skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Just get an android, then you don't have to depend on Apple to be allowed to use your own device.
UPX (Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) - save space in your distributed packages.
Big deal. I've been looking forward to the unification of cellular data and IP for a while. I'm curious to see how things look in about 18 months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_l... I guess the most famous ones are Brainfuck and the Perl module that lets you write Perl in Latin http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata....
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I think the article does a decent job of explaining how important properly written SQL is to the health of an application.

I disagree with the notion that you should rely on your hardware or juice up your system to gain performance. This should be a last resort only after ensuring that you have well written SQL running on a properly laid-out database.*

*caveat: Hardware can sometimes be cheaper than paying somebody to write SQL statements the right way.

Edit: changed "can" to "rely"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_l...
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Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?!

APL?
Not sure it counts, but... the Portuguese version of Excel uses portuguese keywords for all the functions (Soma instead of Sum, etc)

Also "BrainFuck", but that one doesn't use any words at all, just a few symbols.
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I should also note that being a native speaker of the English language does not automatically make one able to write coherent technical documentation in English. Unfortunately.
Mmmm.. 'k.

Having been born behind the iron curtain I do know there was no Marshall plan outside of Western Europe. But I did not know that cities in China were rebuilt 2 or 3 times for the sheer hell of it during the post-war period.

My point is that I agree with you, L.A. (like most American cities) is a city build around cars. I'm no sure about Berlin and Tokyo, but I am quite sure about the plethora of other west and east European cities I've enjoyed living in. Those cities, much like NY, are great to live in even if you don't own a car.
Last night on 60 Minutes, Leslie Stahl interviewed Vint Cerf and some security experts for a story on identity theft and malware. Cerf was on for maybe 20 seconds and the rest of the segment was your typical the-sky-is-falling doomsday report. What bugged me about Stahl's piece was how rotten she presumed hackers writ large to be. She said the word at least 20 times with no consideration given for honest hackers.

I once used the h-word in a corporate setting in front of my boss. The benign context left no doubt as to my meaning but old pointy hair later assured me I had crossed a line. Memo: the safewords are "code" and "program."

Good to be working on a startup today. Essays like this continue to remind me why I left the establishment.
Being Danish I can attest that this is very true - I write my code-comments in English, my business plans in Engish and do my financials in English. Even my blog is English.

It just makes it easier to communicate, and I've never met a Dane that complained about it.
I don't doubt that Seattle has been inhabited for 4000+ years, but I don't think the bulk of was built quite that long ago.
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Hierarchies and graphs are both fundamentally navigational data models, which force a physical-logical coupling of concerns, hampering flexibility significantly.

The network model recognizes the flexibility issue with hierarchies, however I'm not sure how it can guarantee the same scalability benefits. Due to this it doesn't have the flexibility of the relational model, nor the performance characteristics of the hierarchical model.

This is probably why it isn't ruling the world.
Do we really need to go over this again? It's pretty simple: within the computer community 'hacker' has a positive context. For everyone else it's negative.

It's like 'fag'. Say that in the UK and you are talking about cigarettes. Say it in the US and it's offensive.
Same here. English is not my native language but I just do everything in English. Code, documentation, blogs, requirement docs, etc. Really, everything.

Is this even remotely controversial these days?
This really doesn't need discussion. English is simply the language for science and computer stuff, just as latin used to be in the past (not for the computer stuff, but for science).
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I can imagine some benefits, but as for speed of execution I am really doubtful. Your example suggests a "select all" followed by some analysis done in code. I can't imagine this scales well.
Clearly the way to go is the append the number '3' to your password ;)
Open a 400 person coding shop in Ningbo and try to get everyone there to write in English, or even understand it. Good luck with that.

Working in markets with large numbers of non English speakers is quite difficult, as the article implies. Very profitable though. Chinese people like games as much as we do, and they will actually pay for them!!!
Separating presentation and data in applications an accepted design practice, but somehow it is not as common in-browser apps as it is on the server side.

Here's an architecture of a dynamic web app that works well for me:

- an app server exposes JSON and no HTML. (eg django or rails)

- html/css/js is completely static (eg. on S3/CDN) and defines UI as a set of HTML templates.

- once html/js is loaded in the browser, the browser makes an AJAX call to the server to get the JSON data

- in-browser JS expands a template, the data is rendered out

In this architecture, http://code.google.com/p/google-jstemplate/ is key. Check it out.
I didn't think I'd ever say this, but the stagnation or even slow death of Java wouldn't bother me. It's become bloated and seems to lack direction.

Since discovering Reddit (back in the day) and HN, I've discovered so many new languages and platforms to attack problems. I'm consistently finding Java lower and lower on my list of weapons to use in that attack.
Nobody who knew that would build such a contraption in the first place.
Wow, haha. This story gives everyone hope!
Well the relevant question is do people do serious coding in any non-english programming languages ?! That's why I was so surprised when I heard of them !
> Chinese people like games as much as we do, and they will actually pay for them!!!

Yes, the Chinese would never pirate software!
There are lot of dialects of LOGO in other languages than English
To print a single copy of your average 110 page publication with this service would cost $22.00. Perhaps this will be a novelty (Look Dad, we made a magazine about your life for your 50th birthday!), but I don't see how this is a viable option for any regular publication that hopes to make money.

For reference, a magazine with a circulation of around 100,000 will pay around $1.00 to print and mail each copy.
After working with PostgreSQL for many years, my best advice (for repeated queries, e.g. often hit Web app queries) is to make sure they all use indexes and all the indexes fit in memory.

You can get sizes from: SELECT relname,relfilenode,relpages*8/1024 AS MB FROM pg_class ORDER BY MB DESC LIMIT 10;

Newer versions avoid bloat better, but it can still happen if you don't vacuum full, which you don't because of downtime implications. So every now and then it is good to recopy everything in.
Dylan started with an s-expression syntax. For several years, it looked like Scheme with CLOS bolted on top. The language eventually switched to a conventional infix notation. It actually looks pretty good to my s-expression-addled eyes, except that "end" blocks explicitly describe the block being ended, e.g., "end if", "end class", "end function". (To any Dylan experts in the audience: if that's optional, feel free to correct me.)

Dylan has not exactly failed, since it still has an active development team which makes regular releases, but it has not achieved popularity. Dylan has macros, a real condition system, and a CLOS-type object system --- a way better feature list than Ruby's or Python's, IMO.
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Crazier, maybe. I'd say Lamborghinis are inherently cooler than swimming pools. (unless you meant thermally)
My Conclusion: do it your own way (which is not necessarily: do it the 37signals way).
They pirate plenty of software, including games, but they pay big money for the virtual goods you sell inside the games!
chronvert.com is available...
not to cut teeth here, but the 'fag' analogy doesn't really hold up. no matter how you swing it, the term 'hacker' relates to technology (hardware, software, wetware, whatever). in this case, 'fag' has two very different meanings. i'm reminded of the story posted a month (or so) ago on the linux hacker dad whose son received some flack from an ignorant teacher (anyone have a link?).
You seem to be being sarcastic. But a guy did this inside his own house. Do you really think the government should come in and save him from himself? Why?
I'm so mentally attracted to the concept of not formulating a business plan other than "make something people want, and then put it up for sale" - but in my business it hasn't been viable.

To get the loan that we've taken out, and to get meetings with useful people, we've had to have a traditional business plan and cashflow forecast.

Here's the good news though: it only took me one evening to write and another to edit, and it doesn't matter if we don't stick to it.

I wonder if Jason Fried had to man up and write one when he founded his consulting firm?
Eric Raymond:
it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job

Or probably English is simply the most easy to learn.
To clarify: Bill Gates discovered operating systems, and made a lot of money producing and selling them. He did not invent them.
I almost feel like with the lesser spoken European languages that something akin to what's happened in India emerging:

There's one language for the home and the family and friends, and other that's used in formal, academic and business settings.

It wouldn't surprise me if soon even formal regional official documents can be handled in English to facilitate some the free flow of work in the EU.
We're also starting to see more server-side JavaScript, which would make these thing even more useful.
So the moral of the story is convince everyone you know to only pirate music until the piracy rate is above 90%. Then wait for Google to allow for free legal downloads paid for by advertising. Brilliant.
"Ideally we would all use Esperanto - that's the future! Ah well."

To disagree with this comment from Jeff's blog, see

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

English comes by its huge network advantages honestly. All four of my grandparents were born in the United States, but three were born in households in which a non-English languages was spoken, and two were educated entirely in another language (German). Everybody learned English, and that was no big deal. The majority of Americans have ancestors who didn't speak English before they arrived in America. English is by no means perfect, but it is pragmatic, as Jeff says.
I've looked at AllegroCache before, and really liked it. Can you briefly discuss how a graph database of type you describe (AllegroCache or KiokuDB) differs from the object-oriented databases which have not exactly taken the world by storm?

Edited: I also just Googled around a bit and found something called Neo4j. Do you know anything about it?
And the Catholic church used Latin exclusively for centuries.
I don't think so within the EU (perhaps in France ... chuckle), but I suspect it'd be more problematic in for instance Japan, Korea or China.
Um?

How do you think that the topic of the book I'm selling and the Google Checkout saga correlate at all?

I'm really curious, because there's not even the tiniest link in the chain between the two totally disparate and unrelated things.

I didn't get "chastised" by a "security check."

They closed my account, disrupted my business, and stole my money.

With no warning, communication, notice or appeal. They give no way to contact them and they tell you the money is gone for good.

I got my account back only through this publicity campaign, which is, in my opinion, a good example of how Google's "Don't be evil" motto has been abandoned.
I'm Turkish and I have to agree for the most part.

Technical CS terms in Turkish get invented by a handful of academics. Since this is a pretty close knit community, the jargon does not get socialized very well and leads to unwieldy, inorganic words. I don't live in Turkey, so I pretty much don't have a chance in hell of understanding Turkish CS speak.

That said, there might be some language communities out there, large enough to be self sustaining. Chinese seems like a good candidate. The fact that there is a Chinese clone of Atwood's Stackoverflow also supports this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537246
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Maybe we need a story called "The Word 'News'"
It would be interesting to couple this game with user profiles that include questions related to mysteries and observations in cognitive science. Thinks like left/right handed, formal education, would be interesting too.
Notice I said rule oriented, and not intrusive or other similar words. You are right that they should insist on safety etc., and I have no problem with that.

But what's the chance that they will evaluate the safety of this, vs. saying - no engineering plans? No inspector? No permit? Fail, big fine, and we'll bill you for demolition.

And not even evaluate the specifics.
why I gave up Visual Basic for C#, as painful as that was.

No Jeff, working in VB is painful.
that sounds good... Unfortunately, it looks like they have no code to implement. not even done with the spec.
Has this been inspired by CNprog.com?
Well, just to state the obvious, no particular database will "rule the world".

They are different tools for different tasks.

RDMBS will not go away in data warehousing for a while.
Key/Value stores are useful for many webapps where they match the access pattern.
Graph DBs have yet their own area of application.

There is not "one tool to rule them all". Albeit it would be an interesting project to wrap up all those engines under a common API (SQL?) and have the server choose the optimal one either on user demand or even by magically analyzing the workload.

I'm saying that because the real uglyness that many of us are facing is that we need not one but several of the aforementioned tools for our particular app. For parts of the data we like the guarantees and integrity of RDMBS, for other parts we need the scalability of a key/value store.
Okay, let's think about how this could have been successful. My next suggestion would be to let the people in that Thai factory do all the packing etc. work such that a finished end product could have been shipped. I think a factory worker's salary in Thailand is around $100 / month.
Lisp doesn't like to be dressed up.

I think the real problem is that people who understand Lisp understand that Lisp programs are Lisp data structures, and want them to look that way. People who don't get it won't be drawn to the language for its unconventional object system or condition handling. People who are won't be scared off by unconventional syntax.
This is probably why it isn't ruling the world.

Technical merit and popularity are only occasionally related in the computer world, so I won't comment on this.

I will elaborate further on the use case of graphs versus a relational database. Basically, I see relational databases as especially useful for cases where you have a big pile of data, and have no idea what it really means. You do queries to learn what you have. ("Aha, in March, people from Illinois buy more of product 23894735 than people from California.") The relational model is good for this, since it doesn't build any preconceived notions into your data.

However, most applications don't need anything like this. They have a well-defined data-model, and rarely run "queries" (except to work around the fact that that's the only interface to their data). In this case, the relational model is basically being used as a dumb key/value store supplemented with joins. This results in a ton of code in the application to translate in-memory structures to something that can be stored in the database.

If you use a graph database, you can just store your in-memory structures directly, and get them back later. (Most good object database give you other features, like the ability to index your data so you can still run searches efficiently. Kioku and Elephant do this, anyway.)

So really, you should use the right tool for the job. Want to persist and search in-memory structures? Use an object database. Have a big pile of data you need to make sense of? Use a relational database.

You are allowed to use more than one, they are tools, not religions.

(FWIW, I see relational databases as filling a very specialized role, and I see object databases as the general thing you should use when you want to persist some state. The rest of the world seems to have gotten this backwards, which is somewhat depressing. I think it's because people think databases are magical, as a result of not understanding how they actually work.)
Have you tracked Facebook's changes? They routinely piss off vocal users to make their service better. It's a growth strategy. They doubled in size in 8 months - which for an app that big is ridiculous growth.

They are certainly making a bet about the real time web with their most recent changes.

The change to make relationships more asymmetric is a requirement to get bigger.
You may not be convinced yet, nor am I, but your strawman argument makes you look ... well a little silly.
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When I've heard programmers criticised for the "ugly american" behavior it is not about the use of english as a technical lingua franca. The ugly american programmer is one who embeds english chauvinism into the user experience of their software. This includes lack of unicode support, and support for locales and internationalization.
It creates an index for each view essentially. It's not anything like a "select all".
Every successful website needs an API

I, for one, am really looking forward to news.YC's API...
The article didn't give a good description of the area around this guy's house... I, for one, would be concerned if I found out one of my neighbors had 3000 gallons of water in a poorly structured container in his garage. A collapse would most definitely affect me and my neighborhood. Aside from the inconveniences that would be caused, the neighborhood could very well end up stuck with the bill for repairing damage done to infrastructure (street, sewer, underground power lines, ...)

For what it's worth, I'd also be concerned if I found out my neighbor was: stockpiling firearms, making meth in his bathtub, keeping pet tigers, storing 3000 gallons of gasoline in a tank in his garage. I'm not trying to make a direct comparison, just hopefully illuminating the fact that it might not all be about the government "[saving] him from himself"
They are also useful for rapid app development or prototyping. I've used couchdb this way a few times and it works great.
It might have something to do with the installed base of the language, so to say. Large languages like French, German, Japanese and Chinese may have an expectation that people should learn their language.

Small countries like Iceland, the Netherlands and Denmark can't possibly expect anyone to learn their petty language that can't be used anywhere else, and thus realise that they have to learn English if they want to communicate outside their borders.
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Democamp East West - how to spread the word?
We are organizing a startup related event in Poland. Any ideas on how should we spread the word about this to European "startup scene"? Link: http://democamp.org/
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I've seen much funnier and less obnoxious in the years people have been putting up little "Don't use IE to look at my site!" notices.

The punchline, of course, is that this appears to be a completely pointless warning; someone's taken the time to make sure that the front page, at least, looks exactly the same in IE.
IE 6, that is.
I had thought that git was rolling towards a dominant position in this space, however:

> At PyCon, Brett already announced that Git was no longer being considered -- while it has obviously many fans, it also provokes strong antipathies.

And I'm starting to see why. It has... issues. One I ran into recently:

http://book.git-scm.com/5_submodules.html

> It's not safe to run git submodule update if you've made and committed changes within a submodule without checking out a branch first. They will be silently overwritten:

"Silently overwritten" are not words you want to be associated with a version control system.
Same here, had an Amiga before college, but only started programming in college.
Didn't he brace the outside of it with 2x4's?
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I think it's that plus literary tradition. The Netherlands isn't actually that small population-wise, but it has a long tradition of its best minds (e.g. Spinoza, Erasmus) writing in the lingua franca of the day. Even though there are only four times as many people in France as the Netherlands, I'd guess there's more than twenty times as much written and published in French.

Edit: Interesting note -- if Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans are all considered the same language, then Dutch has around 30 million native speakers.
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Well, English does have a larger technical vocabulary than most other languages. Admittedly, this is more because English accepts other languages technical words into the language, so therefore (to some extent) is the union of the technical language.

With this in mind, i would not call English easy to learn. There are far too many special cases and bizarre twists to get to true fluency (it might be east to get to a passable spoken version, though).
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I disagree. It's all about context. Don't describe yourself as a hacker unless you are around fellow hackers (in the sense used on this site). Otherwise you risk being misinterpreted.
Any more pics? I can't really picture how it looks? I wonder why he didn't just get an engineer to help him out?