skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's probably true that rubyists are still "left-brained", whatever that means, but I think they tend to be more on the right side of the left side than other language subcultures. The co-occurrence of terms like "beautiful", "happiness", and "art" in discussions of what ruby means are far higher than in other languages. This is self-reinforcing since a like-minded neophyte will be attracted to a community that talks and acts in ways that she or he finds common ground with. I had learned a bit of python from some well-written but dry books. But Why's poignant guide got me excited about ruby because it was obvious how excited he was by the language, and to some of us that was infectious in the same way chunky bacon is (it's not for everyone).
I would absolutely love to see Ubuntu and others (Jolla) succeed. Unfortunately I'm also highly skeptical they will. The reason is that currently their marketing story seems so far removed from actual consumers: think about the fact that they're even trying to sell the idea of an operating system, not a complete product. This seems really backwards compared to the evidently successful Apple model. Granted, they are probably having discussions with manufacturers right now, but we'll have to wait for the results. I'd be happy to hear somebody refute this argument!
While a nice idea, licensing issues are a problem for this project... I don't understand why they didn't use the standard MIT license, but instead went for GPL3, but still chose a proprietary encryption method.

iSSH on iOS now also experimentally supports it with an own independent implementation, with an in-app purchase, since the encryption uses a proprietary encryption method only freely licensed for opensource projects.
In part, this is why I've submitted this again. There have been previous discussions, but comments there are closed, and many people aren't aware of it, so I thought it was a good opportunity to allow those "in the know" to tell us if anything has changed, and if it's fit for purpose.
So, what is to be done?

At root this is a philosophical problem, coming down to what people believe is true or false, good or bad. Now, many people will instinctively react very negatively to this remark -- see my last paragraph.

The US was never on a very firm philosophical base, but it was on an improved philosophical base. The thing is, while this may get an improved government going, unless you fix the philosophy of the culture, it's going to degrade over time.

Our problem is that our institutions, which are funded and therefore controlled by government, do not permit the right kinds of philosophy to flourish, and they promote the wrong kinds.
One should not forget: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott/Upper_Peninsula_...
When all that you said is happening, and people feel that the government and the justice system is no longer on their side anymore, you will see people taking matters in their own hands, and punishing criminals on their own. This could lead to the destabilization of a society, but that's what the corrupt politicians and law enforcement are creating. Cause and effect. But they don't really care because of something that "may" happen 10 years down the road, and "why should they be the ones to fix it anyway?".
Is personal branding necessary for a programmer?
I think that using bootstrap core without any kind of customization isn't the best way to get users. Add a nice logo, maybe some screenshots of the product features, and the most important, if you want to keep boostrap, customize it!
"Design patterns are missing language features."
The article doesn't actually say that ideas are bad, that's just the title. Not an uncommon phenomenon for blog posts I think.
> 1- I can show you video lectures from 1985 that discuss mutability -vs- immutability in concurrent systems. Immutability won this war, at least in the research realm, 30 years ago.

Maybe, but concurrency based on mutability seems to have won this war in the real world these past thirty years.

Immutable systems might be easier to design in theory but we haven't seen this proven in the battle field yet, and the fact that most of the concurrent code today runs on mutable structures shows that it can be done.
IPad, Nexus, Kindle Fire – which tablet should I buy?
But the act of searching and evaluating the results limits your cognitive capacity for building even greater abstractions. If you already have some standard set of implementations memorized that frees up your mind to use those pieces as building blocks for new, grander structures. As you fill your working memory with minutia, the larger abstractions are bumped out which makes it harder or impossible to create new abstractions using the higher level building blocks.

I get the resistance to memorization--I am the laziest SOB I know (and being in the company of programmers, that's no small feat). I got through college almost never taking notes and by just understanding concepts. It worked great for some subjects, namely math, CS, physics, etc. But one thing a math professor said one time in a higher level course for math majors that stuck with me: "If you don't memorize what came before, you will never be able to make new discoveries". In hard math it is expected to memorize the results that came before as this is the only way to discover patterns between them and create new associations.

I think the same applies to programming. Your mind can only hold and manipulate so many units of information at a time. The more abstract those units are, the greater the resulting mental structures will be. We artificially limit ourselves in our resistance to memorization.
What sorts of libraries would you want to see? Web framework? ...?
Notch tries Omegle
In case you want to prove that: Coffescript and node.js change nothing in the equation but jQuery has as much searches as python and javascript respectively:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Python%20tut...

Not including ember, backbone, angular, …

Although it seems to me that the amount of tutorials on a language/framework do not have to have much in common with their popularity but with the beginner/pro-ratio. (under the assumption that mostly beginners write (for TIOBE) or read (for PYPL) tutorials)
"C or C++ still power basically every piece of truly important software, even today in 2013"

I doubt that; here, for example, is a truly important software system that is not written in C++ (and I suspect it would be a lot more dangerous if it had been):

http://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/ada-next-generation-...
Old news, by a few months at least.
Could ``Bicholim Conflict'' have been a potential Mountweazel for Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
(This post was typed on Emacs, an open source text editor,
and I’m already gathering awkward looks from the people.
“A strangely dressed man typing away furiously into a black
screen with green text. He’s got to be a hacker!”)

More likely people are thinking "Why is he using Emacs when he could be using VIM!?". Or maybe they're asking why he's writing a blog entry on an OS like Emacs when it doesn't have a good text editor.

Seriously though, most of the software I use is open source and is often more user friendly than commercial alternatives. So I disagree pretty strongly.
Here is more info on using SBT with IDEA 12: http://blog.jetbrains.com/scala/2012/12/28/a-new-way-to-comp....
Publish or perish is not just about doing your job, rather it limits you in how to do your job, and that limitation runs counter to what your job often requires.

It's not so much "publish" in itself that's the problem[1], it's how publishing is defined and handled, and that a certain form of publishing is seen as right to the detriment of any other form of published material, whereas the preferred method is often not the best method for a given project.

[1]: though it certainly is a big part of the overall problem of uniting teaching, research and publishing
I'd suspect though that the flat model can only work while a company is below a certain size.
404ing now. Mighta been something he planned to release later?
Ask HN: being offered stocks, how to estimate value?
I am consulting local start up on some specific technical issues. I am charging quite a lot to do more work on this start up, so I was offered stocks as a part of payment. But I have no idea how to evaluate this offer. Any tips on what I should look for and what I should base my numbers on?
Hah, a blog post!Guy from HN! I know a person who told me, "I am a Facebook Celebrity". To my face.
Vim Poster. Vim. Live it.
Well, you're asking two questions here:

1. is it legal right now

That I can't say. Ask a lawyer. Most probably not, depending.

2. should it be legal right now

Yes, yes it should. That's the entire point behind "free speech" - once you start drawing lines, shit happens. And the problem isn't with child porn per se, the problem is with the horrific acts that produce it and the mentality of the people who enjoy it, but the image itself should not be in any way illegal. Think of scenes of gruesome manslaughter. There are people who get sexual satisfaction from seeing bloody dismembered corpses. Even so, those images, unsettling as they are to a mentally healthy person, aren't illegal.
Google Restores Maps for Windows Phone, But For How Long?
I have to agree, I was trying to work out how the odds are calculated and it makes no sense. Why not copy what Betfair or Intrade or something like that do.
I definitely get the concern over proprietary encryption, but why does the license matter for an end user like me?
> the majority of the students who did well still had slight issues with their HTML parsing.

There were a few students who actually passed all of our professor's test cases (at least that's what they claim).
Just remember that with the lower end dedicated servers you are dealing with desktop class hardware. With the last server I received from them one of the HD's in a raid1 was dead and although they replaced it quickly I was required to reconfigure it wasting quite a bit of time.
> Go error handling is not to be taken lightly

The fact that Go relies on return codes instead of exceptions to express errors is what will fundamentally limit the language's adoption, in my opinion.

Anyone who was writing code in the 80's and 90's remembers how fragile and buggy software written this way is (Windows' HRESULT, anyone?). Exceptions have considerably increased the robustness and reliability of millions of lines of code, the software community is not going back to error codes.
A concatenative programming library in 5 lines of Clojure
I love your idea and this niche. Here are a few thoughts...

1. There are a lot more stylists than salons, and a lot of them are independent contractors (they rent chairs in salons). I would focus on selling to them, not salons. I would make my most expensive plan (multi-user) for salons...but Plan A & Plan B for individual stylists.

2. Be sure to have a "37 signals" type sign up page. Explain the differences between the plans. The first thing I looked for was the pricing...and didn't see it until I clicked to sign up for the free 30-day trial.

3. Offer a 60 or 90 day free trial. Get them hooked. (I have done 1 year free trials which turned into $100k+ in recurring revenue). It's tough to get paying customers, don't be afraid to prove your value.

4. Continue to add value (text reminders, etc..)

5. Don't be afraid to get on the phone and call stylists/salons. Send postcards. Sell, sell, sell.

Good luck!
Are you being purposefully obtuse? Do we really all just use and read our own code and not the code of others?

Having `gofmt` drastically increases the probability that any particular Go program has the same style/formatting that you're used to.
Without the problem to solve, there's nothing to build the idea on top of.
Good points, and I like your copy better than what I wrote. Thanks!
I have 2 candidates, neither of them are mine but my friends'.

The first one is http://ollaa.com
The service lets you share 6 different activities you do most; like eating, drinking, watching, buying etc. It is similar to Path in some aspects. You can connect with one of the cofounders through his site: http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/

The second service is http://gonnasphere.com
That is a collaborative to-do list that you can share your gonna's with your friends.

I am not related to any of the services so I might have not explain them well. If anyone is interested they can check them out.
Isn't this just parimutuel betting? What's the difference?

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting)
In most states, threatening someone w/ injury is classified as Assault. In the state of NY, it's Menacing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#United_States

http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article120.htm#p120.15
I regard the Samwer brothers as kings of execution. They have even come into Nigeria. Within 5 months, they have set up 3 companies. See (http://www.innovation-village.com/2012/12/rocket-internet-la...). They also go where traditional companies are not confident to go to. I respect them. J P Morgan even just gave them funds for their ventures in Africa. See (http://www.innovation-village.com/2012/10/j-p-morgan-invest-...). I wish them the best.
The SATA interface won't make a significant difference. It does at the margin but not for normal use. If you are going to use remote servers why upgrade at all?
Whether these succeed or not, I simply don't get it.

Android is open source. Fork it. Improve it. Why build something completely new. Is it just to keep a brand name like "Ubuntu" and "Firefox"?
Now that I think about it, you're right, it was the Netherlands judge story. My fault.
So high that non reasonable human can do it" == the load carried by a high school teacher?
As pk2200 said, this is PYPL. From what I read I believe, the search term used is: "<language> tutorial"
Thanks. I had not heard of Bootswatch. Will check it out.
That's not true. You can build stuff based only on ideas for as long as you want to.
Expanding knowledge without communicating it is useless, and salaried researchers should know that.
So Facebook information is a tool that can be used by the prosecution but not defense lawyers? That seems perverse, especially if a subpoena has been issued.
Thanks. I didn't know about the iPad problem, so I'll have to look at that. Thanks for the kind words as well.
> I've liked everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source material without issue.

So have I, and as much as I wish it could coexist, I'm not sure it really can. For an entire generation, "Lord of the Rings" really pretty just means the movies.
http://www.zinger-soft.com/iSSH_features.html

iSSH includes the mosh protocol as a 99c in-app purchase. Use mosh on your mobile device, just where it should be!
shutter island
php is still the easiest thing to deploy on a server. unless you get loads of ecommerce cms or blog engines in node i wouldnt bet on it. on client there is not much choice anyway.
Nothing complicated -- Pascal has been out-of-fashion for many decades.
Because due to the license the code can not be included on certain platforms or in applications which is preventing wider adoption.
"Upon return from a system call, eax will contain the return value. If an error occurs, eax will contain a negative value, with the absolute value indicating the error."

I've always wondered about this. Why do errors always return as negative?
Looks like fun, really. I never actually checked out many of his projects. Oh well, can't do everything.
Industry isn't so different. My salary is determined by 2 days of interviews and negotiations, and only slightly perturbed by my performance over the next several years.
You're absolutely right on with your first three points. Thanks for highlighting those things for me.

To address your fourth point, I do share that concern, although I do feel pretty good about the market. I've physically visited several dozen salons and I do have a few salons using the product. There are also a lot of competitors in this space, which is a good sign. As to whether I can make a viable business out of this particular product remains to be seen. :)
Corporations aren't the entities with a monopoly on the use of force. Governments are.
After reading the FAQ I agree that using the term "<lang> tutorial" is better than "<lang> programming" - but couldn't the results for "<lang> tutorial" possible represent languages that are harder to grasp, rather than languages in popular use.

Then again, if that was purely the case we'd be seeing "brainfk" all over the place.

Just a thought.
FastLane Shop - magia
"Earlier I mentioned about the JVM being a bad trade-off for phantom portability. In practice, non-trivial Java programs also require porting for different systems."

I have used Java since the beginning (and I have written several Java books). I have had very few portability problems. The JVM is a great ecosystem that supports several fine programming languages.
If only one of these fifty bitcoin betting site developers created a prediction market instead, he'd have my money.
Mosh has been brilliant so far. I travel a lot by train but even SSH'ing over the trains WiFi can be problematic. Connecting through Mosh solves all the typical issues and with local echo you can continue to type as if the connection was still up.
AFAIK even a file of 45bytes takes up at least an inode and an entire data block on disk. So on most systems it doesn't matter if the file is 4096bytes or any smaller. And if you need to send the file over the network, the source code still beats the binary in size...
My personal anecdotical evidence suggests otherwise.

I believe that in order to get the general audience interested in open source it will need a better branding and design. Note, that some organizations are taking steps towards this direction (Ubuntu and Mozilla come to my mind).

Interestingly, I use a lot of open source projects that do not have gui nor complicated UI. I can't say the same thing about projects that do have a gui…
Didn't know that. I thought as their mobile workstation it'd have a higher cap than that. It is a little old I guess.

Personally I'd go with a new Thinkpad. MBPros are nice but the new ones are completely non-upgradable which is a real deal breaker. I've used a T500 for a little over 4 years now with nothing but more RAM, a new SSD, and a storage bay HDD.
You should really try to get cash if you can. The value of any stock the give you will be highly volatile and very illiquid. The only way you could try to value the equity would be to look at what other investors paid for their equity, also you could try to actually look at their books.

But really, there is no reasonable way for you to value their offer. I would take cash and possibly offer a payment plan instead.
If I recall, DEC's VMS operating system had an error return convention where the high bit was negative on error, and the other bits meant different things: system the error occurred in, specific error, etc.

I believe it was a tradition to have a high bit indicate error at the time Unix was originated.
There are already plenty of sites that do this exclusively online for the same/cheaper price point. It'll be interesting to see if a store-front will be a good investment considering the high overhead cost.
Fine, replace "heating" with "mail services".

Would you be OK with letting a company to scan and retain a copy of every letter you sent and receive in exchange for being able to not use stamps? Bonus question - do you think your correspondents would be OK with it if they knew you had such arrangement?
I imagine Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. But I may be wrong.
All good stuff!
It sounds like you didn't read much of the article.
Oh, interesting, thanks. There was me thinking I was gifting the world a bit of prior art :-)
I watched the Al Jazeera "Counting the Cost" episode discussing alternative currencies. Very interesting. People with ideas discussing said ideas instead of taking potshots at each other.

The U.S. media can take a lesson from Al Jazeera: really high quality productions with interesting graphics. It makes American news shows look like video games.
Haven't compared the price points, but if you want to support a YC alum, check out Picplum's Instagram integration: https://www.picplum.com/instagram
Doubt it matters. Any commodity that has value ought to be covered, and value is simply determined by people's willingness to pay, so bitcoins clearly have value. You can't get around gambling laws by gambling with chickens rather than dollars, so why would bitcoins be any different?
Because positive values contain the actual return value, e.g. the number of bytes read, etc.
I did read it that was what I took away from it.
If you have something really intensive running GO, I genuinely would love to hear how it's going after some uptime. Thank you.
You think that starting with an idea leads to fragility and that there is an off chance that you succeed. You are probably right. You state an alternative process which you say is leads to higher success rate. Great, but where is the proof? The part where you say this has increased success rate from X% to Y% with other variables kept constant is missing.
Wouldn't a real Linux OS on a smartphone be every developer's dream? I will definitely get a Ubuntu phone. Think about the the variety of options you'll have...

However I am not sure if the mainstream market will be as interested.
A problem that prevents people from spotting things like this is that there are tons and tons of sites that just have copies of Wikipedia articles or the site just blindly copies things from Wikipedia.

For example... Alicia Keys birthday on Wikipedia is wrong, she was born in 1980, not 1981. If you read the Talk page about this there are several times where discussion of this takes place. But due to a Wiki Admin sitting on the page, he/she refuses to acknowledge this change and the articles he cites that she was born in 1981 most likely were using the Wikipedia article as reference. So how do you argue your position when the admin says, "Hey my source is Magazine X, it is reputable so therefore you are wrong"
My favorite habit: Write three positive things about today
+1 for alternative languages like Clojure and Scala.

I recently (more or less) shut down my consulting business to do other things and since I no longer need (so much) to fit in with customer's tool chains, I decided on Clojure as a great general purpose language that is also a lot of fun to develop with. I could make the same comment about Scala or JRuby if I had chosen either of those fine languages.

Really, the JVM ecosystem rocks.
When to drop the F-bomb and other negotiation techniques
In other words. None is worth more than the other. They are both equally valuable.
Android doesn't have a file picker.

Maybe stock doesn't, but install any file-manager from market, and voila you have just that.
I was trying out the app and was randomly clicking on things. Wanted to see what would happen if I lost all my health.

Now it says Game Over, and forces me to buy tokens.

Isn't there some way I can reset the game? The tutorial seems woefully inadequate. I understand, you want to drive more people towards the buy more tokens for money thing, but could you implement a reset account link there somewhere?
Primarily because I want to move to OSX and I'm looking for something more portable than the beastly W500 (+- 30% heavier than rMBP)
A well written post and a lot of good lessons. I really liked your 2 tips for spotting expensive middle men in particular. Seems obvious when you think about it, but well worth being conscious of.
I don't agree that PHP is that easy to deploy properly. I think it has that reputation only because most people using PHP never actually have to set up and configure a PHP server.

But my point is about the client side. We don't have much of a choice between client side languages, but we do have a choice about how much we do on the client in the first place. That equation has changed quite dramatically over the past decade thanks to new JavaScript runtimes.