounding failures.

This is a bit dramatic. Despite its faults, the language and community around it have been quite a success story. It's had a huge and positive influence on the web development world.
The thesis of this blog post, by the same author, is clearly about the literal best. He could easily have asked "What is a good place for ramen?" or "What should I look for to find a good ramen place?" or even "What is your favorite place for ramen?"

And note that he's not asking for the restaurants, he's specifically asking about the product: the best ramen in tokyo. I think it fits this blog post very well.

If I go to Italy for the first time, I won't go for "the best pasta in Italy", I'd go and try authentic italian pasta. There is a huge difference.
It was an opportunity for attacks.
While I can agree that scala/java/jvm deserve some credit for this (typing, concurrency support), I think stories like this do a disservice in that they underestimate the importance of building a system a second time with all the lessons learned the first time around.

This is not unlike those stories where a developer writes a trivial program in a new language that is similar to a trivial program they wrote in another language 1+ years prior and compare the results. "I wrote program foo in 30 lines of code in language X, which is much better than the 120 lines of code it took me in language Y two years ago". It's natural for a developer to write a shorter program two years later since they have 2 more years under their belt. In fact I'd expect the same program to be much better two years later even if written in the same language.
Markets are by in large not NEARLY as rational as conservative economists make them out to be. Your point about the political biases informing the positions that traders were taking further supports that.
i run CM7 nightly on my original Evo 4G (WiMax). i have done a fair bit of customizing it, but without learning Java in addition to the huge android framework, it's a pretty gnarly task to make significant changes.

i think that firefox OS will do to the smartphone ecosystem what github did to open source contribution revival. not having to touch the OS guts, and just scripting against some additional APIs is a huge win for simplification to the whole hacking process.

the mozilla-specific stuff will start proprietary like android, but all of their work is submitted for standards adoption and is almost certainly needed in one form or another.
If that were the case, they could have just run JRuby and avoided rewriting a bunch of code.

The truth is, Scala is actually helpful with the architecture they came up with AND its great that it runs on the JVM.
I was just thinking about doing this. I always find it weird that the riser pipes in my apartment heat up at times unrelated to when my radiators are on. The time-of-day temperature fluctuations also annoy me (because if I open a window to cool off and then the heat turns off for the night, I can never get warm again).

All in all, HVAC was my biggest surprise when moving to NYC. I lived in Chicago before where every structure I ever lived in had central heating and air conditioning. Set the thermostat, enjoy. Moving to NYC, I have to screw around with steam heating and window AC units. (The corollary is that nobody in NYC has anything nice because NYC is the thing that's nice. If only I cared in the slightest.)
The wise programmer rewrites his stack in another language to scale right?
Allow me to be withering in my criticism of GP.

Cargo-culting is what you accuse others of when they are learning and you do not like them.

The appropriate way to deal with newbies who do not fully understand the consequences of the decisions they have made (perhaps even while they are advocating others join them), is to explain their rhetorical and technological shortcomings in a way that others can learn from. Accusing someone of "cargo-culting" is just unhelpful character assassination.

Also, weak-sauce.
They used Scala, not Java, on JVM.
Have you worked on other sites with a similar scale to Twitter? If not, how would you know?
Basically, the article is made up. You would be hard pressed to run a generator for 6 hours on a gallon of gasoline.

We are talking about urine here- 95% water.
I'm pretty sure most Washington counties voted to do away with walk-in voting.

Counties have the option to allow it, but most don't, so most individuals don't have this option.

Not that they seem to mind, though - I haven't heard of any complaints, anecdotally.
...I never get it why scaling is seen as such a "hot" problem and everybody seems inclined to make language and technology choices based on it ...I bet Twitter could have scaled well keeping Ruby and rewriting performance critical parts in C and maybe keep tweaking and tuning the Ruby interpreter, much along the way the Youtube team did with Python and C and now some Go I hear...

I think their decision was more influenced by the experience of their team of programmers or by employable talent pool - they went the JVM|Java|Scala route because they had people with experience in high level languages and the JVM. If they happened to start with a team with "C hackers" background they would've gone the Ruby|C way and it would've worked as well.

...I think almost any language and technology can (be made to) scale, even to Twitter scale, at least if it's open-source and you have people with the required technology to hack around the internals and recode performance critical parts in lower level languages (basically C, C++ or Go nowadays)
It's also worth rebutting douchebag trolling with the Ruby community's actual merits.

The Ruby community, really really cares about developer tooling and teaching others. Ruby is also one of the nice places where object oriented programming touches metaprogramming.

Don't forget that a lot of sysadmin work is done in Ruby now. Both Puppet and Chef are written in Ruby, and that Github and Heroku both came up out of the Ruby community.
Cryptography Patent Troll: RC4 Algorithm + SSL/TLS
The wise programmer does not write programs. Therefore, the wise programmer does not exist.
> Gem hell.

Is this really a problem? Every package/dependency manager seems to blow up on occasion. Gems haven't given me the problems that I've had with Pip/CPAN/Autoconf.
What this says to me, a non-RoR user, is that it's harder to build websites with Java than with RoR, but if you pass a certain (very unusual) level of traffic, you'll wish you'd made the extra effort; otherwise, you'll be glad you didn't. (Extra effort isn't free.)

Fine, but what I wish I understood was why RoR is so popular to begin with. The claim is always that Rails is so wonderful that it's worth learning Ruby just to be able to build web apps with Rails. Well, if so, then why isn't there a sequel to RoR: Python on Rails? "The benefit people care most about (Rails, not Ruby) using the language you already know (Python)." Since Python, Perl, and Ruby are so similar except in syntax, and people love the Rails part more than the Ruby part, and so many more people know and love Python, and new Python web app frameworks appear all the time...why isn't one of them Python on Rails after years of Pythonistas being forced to abandon Python and learn Ruby just to be able to use Rails?

Is there some significant difference between Python and Ruby that explains this? What makes Rails so attractive and why isn't the same thing done with Python?
Agree and disagree.

It sounds to me like the void created by ditching his personal goods was replaced with the time to find 'the best' possible items. To the point of obsession. In fact, I'm glad he stuck to an essential item like silverware rather than the luxury goods that I'm sure he's got.

In that sense, I think it contrasts the idea of minimalism.

Obsessive maximalism.
Hell: not really a problem.
OpenMP 4.0 may offer important solutions for targeting and vectorization
Clocks vs alarms is a new insight. During hour-scale procrastination, I do check the clock often. An alarm near the deadline, instead of clock-checking, could force me to start the task immediately because of uncertainty. I'll try it right now.

EDIT: I just tried it. Unable to check a clock, I felt a real urgency to get things done. Very interesting idea.