skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Java and PHP have been around long before Ruby."

It seems like they are confusing Ruby and Rails in the first point. PHP, Java, and Ruby were all first publicly released in 1995.

From their respective Wikipedia articles:

"Lerdorf released PHP/FI as "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0" publicly on June 8, 1995"

"Sun Microsystems released the first public implementation as Java 1.0 in 1995."

"The first public release of Ruby 0.95 was announced on Japanese domestic newsgroups on December 21, 1995."
I have been asking, and wondering why would anyone want to use AWS. It is insanely expensive. It is Slow on CPU, Slow on I/O, Low on Bandwidth, Low on memory, and Zero Support. Compared to many other alternatives that gives you 3 – 4 times the on all the above plus better support for the same price. Even their High CPU and Memory plan is still on the expensive side, only the High I/O SSD offers some value. AWS works great when you are in the mid range of expanding, then you can calculate your usage and book their server in advance using Reserved Instances. Instagram and Netflix as example. But that is hassle you have to put though, there are alternatives that are priced and perform just as well without using Reserved Instances. And once you got past the mid range, a managed dedicated server and some instant cloud severs should be much more cost effective.

Apart from being forced by VC ( because they are heavily invested in Amazon ) i could not understand why startup are choosing AWS at all.
Reason #11: Ruby isn't fun. ;)
The website is completely broken in Firefox for Android. It loads a different article (at this time, it's loading the first one in the sidebar, rather than this article on Opera, which is the second---but at least if you tap that item it loads it), and has a sidebar which covers about a third of the text (always bad), and disables all zooming (almost always bad---please, web developers, refrain from doing that... I know best when I want to scroll).
What exactly was the point of this blog post? Quite a few of those reasons are valid and none of the arguments against the 10 reasons are good. It reads like "OMG BUT RUBY! MY PRECIOUS!!1"
I use Apple's Pages when something needs to look pretty. The thing creates wonderful pdf's. They make angels weep tears of joy.

Of course as soon as you need to include a formula somewhere, LaTeX is pretty much your only option.

Oh and because I'm lazy I use wordpress's editor to make a blogpost nearly every day. It's clunky and I would prefer markdown, but the annoyance of switching to a markdown-enabled blogging platform is just too much.
Another event that sets off alarm bell was sedition charge (one of the most abused laws) against cartoonist Aseem Trivedi.
Thankfully you can still have some faith in Indian judicial system. Full story here: http://goo.gl/evx4J
Considering public institution are using taxpayers' money, I think all of them should be using open source software, for both budget reasons and in principle (to help grow the public open source community, and then benefit from it in the long term).

The problem here also sounds like somebody was trying to use Microsoft Office docs in an older version of Open Office. So they were the ones locking themselves in before, and now their solution for having hassle-free work is to reward Microsoft for it, and lock themselves back in? It's like a drug addict who thinks withdrawing is too painful, so might as well continue taking the drugs.
LaTeX is one of those things somebody helps you with. Check any professor's book and there will be a dedication to the guy who helped them put it all into proper LaTeX.
Europe Seeks More Taxes From U.S. Multinationals
Yes - I was until 5 weeks ago living in Melbourne, I'm aware of the NBN and Tony Abbott's delusions about technology ;-)
AMD is still contributing code to Linux
Of course, if sociologists accepted the former definition, they wouldn't have anything to talk about.

Conflating the two definitions and describing people as 'racist' for re-enforcing racial imbalances in society is disingenuous.

A lot of people oppose affirmative action (thus earning the label 'racist' according to the latter definition) not because they are prejudiced, but simply because they do not believe in the efficacy of the process.
I don't think that is entirely true. I've met really nice Ruby developers and know many online (twitter/github/irc etc) who are really nice and welcoming and always want to help. Of course there will always be loud and obnoxious people in a programming community but so far I've honestly haven't met a single such person.
Yes but replacing the last dozen feet at a customer's discretion is a lot different than having the majority of internet users connecting via something like 4G/WiMax
It's not just the format. MS Office really is better than Libre Office. Even Apple's iWork suite is better than Libre Office.

And now that everything is becoming mobile. What choice do you have? The only office suites that work on mobile devices are Office and iWork ...
The problem with W3Schools is not that it's horribly bad in any way.

It's that it's so consistently mediocre, and at the same time, so prevalent.

We need not accept this. The task that they're trying to achieve can be done so much better.
IPad To Dominate Tablet Downloads For Next Five Years, Owning 56% In 2017
"We might even see a flying car".

Sign me up! :-)
which reminds me of http://www.codeclub.org.uk/
pretty much yes. it's a magnified version of the problem cable (DOCSIS) internet has - the more active peers in your area, the slower it gets.
People like to talk about their hobbies (and jobs)! Nothing wrong with writing down a few bullets about a language, especially since programmers like to argue about which language is the best.
Letter to Maharashtra CM
Response from judge after girl gets arrested in india for protesting over hartal after the death of a political leader.

Harthal : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartal
In short, you just shut down the whole state for a day.

News article : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/21-year-old-girl-arrested-for-Facebook-post-slamming-Bal-Thackeray/articleshow/17276979.cms
Secrets Of A Professional Writer With NY Times Bestselling Author CJ Lyons
I have been asking, and wondering why would anyone want to use AWS

It's dead-simple to get started.

It's widely known. I can convince my CTO to use Amazon for cloud-hosting. He's never heard of Rackspace or Joylent - people who are serious about running their infrastructure on the cloud will research and know about them but for quick experimenting and companies just getting their feet wet, Amazon has a big edge here.
I sometimes want to make a "posh looking document" on a WYSIWYG environment. If the content is only text, and maybe a few images, I use LibreOffice rather than start LaTeX; there's also less overhead to start writing the text.

(Also, LaTeX is rather annoying if you are writing in a language with widespread use of tildes or some other symbols)
No, it's the most genius software product ever because it is like a drug -- it attracts newcomers with a seemingful ease, then sucks all their life juices into managing larger documents, finally lefts them with a load of experience, skills and already made docs that only work in Office and cannot be possibly replicated (Office formats and algorithms are build purely of quirks and leaking heuristics).
Try Chronon. While Omniscent is a research project, Chronon is a full blown product http://www.chrononsystems.com/
The obvious problem I think, notwithstanding the fork of OpenOffice, is that MS Office is the de-facto standard and it's not in the interest of MS to have the compatibility gap closed. The critical issue with OpenOffice is rooted in Cat String Theory. Compatibility with MS Office is the driving force for development and it's not producing the best UI/UX experience.

I think LibreOffice needs to step out of the shadow of MS Office.
subtext: ruby is awesome, i'm a massive fanboy and you should use it.
They forgot driver licenses.

(OK, that's not a technology. I think there's a fair chance that children born this year will not need to learn how to drive just to use a car.)
Well, my point was that Apple's trackpads are the same hardware as what's used in Windows laptops out there too, so any difference in usability and features (e.g. gestures) is driver-dependent and there is no technical reason why they would exist only on one platform.

For actual usage I definitely prefer a mouse or a trackpoint.
Yes, that is exactly our point with the collaborative album creation.

1. The issue is related to the way how the photos come to us. If it is via free account where we don't allow direct upload to our app, it gets a bit complicated with the collaboration. So our current intention is to allow collaboration only for premium accounts. However, we have to think a bit more about the prices and the target audience. We welcome new ides.

2. Yes, we get it.
Short Interview with Owner of the Texas, Steve McNair
have you even tried lyx? http://www.lyx.org/
Strange they didn't even consider Google Docs or web for the purpose. It is quite understandable that experience with OpenOffice is not as smooth as it is with Microsoft's word or Apple's iWork, but why not give web a chance and then decide this?

As it is Governments are supposed to explore all options and then choose the 'technically acceptable most economical' option? I think Google docs will be sweet and better in some ways for the council, considering that these entities are in dire need of more collaboration.

Just my 0.02 cents.
1) If he wanted to provoke in the name of art, then it didn't cost him, he managed to achieve his objectives.

2) Being able to smuggle a watch through security at an airport wouldn't be grounds for much celebration.

3) What kind of bears have horns?

4) We don't know the full details (the official story could be wildly exaggerated), but if the TSA over-reacted then it doesn't really matter what the intentions of the artist were. If the artist was just a dude with a strange watch or if he was trying to show us the limits of our freedoms, our freedoms are still limited.
If you use a Mac I cannot recommend OmmWriter enough.
http://www.ommwriter.com/
I've used both OpenOffice and MS Office for extended periods and I can honestly say that MS Office is significantly better.

Yes you can do pretty much anything you need to do in OpenOffice but if you spend a significant amount of time using them then the little bits of polish in MS Office really add up and for a tool you use a lot that's a big deal.

And that goes directly to the budget reasons you mention. As a developer I wanted the best tools for the job, I didn't want the cheapest tool, I wanted the ones that allowed me to be most productive because that saved money. I don't see any reason why my standard as a tax payer should be different - I want people working on my behalf to have the best tools for the job, so they can do the best job for me.

I'd love it if Open Office was as good as MS Office but it isn't and until that changes, it's a bit more complex than you're making out.
Comments wouldn't solve much, I fear. For example take a look at PHP's documentation or MSDN. Both have community content in form of comments. In PHP's case it's a few helpful hints and a lot of bad example code in said comments. Or years-old discussions no one really needs anymore. On MSDN the comments are pretty much only used for P/Invoke signatures of Windows API calls (which is helpful, but I'd argue they're not really the point of comments).
Cisco to Buy Meraki for $1.2 Billion
What should I do then? Sit on my bottom and pretend to be happy?
I can't fathom why racial minorities would not feel welcome at such a conference. Do they think people are going to be surprised that they are in attendance, disapprove of them being there, or look down on them?

It's a programming conference, not a meeting of the KKK.
Have you seen ReText? It's precisely the sort of split editor you're talking about.
I'm having a tough time understanding what compelled SEC employees to bring a laptop to such a convention.

"We dodged a bullet this time."

More like the SEC employees tried to fire at us, but missed.

This isn't about policy. This is about common sense. Why wasn't the data encrypted? Why were the employees allowed to leave the company buildings with the information? Why didn't they have the common sense to leave them at home before attending said conference?

And, that being said... You would assume that those attending a hacking convention would normally be smart enough to know the risks (and especially not to bring an official work laptop). Alas, it's funny and worrisome to see that Wall Street is being run by people incompetent with technology.
MS Office is fantastic software. It is very full featured.

Most people don't need nearly all of those features. Most people would be okay using Abiword. The people who need more than Abiword could be using LibreOffice.

OpenOffice and LibreOffice are very good packages, but they do still need a bit of work. I hope that they don't focus on duplicating MS Office functionality but on bug fixing and 'feel'. This will make LibreOffice "good enough" and then "better" than MS Office for most users. The esoteric stuff that MS Office does can be left to MS Office, or to other open source projects, or to LibreOffice plug-ins.

Another thing that Microsoft has is the MVP scheme. The MVPs are variable quality, but the MS Office MVPs, especially the Excel MVPs have been excellent in promoting Office and providing help and support about how to get the best out of it.
That's reinforced by point #6 ("Ruby is too opiniated"). Ruby is not particularly opiniated and the community seemed to have much less attachment to doing things the idiomatic way than Python folks.
"I'm an iPod Convert" (2004)
If we all went around with highly specialised individual definitions

This is not my definition, there are loads of people with this definition.

Rational discussion can only occur once terms have been agreed and defined

Agreed, that's why I made this point. Too often people are only aware of the first definition.
I wouldn't say I use one on a regular basis, but they do have their uses. For a longer document, things like footnotes, internal cross-references, and an auto-generated table of contents are pretty darn handy. For something like a book, add endnotes and an auto-generated index. These things are painful to do in raw HTML/Markdown/whatever. No LaTeX editor I've ever used, and I've used several including Lyx, is much better. They get a little better with something like a WYSIWYG HTML editor, but that's really a word processor too. It's just a lame one, hobbled by the lack of abstraction between the interface and the output format. Really, word processors do this job better than the alternatives because it's what they were designed for.

BTW yes, it is possible to write longer-form documents like this while remaining technical. Junior folks can focus 100% on code. More senior folks still code but also get asked to teach and explain stuff, and after teaching or explaining the same stuff a dozen times putting it in writing starts to seem like an excellent idea.
Sorry Theo, but SSH Sucks
Revolution: The story of Wii
I doubt that many European government organisations would be allowed to use a SaaS app provided by a US company, purely for data protection reasons. There are rules surrounding where personal information may be stored - due to, among other things, the USA PATRIOT act, the US is not usually an option for organisations that deal with personal info.
Since then, the city noticed that it has been far from ideal to use only OpenOffice for digital correspondence. Microsoft Office for instance is the standard for external communication, the council said.

Well, ur doin it wrong. There are vastly superior alternatives to the workflow I think this implies (e-mailing attached documents around).
Honestly, the community around Ruby (Rails, actually) is one of the main reasons why I haven't given Ruby more of a chance. It seems like everywhere I look, people act like they're too good for me, and I'm probably too stupid to ever be a good Rails programmer.

... and I use Windows as my main OS, so I must be square! I'm not "worthy" of Ruby, and anything bad I have to say about Ruby just proves their point. Many articles I read have this condescending tone, this article being a prime example.

Even an article about why Ruby is not ideal for some scenarios is turned into a "you're wrong, Ruby is best" rant.
Racism and sexism were systematic and endemic in the UK during much of the 20th century.

A UK constituancy seat in 1960s was won by a conservative candidate against the Labour candidate, on the slogan: "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour" http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/apr/27/race.world2

But no, apparently it's "gone too far" when you can't say that anymore!</sarcasm>

the UK doesn't have explicit free speech protection

Debatable. it doesn't have a written constitution, yes, however it has signed up various treaties that guarantee free speech (e.g. Charter of Fundamental Rights).

Regardless, all countries have limits on "free speech" (even USA). Many EU countries put a limit on free speech and don't include very racist vile speech as protected speech. This doesn't mean they have "no free speech".
I assume it depends what you're going for. If you mean to make a fun blog post, maybe (though in my mind it's taking itself too seriously for that, despite occasional jokes, and it comes off as immature instead). If you are trying to convince people to switch languages, and flat-out refuse to acknowledge your favorite language and ecosystem has any weakness, not so much.
It's an opinion piece based on this article [1] where the author advocates for making legislation to regulate computer systems security. Very sensationalist, classic link bait.

However, that worries me anyway. Piracy fighting initiated with pieces like this, and now we have legislation that threatens our freedom of speech.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/sec-cyber-attacks_n...
Sorry if I am wrong, but as far as I know, Office Open XML specification is public since 2007, precisely the version referred in the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
Not surprising. Been through many MS -> OO and back again with various organisations throughout the years. OO is good if -everyone- uses OO.

In most organisations you get some genius who develops a fancy-smancy spreadsheet, visio diagram or word document with linked data which will be dependent on the MS access runtime, this gets distributed to all the OO users and it just doesn't work.
This feeling is disturbingly good. I remember my shift being offseted at work for I was always late, as a side effect I had to enjoy 1 hour alone at 5pm, the second people left the workplace, my brain expanded out of my suddenly relaxed self. As if I could use the walls as extended mind storage.
We're (open source advocates) a niche inside the software world and I don't think basic computer users, including government officials, even care about any argument or cause based on principle. People are just pragmatic, they want something that works, that uses minimal brain-power and that's it.
Function composition in C++11
But all my apps are immediately accessible with cmd+space and typing the apps name.
Ha this is a great article. I too look for quietness and find myself more and more turning off music just to allow myself to think properly. And yes- one of the virtues of staying late in the office is the actual quietness, which is a shame.
I may be in the minority here (and I certainly have nothing against Mark), but I really dislike such _implicit_ glamorization and heroism of entrepreneur hardships. There two specific problems with the post: a) in general (unless you are lucky), all good things require hard work so what's so special about entrepreneurship?; b) this interpretation of entrepreneurship is clouded by a specific type of startup (and I am guessing for a founder with a specific personality type who gets a kick out of such emotional turmoil -- I am probably like that but it doesn't change the argument).

Athletes, politicians, charity workers, soldiers, scientists and many others work hard even when outcomes are unpredictable. Even people with so-called "normal" jobs may require episodes of such unpredictability and hard work. Why specifically elevate entrepreneurship?

And, frankly, such lifestyle even for an entrepreneur is a choice. I see no point in re-iterating the obvious that doing a startup may be hard if you are aiming to build a huge business. If it were easy, most people would be doing it, no? I fail to see the whole point of the article.

To be fair, I did write about how is it in the life of an entrepreneur (specifically it was about my day): http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/startup-an-emotional-ro... but my aim there was to document how is the day in life of a founder at a startup that is still in early days and I tried hard to avoid generalizing or glamorizing the hardships. Looking back, I think I should have been more specific and objective in documenting the day (rather than making generalizations on the nature of entrepreneurship and heroism contained in living through such a day).
Interestingly Apple recently said that they're really not getting requests for Blu-ray discs in machines any more.

I think Blu-ray is around for a while but I think it's the last mass market optical format. The on-line services are currently limited by bandwidth but I think your view on how long Blu-ray survives and how quickly bandwidth improves should probably be pretty heavily linked.
Microsoft's Office file-formats are now public.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313118.aspx

At least in principle. Not sure if there are critical omissions that might hinder interop. Devil's in the details, and such ..
If only there was some way to save a url within the software that we use to browse the web. That would be an incredibly useful feature, someone here should consider developing an addon or put in a feature request for such a thing.
Zed's story[1] is a good read.

[1] http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto
Ha, I never tried to count visually, it's funny. I also tried to think about number names sequentially trying not to drift in their other representations.
But the security should not depend on the plans being kept secret. I mean, in practical terms, there is some security through obscurity, and possibly such laptops might contain passwords and things (but then what if they got lost on a flight or in a cafe?) which would make an attacker's job easier; but the best security would be if they could hand all the plans over to Black Hat Con and not take a single hit in their security.
A little bit broader interpretation, it seems, also valid.)

Actually it was a weak joke, paraphrasing pg's passage about ordinary people.
If data is the new oil, don't end up as BP
I see a lot of comments here, decrying the decision based on a mere word processor. Do also note the problems with the spreadsheet part which, as quoted, is much worse.

I can completely sympathize with being forced to abandon Linux itself because of its inability to compete with Excel. There simply is no compatible alternative to excel

I'm willing to bet that it was a bigger factor than word processing.
You are talking about past. And here's a good read for you http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html

It's much better nowadays with docx format that is open and is used by default (for a few years).
We've heard of this once before in S. Korea in the case of the veterinarian Hwang Woo-Suk.

http://www.asianscientist.com/features/hwang-woo-suk-disgrac...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33476693/#.UKoiNeSzpIE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15340240