skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am not sure. Rails seems far better positioned than PHP for future growth. This means PHP will peak and Rails will surpass it eventually.
My calculations (http://daniellefong.com/2008/11/15/tick-tock/) give about 4 kwhr per 100 miles of city driving without regenerative breaking at about a 70% efficiency. Most of the US ranges between 2 to 4 kwhr a day of impinging sunlight - let's call it 3. High efficiency PV panels are about 30% efficient, so this is about 1 kwhr per m^2 of charge per day. This would give about 25 miles of city driving, which is well in the range of many urban commutes, but not most. To do better you need regenerative braking or higher efficiencies or more solar panels or all three.
> If you are going to do do any serious analysis of timing or performance then you are going to have to control the machines.

Absolutely - the timing and performance won't be more accurate but it will be more realistic. For accuracy everything has to be done on the same machine in a 'clean' environment (and definitely not in a VM).
Have something to do once you get up, a reason to get up. I had the same issues before I started to go to the gym in the morning. This has really fixed my sleeping routine.

If I don't have a reason to get up in the morning, I'm much more likely to stay in bed before I go to sleep again.
And that is my future. I'll be enjoying sleeping in for the next 7 months (every chance I get), because the party's over for me soon.
there is no best language. they're all tools in a toolbox. you can smash a nail in with a screwdriver, but its easier to use a hammer.

the question is, what do you want to do? are you new to web development and want to learn a language? do you have experience with other languages? etc..
"of course they picked the most bone-headed, moronic conventions imaginable, like coupling data objects to the database"

Because creating every onject twice, once in the logicm, once in the DB, would be clever?
Hamburger... I hate Ramen.
I guess that depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Often one wants to be first to market or add new features quickly. The author states that he was "getting a hell of a lot done in not much time at all." That means the front end of the business could be built quickly, accomplishing the main goal of satifying the customer as quickly as possible.

Now there may be another framework that does it better, if you can find that and use it, you will outrun your competition.

I chose PHP for my first startup, because it was a really fast way to get things done, warts and all, and it seems many feel that way. But I'm going to check out Rails this time because it has so many people getting things done with it.
Every business should be a "lifestyle business". If don't know what a non-lifestyle business is, but it sounds like something that's unsustainable, that doesn't make you happy and thus doomed to fail.
> We must bridge the gap between the techies and the rest of the population.

This is sooooo important. Blogs existed before blogging platforms; it just was too hard for non-techies to do. Look how long email was around before AOL made it easy and fun. Wikipedia was possible before the wiki had been invented, but the wiki made it more accessible for everyone.

Sure, people are gaining competence in computing, but we need to make things easier to use or consume as well! There's already a lot of great CS/technology out there that has so much potential if we can get more people to embrace it. It's half on people to adopt the new technology, but half on use to make the technology easily adoptable.
The ROI "upside" to moon-shot companies like Seesmic is deceptive. Yes, the success stories in the Seesmic bracket are 8-9 figure exits. But the founders (a) see only a small fraction of that return after preferences and dilution and (b) are disallowed from pursuing any but the most lucrative conceivable exits; the rocket is strapped to their back, and it's the moon or bust.

The investment "risk" of bootstrapped companies is also deceptive. If you have a business model that works, you don't need investment; if you'd benefit from an investment, you pursue it at your leisure.
I think this is one area where the economic crisis can work for startups.

Previously, the market was so hot it was difficult to grow organically. There was so much competition and so much heat that you felt compelled to "go big" as quickly as possible. You had to launch bigger, quicker and with more features or somebody else was going to come along with millions in technology/marketing/etc and stomp on you.

Right now we have a market that favours growly organically and slowly... Perhaps towards something that is a more refined end result. You can grow your customer base slowly, and listen more to what your customers want and need.

All just my conjecture really - But I hope this will turn up some really interesting results over the next 12-24 months.
I wouldn't say "get light as early as possible." (Ideally) I go to bed at 11pm and wake up rested (I said ideally, ok?) at 7am.

So in London in the middle of summer it's light from 5am or so and I have to use an eye-mask. That early light was not my friend. On the other hand in winter the dark at 8am wasn't my friend either. A "wake-up light" (google for "sunrise alarm clock" or "daylight simulator") for winter might help.
Try melatonin. They usually come in 3mg pills, and I find that a quarter pill will do me fine, triggering a drowsy phase in about half an hour lasting for about half an hour. If I am in bed with the lights out, I will sleep the rest of the night.

I am a night owl. When I'm not working, I naturally phase shift until I go to sleep at 5AM. When my workplace instituted a less flexible flex time so that I had to get there before 10AM as opposed to before noon, it allowed me to get to sleep early enough to be well rested.
GO to bed earlier at night.

Thats pretty much it - We've all read the various sleep 'hacks' and blogs out there but the only thing that worked for me was to go to bed earlier.

Like an old man, I now go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6 ;) - But business/work/wife dictates that I get up earlier - when I first started this schedule it felt like I had been missing out on the wonderful early mornings. I just felt a bit more 'fresher'.

My previous schedule was 1:30-2am and waking up at 9-9:30; I sorta miss being a night owl, but both work and wife make sure I go to bed early.
a hide button.
I am totally different. I am a horrible procrastinator, but give me a deadline every day and I will move the world.

Need that pressure. Love that pressure. I'll probably have a heart attack when I'm 40.
Do you think this is the first car to be built from the "ground up" in the last 50 years?

Supply chains have been squeezed and simplified for the last several decades. It's not uncommon for all automakers to meet with suppliers and work with them to offset R&D costs and outsource the design and manufacture of various components.

The kitting of pieces isn't new either. One example of this is the Dodge Viper. It's been ~12 years since I was close to the process, but something like 80% of the Viper was built by various suppliers. Those suppliers shipped the pieces to Dodge for final assembly, but the Viper factor was little more than a dozen guys with air ratchets. Yes, I'm exaggerating slightly, but not by much.

And I still have not seen anything that says Tata makes even $1 in profit off that $2500 car. This project seems about as realistic that the $10 "laptop" people were talking about coming out of India also.
How to build companies that matter (the lean startup on O'Reilly Radar)
It's also not ideal because it's ratiometric to the supply voltage, not reference ground. They're reading the voltage across R2, and subtracting that from "5V" to determine the voltage across the sensor.

There should also be an anti-aliasing filter.
Following that strategy was a prelude to some of my housemates getting up at 5PM for a few weeks. I felt bad for the guys sharing a room with them.
I like companies that work on big hard problems, not whether a border is 4 or 5 pixels wide. I like companies that encourage top minds to stick around, not with gimmicks like free snacks but by valuing their ideas.

They've got millions of clients, but they have very few designers. I'd be more worried about losing the design leads. (Unless his ideas would have cost the company millions of clients, but it doesn't sound like that's the case -- if it was, they would have just fired him.)

The question of whether it "works" isn't clear-cut to me. Not a day goes by I use a Google service that I don't curse it for something stupid it does. I'm looking forward to what Bowman does next, because if it's any of the Google services I use, I'll jump ship in a heartbeat for something with good design. A lot of their services are almost without competition, because the little guys don't have the guts to stand up to Google, and the big guys who do have even worse design.
Yes, they created a "JEdit server": http://www.jedit.org/users-guide/starting.html
It keeps an instance running so startup time is smaller.
I've worked 16hr days during the summer in Alaskan canneries and there aren't very many jobs that are as time pressured to get things done as that. Every minute of down time is potentially lost money. That said, I never saw anyone being reprimanded for not getting back right on the whistle (we did have one - I was the person blowing it for a while) or for talking casually with a co-worker. We had to screw around every once in a while just to stay sane. I would quit for these reasons alone.
Study: Microsoft holds solid in browsers, Chrome slow to grow
I was faced with the exact same scenario as you about a month and a half ago. At that time the economy was bad but the massive layoffs hadn't really started in earnest.

I had been toying with the idea of just leaving cold turkey but the logical/risk adverse side of me kept saying it wasn't a good idea since I had a great paying job at a solid company with excellent benefits.

But as the days wore on with me feeling like I was literally withering my life away I decided that it was time for me to crap or get off the toilet. So I turned in my notice on the same day Obama was inaugurated (figured it was a nice metaphor for my life change).

I had a very similar situation as you, with a friend who had a lot of contract work he could farm to me. This work pretty much paid all the expenses (I know PG doesn't encourage even doing this, but this was about as risk adverse as I could get comfortably). The first day of not going into a cube was magnificent. The second day, some shock set in, but now a month and a half later and I will say it's been a very good decision. Work and opportunities are just piling in and I have a number of other business projects in the pipe.

Now I work really hard but I take time out to do what I want, when I want. I go for a run after checking some email, I meet friends for long lunches, then I crank on code til 1am, and while I am doing more 'work' I feel like my life is much much more fulfilling.

I would say you're actually playing it more safe than many who have quit their job and you're in a great position to be successful and lead the life you want.

Hope this rambling helped in some way, and whatever you decide to do I hope you find success and fulfillment.

Cheers
The title will get votes, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of content in it. "Rails won". OK, why? What's good about it?

I wish the author at least postulated some reasons why Rails became popular:

* It launched before the other web frameworks of its nature (in fact, many were inspired by it).

* It hit API stability many years before Django did.

* It's a lot more flexible than most PHP frameworks.

* Ruby makes pretty, domain-specific languages easy.

* Rails, while allowing you to override defaults, doesn't ask you if you don't care.

* The features have kept coming in Rails with regular releases increasing its value. Many of the additions have come from real-world, high-value projects. That can't be said for many frameworks which were built as "we can make Rails in (Java|PHP|Python|etc.)".

Rails has hit a tipping point, but the interesting question is why. The author hasn't put anything forward there. In fact, the author has some downright weird statements. He can't find anything bad to say about Django? Rails just plain sucks? Yet Rails wins? Even some of the things he mentions - such as coupling data objects to the database - are done in Django (and most of these style frameworks) in a similar fashion. So, that sucks in Rails and doesn't in Django. Hmm.

It's a great attempt to create one of those articles people love to read that say, "this sucks, but it's still what you should be doing because it doesn't matter that it sucks".
This sounds like you have no clue of who the guy is. I don't think there's a single company or start-up that wouldn't hire him.

You're talking about a guy who talks at numerous conferences every year (or at least did), who designed Blogger templates before being employed by Google, who designed Webmonkey, Wired, etc. (http://stopdesign.com/about)

Besides, he was simply pointing out that this was a complete mismatch for him and I can understand his "frustration", given the fact that he was supposed to be a UI Lead at Google. He wasn't hired to be some low-level pixel pusher.
There are some tricks to help avoid the lows or at least diminish the unpleasantness.

Don't overwork yourself.
Get at least 7 hours of sleep.
Exercise at least 3 times a week.
Keep a pulse of your venture and know when to move on if things aren't looking good. Life is short so don't kill yourself with one thing, you must iterate.
Make time for family and friends.

These are some of the things I've learned over the years.
Please add to this list if you think of anything else.
I think that's part of why I do it, actually. I've noticed that in times where I'm very busy I tend to drift to a sleep pattern that gives me the most time to work undisturbed. Like, in real crunch times, I'll start going to bed at 8:00 p.m. and getting back up at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.

Sometimes being out of synch with everyone can be a boon to productivity.
How come all this has to lead to "at IMVU....". I keep seeing this pattern from the company.
Sleep is a important component of health, along with nutrition and exercise. Life's too short to be unhealthy for a major part of it. You should get all the sleep your body needs.
Game currency now has official exchange rate, backed by swedish Financial regulator
Any registered iPhone Developer should also check out Apple's iPhone Tech Talk World Tour videos. There are a couple of good talks on UI design.

They're available through itunes if you have an ADC account.
I agree with some of what you're saying. However, I don't think Apple is playing the position of scooping up customers who are 'underserved by Microsoft'. They are playing the position of making intuitive, well designed products that anyone can use while locking you into their ecosystem.

Most users don't care about design? I think the number of the different Apple products sold say otherwise. A phone that anyone can pick up and use many of the features without reading a manual, thats a byproduct of brilliant design on many levels. Whether people care or not, they connect with it and are put in a position where they now have feelings for a piece of technology. When they then decide to make that purchase they very much care about design.

Microsoft products have indeed been successful, but other than the xbox (and we're talking consumer electronics here not OS's) what has been the other runaway hit they've made? The zune is a great media player, but came about after msft assembled a team and put them in a room with an ipod and told them to make something better.

The growth in sales from Apples products combined with their increasing marketshare in the desktop and mobile spaces are very indicative of consumers demanding better designed stuff. Apple's in-house iterative process is best positioned and most efficient at making products that are in line with that.
Consistency is the most important part. You need to reset your internal clock to get used to going to sleep and waking up at the same time. Even though it sucks at first -- you may have trouble falling asleep and then getting up early you'll still be tired -- you have to muddle through to get on a regular sleep schedule. Eventually, your body will adjust. Try not to deviate much at all.

(That's advice given to me by a sleep expert at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI many years ago, when I was afflicted with a rare sleeping disorder.)

She also told me never to do anything but sleep in my bed (don't read there, don't eat there, don't work, don't watch TV, etc.). Beds are for sleeping and training your brain to recognize that will help you keep to your regular sleep cycle.

If you're having trouble falling asleep, get up, go sit in a chair and read for 15 or 20 minutes, then try going to sleep again.
Complaining Facebook users aren't a liability, they're a competitive advantage
He got the lead job at Twitter. Don't ask how I know.
That seems to be the essence of the piece and I'm happy for the author but why did this get posted here?

There's no content to it. He doesn't list the pros and cons, he doesn't really detail his thought process he basically just says "I chose Rails so it Won". It's basically a propaganda piece.

I don't fault the author. As a general "this is what's going on with me" post to an established audience it's fine. But I can't see why it's getting voted up on HN
For me it is, asleep from 1-4:40am, wake up at 7:30am to get the kids off to school, back asleep by 8:30am wake up at 11:00am-12:00pm. I then start work (I can work any hours I like as long as I do the work). Frankly, it kind of sucks. I've always wished I could get up early, chipper and fresh but even when I was a little kid I couldn't (well, when I was 8 I could).

Even by the age of 10, when I had to get up at 5:00am to deliver a paper route, I was an absolute wreck in the morning. By the time I was a High School student I would essentially spend the entire first half of the day in a sleepy haze even falling asleep in the midst of taking tests (I would jump with a start and find pencil trails running down the sheet where I had passed out). Teachers would yell at me for sleeping in their class all the time.

No I don't have narcolepsy... I was tested. Most they came back with was I have mild sleep apnea but the stupid breathing machine they give you just prevents me from sleeping even more so I quit wearing it... so I could actually get SOME sleep. ARGH!!!
That's not "less UI", it's just a different UI with fewer graphical elements.

I'm not arguing against it-- he's come up with a simple DSL, and exposed that to the users-- but what would it mean to have "less UI" and maintain a given feature-set?
If you don't have food to eat, that will also kill you.
I must be spending too much time on HN, I thought Rails had "won" since at least a year ago.
But vi (and likely emacs as well) has terrible discoverability. I can modify my gedit or eTextEditor syntax highlighting easily. You could spend an hour learning how to do the same in vi. Hell, to even find 'colorscheme' you'd have to wonder round vimtutor for ages.
If you quit, you won't get unemployment if things go bad. Sounds like you already have more income lined up though. No time like the present to start something. I see more opportunity now than ever before.
You sleep less until you can get to sleep at the time you want.

If you got 2 hours sleep the night before, going to bed at 9pm is not too difficult.
Which is why having outside investors isn't right for everyone. Who needs whom more?
No, unfortunately, not that I know of.
Wake up very early the next day. Get something like 4-5 hours of sleep. Then you'll be so tired that you'll have to go to bed early. Then start a routine of going to bed and waking up at the same time every day and your body will get used to it.
Thanks for the Mosso suggestion.

I just signed up and so far I really like it. I have chatted with support 3 times now and each time they have been very helpful.

Thanks.
From this, posted over a week ago?

http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poa...

;)
You laugh, but I've done this when I stayed up way too late and really wanted to be up early the next morning. When I started my first company, I spent many nights sleeping on the floor with just a small blanket that was too small for me. Miserable, but pretty easy to get up when my alarm went off.
Ask HN:  Is paying for a Funding Post networking event worth it?
One's billing rate is determined by the market value of one's services. For instance, I may be able to charge $300/hr for general security consulting to a software vendor, but I cannot expect $300/hr for flipping burgers at a fast food place. It's contextual; there's not one price assigned to one person. If Charlie finds an exploit that could potentially cause a lot of damage, it's perfectly reasonable to expect the vendor to pay a value proportionate to that exploit's potential liability, damages, etc.

Hourly rates are determined based on market rates, and vary from job to job.
Roll Your Own Multitouch Screens, Tables: Max Multitouch Framework, PyMT
> I thoroughly encourage you to actually come try ot work in the industry before making claims that it is against free speech :)

Although I have never worked in anything involving investigation of CP, I do have experience in other fields in which I gained insight that I believe is relevant here in these matters. In real life I do stick to my guns and practise what I preach.

> Are the children subjected to CP free?

I'm not exactly sure I understand what you mean by 'free'. Though, the decision whether a child participates in CP or not should ultimately rest on that child.

> Why does the freedom of XYZ person who wants to see children (children here, 3 or 4 years olds or younger for example) come before the freedom of 100's of youngsters who are abused.
You've totally misconstrued what I've said.
By all means, if children really get that kick out of it that they'd like to do it for free then let them, but I would normally expect them [or their parents] to charge a fee and pursue CP as a business just like normal pornography is nowadays.

What I really have trouble realizing is how appreciating a youthful body is inappropriate. I don't think it is, I think it's simply natural.