skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The latest unemployment numbers for 2008 for computer software engineers is 1.6%...That's beyond full employment":

http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=...
It still makes me a little sad that C++ won out as the default "object oriented extension for C."
Ask HN: What Paid Services Do You Use For Your Startup?
For your startup, what services do you use? I'm using Amazon AWS for hosting, Pivotal Tracker for project planning, GitHub, and a few others I can't think of right now.

What paid services do you find the most useful in running your startup?
Google Is Not in “Late-Stage Talks” to Acquire Twitter
As a sometimes-OCD, I'd like an unread tweets feature e.g.:

Unread (77)

Of course, this might require consumer-level eye ball tracking to see if you "read" one
It seems wrong somehow that IBM would spend $7 billion on an acquisition, immediately after laying off thousands of employees.
I had a similar experience at my school. In 1995-96 most of the existing Sun workstations in the computer labs were replaced with Gateway boxes running Windows NT.
I guess that's what I'll need to do - throw it against the wall and see it if sticks.
It's the new "button" carried around in the "nuclear football" -- the "internet off switch"!
Just a few ideas of the top of my head:

- If some service stops working (some website or phone system), people can get on to twitter and find out if others are having the same issues.

- You can use it to keep track of various sports teams. See what the players are up to and how the various games are going without having a TV.

- You can even have TV channels tuned to a specific "Search" depending on your interests to get a pulse of what's going on (sports news, news from different countries)

- Combining these can give you a "build your own channel" tool that can give you real time info.

- Another idea may be to convert it to something similar to a radio channel. If there is ever a nice way of aggregating various tweets together by theme - that might be a good way to be entertained.

There are probably a whole lot of other ideas that people can't even think of yet but it'll definitely be interesting to see.
Human Evolution and Frameshift Mutations
Dice shows a 45% drop in jobs advertised on their site. There's a very good chance some companies are simply moving their job postings elsewhere or cutting down the number of sites they advertise on in order to reduce costs, or perhaps decrease the flood of resumes.
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic 8GB Memory Card Free
Nokia 5800 Black Tube a latest Cell phone that most if not every new phone comes with. What do you get when you combine the two, One of the most dedicated unlocked touchscreen phones in the market. there are a variety of music control options.
Some Twitter Thoughts
The text immediately above Kay and Knuth is "Very few programmers ever achieve this level in their own lifetimes."

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001250.html (since the article link is now dead).
True, of course.

Assuming a startup falls in the latter category, coming up with a good monetization for a B2C web-app is challenging.

Majority of the apps I use daily fall into the 'nice to have' category. Most dont provide me the value to the point that I'm willing to pay for them.

And seeking out that distinction - between the 'nice to have' and 'must have' categories is what turns several of my ideas into vaporware
Use Tweetdeck. A lot of other clients have this feature too.
It's not really spending. What's presumably happening is that the companies are merging, and the Sun part of the merger is going to worth $7 billion.
What do you think is going to happen to all the people who got laid off?
Summary: 1992 usenet message from the creator of Minix, explaining that Linux is no good because it's monolithic and closely tied to x86.

In fairness, Linux evolved so that it's no longer x86-specific, and insmod makes it somewhat non-monolithic. Had it not evolved, AST might have been right and Linux might have died, particularly due lack of portability.
I run a free job site and I've seen 20-25% increase in postings...

Number of visitors are increasing 30-35% every month. Seems like good times to me.
A lawsuit over an issued patent is never absurd. It's a necessary mechanism by which our society fosters innovation. You won't have nearly as much innovation without patents, and you won't have patents without enforcement.

The patent itself may be silly, and the beautiful part of the system is that it can be overturned. That happens very frequently.

This is just a case of eggs being broken to make an omelet.
I wonder if Twitter would have to re-write all their Ruby on Rails code into Java since Ruby is not a supported language at Google.
Better Summary: AST's rant on Linux.

Everybody should know that thread by heart. I figured what it was when I hovered the mouse over the link and saw comp.os.minix in there.
John Carmack surprises fans (and his CEO) with Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone
No, what kind of stupid question is that?

Can you follow hacker news updates on twitter?
AWS for application hosting and storage. Paypal for payment processing (if that counts).
Good-Bye Solaris? The Fate of Sun's Top 5 Technologies After the IBM Buyout
Yeah. Classic.
I'm inspired by several things Alan Kay has said about commercializing technology, but it struck me: has he been involved in anything that has been commercially successful for him?

The Xerox/PARC stuff famously didn't make money for Xerox; Smalltalk was not commercially successful; Squeak is not commercially successful.

It seems he's great at inventing stuff, and his opinions on that are worth listening to. But he doesn't seem so great at commercializing stuff, and so perhaps I shouldn't listen to those so much (even though I find them inspiring). Has he successfully commercialized something?
thanks for saving me the time. my thoughts exactly! History should be the first thing we teach new programmers.
"If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to
even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't." - Linus Torvalds, January 1992

17 years later and it still isn't! Makes you wonder about the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem had the GNU guys actually finished Hurd.
Basecamp, Highrise, Harvest, Slicehost, GitHub, Paypal Merchant Account - that's about all for now.
Github, LightHouse, The Planet

All of those services provide things that I need, but don't want to spend time administering. In the case of The Planet they are providing the network, but I still maintain the servers. I am thinking about moving to Amazon once the contract is up.

From a non-webapp perspective, I pay for legal and accounting too. I have thought about paying for a personal assistant, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.
Ask HN: How to Inspire young people in computer science?
I was optimistic today when I heard that computer science enrollments went up for the first time in along time.

What's important for young people to know, about computer science today and what should they be preparing for upon graduation 4 years from now?
Maybe Apple will own the next disruptive platform (iPhone) and objective-C will have its day after all.

BTW: "OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them." http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...
iteration and getting system setting stuff are so generic you might as well implement it yourself or write a thin wrapper (in this case iterating over entries in a hash table and getting the OS name)

IMO, a good chunk of the java libraries are there to overcome java deficiencies, and don't produce anything grand on their own for other languages.
I'm not convinced by the analogy that pg gives:

"""
why waste time on something you "don't know" will work

For the same reason that I'm willing to fly to any large airport without knowing for sure that there will be a taxi waiting. There almost always is.
"""

This is something that you've 'learnt' based on prior experiences. And based on past experience you know that the probability of a taxi waiting outside an airport is high. So, its not completely 'unknown'.
Ask HN: Please help review my site CollectiveSys.com
Dear HN,

I humbly ask for your precious feedback for my site http://collectivesys.com

It's technically a Wiki + social networking site, and semantically a crowd-sourced review + social news site.

I hope to make it the one-stop hub for evaluation of anything in the world.

Last but not the least, sorry for trading your direct link convenience with my two paragraphs.

Many thank in advance.

Jerry
The question is better asked: how quickly am I unfollowing content providers that double-post their content to Twitter? Just to be clear: pretty quickly.

Twitter serves a different purpose than blogs, Facebook status updates, etc. If you're shoehorning all your content into all possible channels for attention, well that's just spammy.
Dropbox, Mantis, and git, the latter being hosted on Slicehost.
Tell them about the opportunities that arise for starting your own company with minimal resources.
Discount the value of a correct prediction by how many predictions were made by that person. You'd need some way to prevent making a lot of sock puppet accounts, but that's probably doable.
Then he's rude and won't be invited to my birthday party. The point is to be cordial to one another.
Knuth is an expert compiler-writer. This alone would qualify him solidly as a programmer.
Not by me, but https://twitter.com/newsycombinator
If they work in IT they have a much better chance of finding a job than anyone else does right now - because of the long-term trend of labor shortages in IT.
Paul Krugman Explains the Global Banking System
Not only that it's important to remember that a lot of people are being shifted around.

For example, Microsoft regularly had hundreds of job openings before the downturn. So if they make cuts now the cut employees are going to take those other open jobs. That gives you a massive drop in listings from Microsoft even though no one actually became unemployed.

I mean, there are clearly fewer jobs out there and I'm not saying things aren't bad. I'm just saying a drop in listings probably isn't the best indicator of how bad.
There is no correlation with 'powerful' and it's only natural that elegant languages are easier to implement.
Linux was obsolete 17 years ago and is still obsolete -- unfortunately, most programmers only know how to write in obsolete ways, so it takes a long time before obsolete code stops being written (cf. forking servers vs. event-driven servers).

It's starting to look like virtualization will deliver the world of microkernels which Tanenbaum prophecied: Xen is, for all practical purposes, a microkernel with which semiprivileged processes (OS kernels) interoperate.
You can also add twitter feeds to Google Reader (Google apparently does not have to adhere to API limits). I do this for any twitter accounts 
I stalk
 that I don't want to miss.
insmod makes it somewhat non-monolithic

No. This is a common misconception due to the overloading of the adjective "monolithic". In the context of microkernels vs. monolithic kernels, kernel modules are irrelevant, since they operate within the same (monolithic) address space as the main kernel.
This has thing ring of truth, for me--but do you see virtualization taking the kind of extreme route it'd need to provide more microkernel (at least, like EROS) benefits? A different OS instance for every program? That seems like a pretty kludgy way to do it.
You obviously haven't read about apply/eval. SICP is a great book. It's even available online! There's also the lectures.

SICP: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
The part about apply/eval: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-26.html...

The lectures: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma... (apply/eval is discussed in Lecture 7, the meta-circular evaluator. I'm not sure if you could understand it without watching the previous lectures, however they're all wonderful)
Zuckerberg is neither very briliant nor very arrogant, just plain arrogant and lucky.
Good point there. Reminds me of the immortal words of Friedrich Nietzsche: "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."
He should probably have called that section "Immortal programmers".
Lisp isn't quite as dynamic as Ruby, but Javascript certainly is, and it can be as fast as Java.

I agree that Lisp is a better choice for DSLs than Ruby. If you want a very dynamic (late bound) language that is also fantastic for DSLs, have a look at Io (http://iolanguage.com/).
GitHub, Linode, AWS.

A merchant account is in the cards, though we don't know where yet (and haven't finished the process of incorporation, so can't get one yet).

At some point we might use Exceptional (I like the look of it, but I'm not a coder so I'm not making the decision of whether we need it or not) and if Get Satisfaction proves useful perhaps pay for a plan there. We'll see.
A different OS instance for every program? That seems like a pretty kludgy way to do it.

Kludgy or not, there have been some moves in that direction. People often distribute "VMWare appliances", i.e., a single application packaged up as a VMWare instance; and FreeBSD system administrators often run different services in separate jails.
To be totally honest I only skimmed the article, but I just don't think Twitter as a service is a replacement for a format. Mostly the focus here is on the fickle ad/brand-dependent media sites whereas more often than not I find myself subscribing to places based on quality content. Of course given that Twitter can be viewed from a RSS Reader means one doesn't have to trump the other.
On a side note, the FTP he mentions still functions, and still contains the directory minix. Pretty amazing that directory structure remained for 17 years. Anyway, reading on...

edit: Oh, it's A. Tanenbaum, my OS class used his book...
No, if I say "generaly" I don't give context, sorry. Don't answer to a rule of the thumb with anecdote.

More specificaly, on the same algorithm:

It's generaly slower than C/C++ (because of the method calls and the tagged arthmetics), unless you use the GC against the staticaly compiled code and slow allocator, but you need special cases. C/C++ "generaly" have faster method call.

It has few chances to be faster than java/.net who have the static types to get longer monomorphic specialization chains appart from corner cases, and generaly better GCs. And those can do deoptimization if the profile change, it's been a long time I left smalltalk, but the last time I checked VisualWorks couldn't.
Totally depends on the market you are serving, the size of the opportunity, and the amount of cash you think you can drum up.

But it's certainly viable to first create something that people would rather chew off their own arm than give up (Google, Facebook, Twitter).

It's also great to have a revenue model out of the gates (salesforce.com).

What's the startup idea?
Government surveillance is an internet myth. The idea all the CCTVs in the UK are connected, and government controlled is quite laughable. They wouldn't be able to co-ordinate anything as complex as that.

The vast majority of CCTV is locally owned, by individual business owners.
If you have access to a research library, you could do some research and write a feasibility study in a day of work. A feasibility study would be the first draft of your business plan after working on it for a day.

Do some basic market research at the library, know how big your market (users) would be and some basic information about them (are they 13-25 WoW players or 30-45 baby booomers.)

Find similar services to your idea and do some research on them. Even if your idea is really novel, you can find replacement products and research them.
e.g.: My company is a lot like Hacker News, but for serious hard core chefs. Hacker News make X amount of dollars with a userbase of Y users, we could probably do something similar.

So spend one day of research and produce a 1-2 page document with your research. That will really help you start to think of how to convert an idea or service into a business. Even if you have a strong idea of how to make money on a service, knowing this basic info will help you polish your ideas and help you sound really smart when talking to investors, potential partners, and even customers.
By the way, why do you use github when you could host your sources yourself ?
This guy completely discredits his company with a nonsense post like this. The reason Geico wouldn't PAY for the Caveman keyword is because it's not going to have much benefit. When someone types in "caveman" into Google, they aren't looking to buy car insurance. When someone types "car insurance quotes" into Google, they are. Geico wouldn't be dropping 90MM a year into that keyword if it didn't have a positive ROI. Althought "Caveman" might be cheaper to buy, I would bet any amount of money that it still have a negative ROI.
The Planet, Ringcentral, Google Apps
Unfuddle.com for subversion hosting, wiki, and bug tracking. Will be using AWS in the near future once some code gets written.
Slicehost, CampaignMonitor, Wufoo, AWS (just for S3 hosting of downloads)
Not only does Wolf3d run beautifully on the iPhone, the controls (and options for modifying them) actually make the iPhone a viable platform for 2.5 dimensional FPS games.

I'd like to see what he can come up with for Quake (a fully 3D shooter - which adds aiming up and down)
I don't see how the fact many programmers like syntax makes it better.

I also don't see how "coding AST-style" can be tedious, especially since it's so much easier to automate the process with macros. Granted, you'll want an editor with support for s-expressions.
Adding [1992] to the title would be much appreciated.
Maybe it's not in anticipation, but to say "Behave, or else! :-P"
we are an eCommerce biz so a bit diff:
bigresponse (email marketing)
MediaTemple
Adwords (off and on)
Facebook ads (now off no real interest in restarting)
Amazon Merchant Account
Copyright law sparks 40% decrease in Internet traffic in Sweden
Texas Tells Microsoft's Vista To Mosey on Out of Town
Just a personal note, my experience with SpyFu's numbers are horrible. They have always been way off the mark.
Bagsbuy.com Coupons
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"Lisp isn't quite as dynamic as Ruby"

?! Please substantiate. And of course when I say "Lisp" I really mean "Common Lisp".
I run a personal finance blog and wrote a few posts about jobs. Some of the best performing posts I've had in terms of search traffic.
Wired.com lays off 12 percent of staff
For a contemporary rebuttal by Rob Pike, see "Andy Tanenbaum hasn't learned anything" (http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/andy_tanenbaum)

See also: "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" [2000] (http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch....)
Chirrup is a bit different -- looks like more of a programmable API than something for end users.

Chirrup fetches all of the replies from Twitter,
and sorts them by URL so you can have a comment feed
for each page in your site.

This is actually not very much our new feature at all, since Chirrup is a feed service (pull from Twitter by API) whereas ours is a way to post comments to Twitter at user's choice (push to Twitter by user)

However, it is quite a bit like Backtype.com's new Backtype Connect, which tracks not just Twitter but comments from other all other kinds of blogs (Wordpress, Typepad, Six Apart), Reddit, Digg, Hacker News. And even Posterous. =)

Here's Backtype's recent blog post just the other day about Backtype Connect API, which is fully programmable.

http://blog.backtype.com/2009/04/api-backtype-connect/

They also have an awesome Wordpress plugin too!
When they first started pitching, we were a local school (Alexandria Va) and somewhat on the forefront of using tech in the classroom (for back then). I was co-chair of what you might call a "User group" (it was called the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable) back then, so I got to see their stuff and we came on board as an early adopter.

That said, I almost never used it. Yahoo provided all the functionality I needed that I didn't have on my web site or couldn't do with email (like chat for office hours, etc.).

It was just too cumbersome. I thought maybe they were better by now.

When I moved to the MA area, WebCT was in the area and I had an idea for them. Alas, they were bought by BB before I ever got anything organized. I figured at that time that BB was circling the drain. When the lawsuits started, I knew I was right.
Nyah. You're selling, but I'm not buying.

Couple of points.

First, warfare is no longer all-or-nothing. Carrier forces can and do sit offshore from nation states that have anti-ship missiles and have their way. War is mostly incremental any more. That might change, but that's current state. Taking pot shots at a carrier fleet in interational waters because its doing something you don't like (like protecting Japan or Taiwan) is starting to play for real money. Might happen, but it's not the most common scenario.

Second, got any evidence of anti-ship missiles taking out a modern warship in the last 30 years or so? Last I remember it happening, I think, was during the Falkland Islands conflict.

I think A/S technology poses an immediate and extremely dangerous threat to a surface naval fleet -- no doubt about it. But it's not a new threat. This threat goes back at least 50 years. A lot of work has been done on both sides to increase the threat and make it go away. Most of these weapon systems have not been tested in integrated battle. That's a wild card that could either help or hurt a carrier, but the assumption was that carriers were sitting ducks, so the onus is on you to demonstrate this is the case.

Finally, a carrier fleet is a large assembly of surface ships, not just a single target. These other ships do all sorts of neat and interesting things. Electronic CounterMeasures are not going to be completely known to either combatant ahead of time.

So right now it's a total crap shoot, in my opinion, to take shots at a carrier group. And it's not a gamble that has any reasonable payoff -- unless you're in a total war situation. In which case carriers are the least of your worries. You'll be ducking submarine-launched nukes. And that's not so much fun.
Good Solves iPhone Enterprise Management
Google (Docs, Site, Mail), Skype (Communication), Unfuddle (Repository), AWS (Runtime), drop.io (File exchange), Vimeo (Video), Scribd (Docs)
I believe you should do it if you can build, promote and manage it without any cost structures...

I think Facebook/Digg would be vastly profitable if they didn't employ all those people. Do they need to?
Making software free, but only for folks with enough money
to buy first class hardware is an interesting concept.
Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.

I guess I should take more note when I predict things I think would be technically good ideas...
Google should offer to buy Twitter for $1 billion