skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Short summary:

1. Validate/clean input. Preferably store data in 3 arrays to ensure separation of input, cleaned data and cleaned data to be used with sql. Or cleaned data to be used with prepared sql-statements. Uhm yes.

2. The PHP type-system is retarded and can return integers treated as boolean false. Compare against !== FALSE when 0 is a valid return value from whatever function you just called, instead of simply checking the return value.

3a. The PHP runtime is retarded and wont choke if you refer to unexisting or unitialized variables. Initialize variables.

3b. Shortcuts which saves you a few keystrokes can result in poor maintainability. Use braces.

3c. Write readable (not "smart") code.

4a. Shortcuts which saves you a few keystrokes can result in poor maintainability. Use braces.

4b. Be consistent.

5. Use simple replace-functions when you don't need full regexp.

6. The ternary-operator is advanced & confusing. We recommend against using it.

7. Caching might improve performance.

8. Frameworks exists. You may or may not use them.

9. Writing buggy code that causes errors is silly and costs resources. Try not writing buggy code that needs to eat errors runtime.

10. Strlen is slow. Use isset on strings as arrays to check for specific lengths. Nevermind compromising rule 3c and in doing so also compromising rule 4b.

Call me picky, but I wont go as far as calling this advanced.
Security error. Which seemed to kind of make sense. Didn't seem to be allowed via Javascript. Googling now it seems like it might be possible if you write the header to the AJAX HTTP request explicitly. I might play more with that later. Granted, there, for most users, the difference would be minimal since most presumably wouldn't read the page's Javascript to verify what we'd said.
Amen. The first person to make steps toward getting rid of the ivory tower universities in favor of cheap online accredited degree programs is my hero. I am absolutely amazed there aren't any good options out there for people who want a marketable degree at a low cost using online courses.
Less than 1%.

The user comments were mostly positive (1300 upvotes, 400 downvotes), and the site made a reasonable amount of money from the traffic, but the service was not compelling enough for people to use it daily. That's my fault, though, not Reddit's.
Thanks for the feedback. It's interesting that you mentioned that. We also have a consumer oriented service called ShareMeme: http://sharememe.com

We built messagepub after a lot of ShareMeme users asked us for an API.
Never Hide Films Are Viral Successes For Ray-Ban
I'm from Canada, too, and I've been listening for a while now. They don't always play the best music, but the variety is nice.

Having said that, I think this is a load of horse manure. I don't think that charging some, but not others is very fair. Also, isn't there and Internet adage that says once you release something for free, you can't turn around and charge for it? Or have I been reading too much SvN?

In any case, $6/month (CAD) for myself and the same amount for my wife is not worth it.

edit:
Also, this makes a good case for proxy software. If I'm able to set up a proxy that makes it appear to Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, etc. that my IP is from the country they accept, I will still get free music.

Am I wrong in that conclusion?
Question closed as "exact duplicate" by *Ross 56 secs ago

I'm going to be in a similar situation to you soon, but from what I can tell using Zend_Test (http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.test.html) looks to be the easiest way to go about this. The only test framework supported is PHPUnit but I've heard good things about it.
Nintendo DSi, ripe for a linux OS
You would think that Walmart would have an advantage in distribution since most of its stores seem to have grown out closer together.

Also, it would be nice to avoid the inevitable Walmart bashing. :-)
Yep, this is why PHP gets a bad rap in a lot of cases. I keep seeing lots of posts about "N PHP Components". Downloading/reading the code of those components makes it blatantly obvious that it was some designer who wrote them and not someone intimate with the language.

Disclaimer: PHP is how I stay living indoors.
Ask YC: Table based layout - part of the learning curve, or just deprecated?
Hi HN'ers,

A friend of mine, a CS major and good programmer, is working on a web project and learning HTML/CSS for the first time. As a web developer, I've done my best to nudge him in the right directions, in terms of separating semantics and layout, graceful degradation, and best-practice CSS, but like anyone who's never used code for layout, he's struggling with CSS's annoying idiosyncracies, cross-browser bugs, and weird (at first) ways of doing things.

Here's the thing: I know he could pick up functional table-based layout very quickly and produce a 'working site' with much less headache. That's how I learned it, and I have no doubt that its more intuitive to the beginner, especially with tools like Dreamweaver's table builder.

So, do you think it's best to learn to do it wrong (but do it) first, as long as one later understands why sites shouldn't be built that way? Or if I teach him table-based layout, will I just be unleashing another hapless developer who doesn't respect web standards onto the Internet?

-dan
"Strange. My family in Germany is very much a part of their community."

There are over 500 people in Europe. Only 80 million of those are from Germany. Neither is Germany a good representative of Europe, nor are most Germans exactly role models. Your over-generalization would be offending to many people. Since my skin is too thick, I found it amusing instead.

I don't doubt that there are advantages in being part of the community. I understand it's part of the American culture. Though I try to fit in and be a good guest in this beautiful "land of the free", this "be part of your community" thing borders "psychological coercion" on my book.
So, you'd like to have a web-dev, preferably one who doesn't ask for pay, to do all the work for you. All the while you smart business-men [who can't even spell properly] stick to your cushy dayjobs and reap the benefits later?

Congratulations, I'm sure you have made it onto many people's blacklist today.
in my humble opinion, its a step on the learning curve. he shouldn't take it and run, never learning CSS, but to build a site or two with tables is fine. especially if he later comes back and spends time re-doing them without tables.

as long as he's using the process to learn more about CSS and improving his skills, not just learning how to make better table layouts.
Thank you.

I've lived in apartments, but it's never been the treble that bothered me, and I never figured that we'd ever see a bass-proofing that would meet my needs. So... I switched to renting houses. (And eventually buying one.)
Does it really matter what sequence of numbers you use, when the result isn't even viewable in a modern browser (Firefox 3 on OSX)?
What I think can speak to its power a lot more than just some virtual degree which will probably be overlooked at, is an awesome product/project/etc created by virtual university graduates and publicized as so.

Creating these virtual degrees is pointless and loses respect really quickly. Just like security certifications serve only as a filter for the lowest candidates and don't actually add much to some qualified.

Projects, interests and output talks, b.s. walks. (This is coming from someone who ended up getting a CISSP... sigh)
Doesn't everyone know this? That's the best deal I know for getting stock in startups. Don't get options, get stock with a vesting schedule. Get it at fair price when it's super-cheap (a few cents per share). Buy the stock outright for fair market value, therefore you pay $0 in taxes.
"Ability to send through email, SMS, phone, Twitter, AIM, and Google Chat (more soon)"

Is this sentence missing "message" after send?

BTW, I love the logo!
Today is Exxon Valdez Remembrance Day
If you watch it in reverse, you can visualize Circuit City's fate.
However sad it might be, this probably is advanced for most PHP devs. Just take a look at the original article to see where I'm coming from. :)
All You Need to Know About Tracking Your Website Activity
start.io
How exciting to have yet ANOTHER version if IE to test against!
It's an interesting service but I feel that certain services, for example Twitter, should be free and here's the reason - hook people in free offerings and get them to pay for the other services. Market it in a way that if they don't throw in the paid services to their notification, it just doesn't make sense.
Rather a leading question. What about the third option: that there's nothing wrong with tables?
Ask HN: What's the advantage of listing your site as "Creative Commons"?
From a purely selfish standpoint, beyond the issue of the public good, can this bring extra traffic, give you additional credibility, make you any money?
Bonus points for blocking IE6. Good luck with your product! Anyone blocking IE6 has a place in my heart for that reason alone.
yup cool :) I'm on my second course in stanford X_x
I wrote about something like this a while ago: http://gobyairship.com/2008/06/02/notifications-how-i-want-t...

Very excited by the prospect of controlling my communication flow.
how does it compare w/ zuora?
Yeah. The way they used the photos was kinda disrespectful (IMHO). They used it as rotten would use photos (sensationalist). This paragraph irritates me:

"The human brain is surprisingly bloody. I've worked in neuroscience labs, and I'm used to seeing brains that are stored in glass jars filled with formaldehyde, the preserved tissue a lifeless gray. But this brain—removed from a warm body just a few hours ago—looks bruised, its folds stained purple. Blood drips from the severed stem, forming puddles on the stainless steel table."

If they used a photo of the brain for a reasonable purpose (e.g. showing different areas) it would be acceptable. The way they did it was just tasteless.
Some good designs.

Why not an H in the shape of a tie fighter?

Or a black & white mirrored lambda? like yin yang?

Was the contest announced here in HN?
Besides €3 probobly being enough set up a tunnel too Germany, USA or UK and then get the free service (aswell as having a way around that problem on other occations). I can't help but feel sorry for the poor nations where €3 is an unreasonable amount of money. I get that it was a buisness decission but them exempting certain countries just alienates those of us who aren't on that list, or at least that's how I feel.
Singularity Summit 2008's talks now up
Apple certainly "gives back" substantial amounts of code. Perhaps not as much as you and I want but your statement is a misrepresentation of fact. The amount of open-source goodness Apple has added to WebKit (née KHTML) alone is ridiculous.
Sage advice indeed.
Direct link to submitted logos: http://www.haskell.org/logos/poll.html

Link was buried in a heap of text.
I think this drives an important aspect of growth home: don't over stretch. Their geographic center is probably pretty darn close to the weighted center. They didn't just start and then create stores in every major metropolis overnight.

I'd like to see the overlay of global expansion, to see if their US growth was used as a model for other countries as well.
Looks pretty cool, but what is it exactly? Just a start page? I think if you have more detailed description about what the site offers with additional screenshots i think it would be better. Unless of course that's all there is to it and I just completely missed it.
Making GNOME Terminal GNU screen-aware
* You're doing things that are (or seem) trivial to do oneself. I'm not convinced this stuff is really hard to do myself, so why would I pay to make it easier? Maybe you can remind me how hard it actually is. There are lots of nasty little problems with these things that memory masks.

* It's not particularly cheap (vs doing it yourself which is effectively free for most delivery methods). Maybe you could compare yourself with other options. Maybe you're better in some ways, so it justifies being more expensive.

* I think a lot of people may only need one or two of the delivery methods. Maybe you can convince me I should be utilizing other delivery mechanisms to reach my users. How would it help me to do so?
its a start page that tells you when sites have been changed.
Physics of Oil Sand Extraction:Alberta Reserves Similar to Saudi Arabia
although the concept is quite good.. the pricing is a deal killer. At any scale that is quite expensive.
you say that like it's a bad thing;)
Thank you for tackling a hairy problem for the rest of us.
One thing I'd noticed a while back was that it tends to generate LEFT OUTER JOINS instead of plain old LEFT JOINS, which isn't really bad, But thats one of the reasons (besides just being plain lazy) that I'm still sticking with pl/pgsql functions for most of my aggregation needs.
Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Thats exactly what I need.
Paul Krugman doesn't like the Toxic Asset Plan
Isn't it called experience?

Honestly, I think the proliferation of certificates and degrees has had a negative affect on the value of higher education, RE: that "marketable degree" you mentioned. Not to mention that some (myself included) could argue a 2 year tech degree is currently more valuable than any non technical bachelors.
In a nutshell, they are discussing changing GNOME Terminal to "speak" GNU screen -- automatically attach to existing screen sessions, option to automatically enter a screen session when starting a new Terminal session, list screen "screens" as tabs in Terminal (or through some other chrome), couple scrolling so that the scrollbar in Terminal scrolls in screen, and generally making screen integration transparent to the user.

As a heavy G-T and screen user, I am very excited about this proposal. It sounds like to make it feasible they would have to modify screen to expose library functions, in order to not wind up parsing the low-level terminal codes.
Seems a little expensive. Cool idea. I'd also like to receive via the same platform, expecially sms.
Tor encrypts data from your computer to the exit node; it's in the clear from the exit node to the server. Tor provides the same level of encryption as a VPN, but with anonymity.
No hackers in our startup group. Oh oh!
Hi everyone, we just want your opinions (preferably from hackers and startups that have already applied or made it in the past). My brother and I have a great idea, but we're no hackers. We applied for Summer 2009 funding, kind of late but we made it before the deadline. We were very hesitate to apply cause we had no hacker in our group, but someone told us to just do it. And so we did.

We consider ourselves as designers only (we made a concept of the site) but with no working functions. It's basically an image of the site. I know many startups are laughing at us right now scratching their heads and going "Really? They are trying to start a company with an image of their site/product?"

I know it sounds funny my brother and I even laughed about it. But it's a good image and we can describe every little detail of the site inside out. It's like if a big soda company like Coca-Cola designed a really good concept of a new drink and having no idea yet how to make the actual drink yet.

But we have to work with what we got...=(

We're wondering if a concept (image) is all we really need to convince investors in funding in our company? Once we get funded we can hire a programmer/hacker to bring our dream to life or maybe use the money ycombinator gives us to find someone who can help make a convincing prototype before pitching it.

In the miracle of ycombinator choosing us to be one of the Summer 2009 startups, would it be hard finding ourselves a hacker in return for the same percent or even more of the company stock as us? I don't want to grab a hacker from a different group who is already spending time on their own project. That's just bad. The hacker we're looking for is someone who was rejected, never applied, or someone who was never accepted and has similar programming skills and knowledge of justin.tv and youtube. You can use open source, I have seen some that would fit our site but it needs major modifications.

We're not competing with justin.tv btw, it's nothing like it so you can relax Mr. Kan.

We're really nice people, laid back, pretty young, love bouncing ideas and we're twin brothers. We also give good back rubs. Nice to meet you!
Why Customers Will Pay You to Restrain Them
Good plan. I'll start by making a GUI in Visual Basic...(SCNR)
I was going to post the same quote. The esteemed senator from North Dakota should have "I told you so" tattooed on his forehead.
White Space: How to Get it Right
Exactly. There are a lot of claims in this article that aren't correct.
For example, No integrated ORM doesn't mean that you have to write a lot of boilerplate code...boilerplate code should always be abstracted away.(also, if you use linq-to-sql, there are tools to help you with code generation)

Also, for the licensing, if i remember correctly. You're allowed to change the source anyway you. But it's true that it's not not an open source license because it stops you from re-distributing your changes.

The API is actually more unified now then in prior releases...the prior releases weren't done on purpose, just that the framework was changing too fast.

The strong typing and the views thing is actually a requirement because you're using a statically typed language. That doesn't make it less powerful, just different. And as mentioned, you can(and should) abstract that away via custom types and so on...

I've been using the framework for about 7 months now in one project and i think it's very nice. I usually develop using Django and so can't stand something like webforms that has a lot of magic.(i do miss python's native dictionaries though whenever i am writing c#)
I agree with you, it's not about the degree itself or the certification. It's about the education, and the confidence it gives you knowing that you've completed certain coursework that others in the field think is important.

As a scaled-back example, I worked through the Stanford iPhone Programming course. It was great, even without videos of the lectures or being able to ask questions. The slides and exercises provided context, structure, introduced material appropriately, etc. Much better than what I'd been able to piece together through tutorials and sample code from Apple. In the end, it was nice to know that I had the same basis that the Stanford students had when they worked on their class projects. Those projects got written up on Techcrunch, too. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/stanford-students-relea...
And from there, the winning logo (#51 by Jeff Wheeler):

http://www.haskell.org/logos/logos/logo7000.png
A handy uptime and downtime conversion cheat sheet
Google Street View may meet its match in Europe - to our loss
It seems to be the difference between an enterprise product and a simpler product for single developers. Does anyone know how much Zuora charges, I can't see on the website?

Spreedly is $19/month + 1-3% depending on volume.
Google’s Wonder Wheel Experiment, and More
The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services
Ask yourself these two questions:

1. Does this layout require display: table/table-row/table-cell?

2. Do I want this to work in IE6 and IE7?

If the answers are "yes" and "yes" then you have to use a table, because that is the only way to get display: table functionality in IE6 and IE7.

If either answer is "no" then using something other than tables is probably best. If you are starting from scratch then you should probably do whatever will get you a prototype faster. If you've already laid out the page using a table, then add an issue "redo layout without using tables" in your issue tracker and prioritize it against your other issues.
I agree, those things are contradictory. I'd go one step further as well. We can't evaluate how well we (US) are at meeting standards if we're not all looking at success as a consistent end product. We just list standards and say, "meet them".

I think part of the issue is that we all look at success differently (and that is natural). Personally, I think of success as a product of the means that is "education" as being an active member in the economy, e.g. to go and get a job and pay it (education) forward through income tax.

But others look at success as college attainment, which skews data and, in some cases, creates inefficiencies in our economy (landing students in massive debt, starving them of 4 years of wages and experience, pushing them down an alternate career path).

Depending on where you stand, success is evaluated in different ways which really has an impact on what the best educational software design should be.

IMHO, the internet is the ultimate educational tool (because it's the doorway to 1000s of tools). The issue is that educational software is almost always designed to limit access to that material, which I think is a bummer for students today. Sure there are areas of the net that have no educational value. But there are other areas that schools automatically shutoff (blogger, wordpress, youtube, etc.) that represent enormous collections of information.
All aboard LambdaTrak!
I probably wasn't very clear. I'm not trying to say the technology is bad; simply that success in the market is due to the marketing and not to the technology. Others who are selling the same or similar technology haven't had the same market success as either Apple or Red Hat.
It's funny how people who use Last.fm's content and bandwidth for free think Last.fm will be hurt in any way by them leaving.
Also don't forget features, as software becomes more feature rich it also increases in available holes.
And what is the license under which WebKit/KHTML is?
Didn't see this mentioned already, but I really don't like the auto-changing text on the home page. I was in the middle of reading a section when it disappeared and I couldn't figure out how to get it back except to just wait, which I did not do.
They allude to a 2nd part of the interview...anyone have a link?
Call me naive, but were a large percentage of users to leave, they will be hurt. Not just from the traffic and revenue perspective, but also from a reputation one.

Take a gander at the comments. There are not just normal users, but also independent artists and even a record executive from Brazil. This is a serious move and potentially, a very damaging one.
From the left side things: Robert Brenner's Boom and The Bubble

http://www.amazon.com/Boom-Bubble-US-World-Economy/dp/185984...
There is no such dichotomy between free-as-in-speech and commercial software. Red Hat pretty much sell free-as-in-speech software and make a healthy amount of money from support contracts attached to it.
I don't think that it really matters.
It tarnishes the concept of cc : do you consider your site as a work of art ?