skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been running a production app on Edge Rails (straight from SVN trunk) for about a month now and it's been all good. The new-ish REST routing enhancements are great once you get your head around it. I also like the ideas behind the performance enhancements, though I haven't had a chance to really flex them yet.

Beware though, they "yanked" out a lot of common things from rails core, so if you are upgrading an existing app you may spend quite a bit of time getting things working again.
Just follow the advice of upgrading to 1.2.3 (and soon 1.2.4) first as you'll get deprecation warnings before jumping straight into 2.0
Rails Rumble: 92 Web Apps Created in 48 Hours
Social networks might actually be semi-anti-social
Unbricked iPhones Now Fully Working, Calls Included
Techmeme Leaderboard To Launch, Attacking Technorati's Last Stronghold
Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, I have no problem with taking risks. Perhaps I was lucky to be raised in an environment that encouraged independent and unique approaches to business, but I know many women who aren't afraid to accept risks in order to achieve their goals. I agree, you should go out and meet more women.
I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly. I'm an architect, and I consider it one of my primary responsibilities to build code on a regular basis.

My personal philosophy is that a practicing software architect must be an internal evangelist and illustrate why things ought to be done one way or the other. The only way to do that is by shutting up and showing some code.

When I was 'coming up' in this industry I was VERY fortunate to have excellent role models to show me how important it was for an architect to be able to explain in detail everything that they may recommend. Honestly, it makes me sad to see so many "architects" out there who make recommendations based on a few opinions that they've read about. In the real world, there are different solutions to different problems, and the only way to know what pegs go into what holes is to know what pegs and holes even exist for a specific problem-set.

Unfortunately, the 'architect' title is relatively new to a lot of organizations who find themselves lacking clear strategy, and a lot of those voids have been filled by people who clearly don't belong there. I hope that eventually that herd will thin out a little bit after enough companies have been bit in the posterior by allowing someone with the incorrect credentials to make their important technology decisions for them.
Downmodded for lack of supporting arguments.

Looks fine out of the box on every install I've seen of the current most popular distribution (Ubuntu 7.04).

Also has worked fine on every distro I've used since at least 2000 (though back then I used Fedora, which at the time was a little ahead of the pack).

Vista, incidentally, requires a reboot to increase the font DPI. Try it.
Yes, it looks fine if you have font smoothing on, but try turning it off. The underlying font rendering is really poor, the underlying font rendering for Windows makes everything look like a pixel font.
much as I not so much a fan of rails these days, I do like the way they have embraced HTTP in all its "glory" - its a simple solid protocol that is well known. Why not embrace it !
Having access to the full power of the parent language can be a problem. This point is well articulated here: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/leastPower.html
Is this question directed towards founders who have already been through the YC process? I haven't been invited... at least, not yet. :)

I spend 99% of my time coding. I like YC because it lets me focus on what I'm good at now, and then coaches me through the business aspects of delivering a product later. The details holding me back from doing this on my own are exactly what YC offers mentoring through.
New Programming Language, Lisp syntax, but ruby semantics
the runtime performance of the Lisp programs in the aggregate was substantially better than C and C++

Well, my bullshit monitor just went off. You can pretend you are comparing languages, but the real difference is almost certainly algorithmic. Do Lisp advocates really need to depend upon flawed methodologies to make their arguments?

Here's an idea, if you want to prove the superiority of Lisp: Write more software in it. Not crappy little websites. Real software.
Monster IPO quarter coming - to be highest since dot-com boom
Adobe Raises The Stakes For Web Documents With Buzzword and Share
Yeah, until we realise the aliens are exploiting us by manipulating the pulsars ;)

Ever read Iain M Banks? I like how the ships subtly re-arrange star formations so that 10000 years it spells out a rude word from the viewpoint of some star across the galaxy. (of course these ships originally came from human AI, and thus inherited and encourage the eccentric human sense of humour).
John Resig's book is great. (He's the dude behind the jQuery library, and also a YC alum, FYI.)

I'd recommend that, and of course the Definitive Guide. Look for the Rhino.
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I'm getting increasingly worried that Google will become too big and too powerful. Google already knows more about me than I'm comfortable with, but damn it if gmail isn't great. I would really prefer to keep them as a content provider and not a service provider. Sure they're friendly now, but as they grow they lose their initial purpose and guiding principles. Remember "Don't be evil"? Where has that rule gone, now that they help the Chinese government censor information?
Friendly advice: don't skimp on living expenses. When everything else in your life is going to hell in a handbasket, you'll be grateful that you didn't cheap out on your apartment.

This is the perspective of a grad student who made the mistake of living extra-frugally for too long; I only became productive once I got it through my head that it was worth paying a little bit for a good living situation.
and good medical coverage
I disagree with your words on cheaper hardware. Vista makes your computer slower and buying more "iron" only makes the effect less noticeable. When something gets so much slower, people what to get something in return. What is it that I get back in return for all that eaten RAM and CPU cycles? I do not run Aero. I do not see any new features or significant imporvements that justify extra 512MB of RAM Vista needs.

Just read this sentence out loud: Absolutely "empty" Vista PC with no applications running is consuming about 400MB of RAM. Sure some of it is disk cache and I do not have exact numbers that 400 breaks down to, but that is not the point. To do any kind of work you'll need about 1GB of memory. Isn't it insane? Especially since XP is doing great on machines with 256MB RAM of memory?

Enough about RAM. How would one explain that after you turn your PC on, Vista spends about 10-15 minutes doing crazy amount of disk I/O on various system processes/services. What is it doing? My Vista laptop (very powerful T60p) needs to just sit and "calm down" for like 10 minutes after I turn it on.

Now do the math: Vista is not cheap. And on top of that you'll have to buy 1 more GB of RAM and (probably) more powerful video card. And wait 10 minutes after power on. And tolerate DRM and annoying security popups. But why? What for? Where is it what I pay dollars and my time for?
Same here; I, for one, welcome our new Googly overlords. I bet there are some interesting startup ideas in this space, even (relatively) late in the game...

I do wonder about the author's offhand assertion that Google are the "odds-on favorite" to win the auction. Does anyone know if there's any evidence to back this up? Last I checked, Google were only willing to conditionally meet the opening auction price if their conditions were met, let alone whatever they'd need to pay to win the auction.
I've experienced this, but there's a problem. I don't remember where I read it, but there's a programming rule I picked up somewhere. It's something along the lines of, "Debugging is harder than programming, so if you program the cleverest code you can, you won't be able to debug it." I've written killer code while moderately drunk, but if you need to modify or fix any, you may as well just do a rewrite. It'll save time.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in a nutshell, is "language influences thought." The classic debunking example is the urban legend, "Eskimos have over a hundred words for 'snow.'" This is often overextended to imply, "...and so Eskimos must conceive of snow on a whole 'nother level, dude!"

But our non-Eskimo language doesn't fundamentally limit our capacity to comprehend the nuances of snow. We just add modifiers (e.g., 'wet' and 'fluffy') to "snow", instead of using a different word. And, actually, it turns out the Eskimos use modifiers, too.

The Language Instinct is a great read. Pinker's got a real talent for popular science writing that's accessible but not dumbed down. Check out his first hit, How the Mind Works, if you're interested in general cognitive science.
High-tech culture of Silicon Valley originally formed around radio
The Eskimo example isn't a very good one because English has lots of words for snow/frozen things, like glacier, frost, sleet, slush, etc.
Vista Kicks Your Ass...

1. Self-limiting software

2. Vanishing functionality through invalidation

3. Removal of media capabilities

4. Problem-solving prohibited

5. Limited mobility

6. One transfer only

7. Stealth Installs with Windows Update turned OFF...

8. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video

9. Windows Update file deletions of 3rd party software

Reference:

http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding...

And thats just the EULA. Once you actually install this piece of malware you find that if you watch it with a net snffer, even while completely idle, after several days with no interaction, it is constantly sending stuff across the net. Try it for your self with Snort. Its spooky.

If you value your privacy, the security of your company, and give a damn about protecting your investments, you will read the EULA for yourself before you rush down to the beach with the rest of the lemmings.
I think there are all sorts of encumbering patents around doing that sort of stuff with fonts in certain ways. And the companies involved have been known to enforce those patents. Hence linux stays away (for the moment). Although it seems like with newer distros it is getting easier to turn this stuff on (but it is still up to you, and isn't a easy setting as yet).

Thats about all I know about it.
Not just startups, sometimes banks fail (and take $2.5 billion assets with them)
I was one of the lucky NetBank customers that suddenly found himself without a bank account this weekend. Thankfully, I'm not rich (yet) so the FDIC will ensure that I don't lose any money.

Potentially very painful lesson learned: Yes, banks can go out of business. FDIC only covers you up to $100,000 if this happens. When you get rich with your startup, keep your money stuffed in your mattress.
"The Zenter duo invested a few months of their lives in non-stop hacking with the goal of winning over Google, and they did. Grand prize? Engineering jobs at Google!"

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me. The Zenter guys spent 6 months building their product before they got bought. I have no idea what the purchase price was, but let's take a wild-assed guess and say both founders made $1 million in Google stock. They ended up with jobs at Google, which is probably the best of the big technology companies to work at, plus the chance to see the stuff they'd developed used by millions of people as an eventual component of GDocs. So on the whole, I think they did pretty well for 6 months of work, and fairly limited risk.

The alternative? If they rolled the dice and tried to make an independent company out of it, there's no guarantee they wouldn't just be crushed by GDocs adding presentations 6 months down the line. They hadn't even launched yet, let alone demonstrated they could build a profitable business.

If anything, I think the lesson to be learned is that if you're in Zenter's shoes, that would be a hard offer to turn down.
I guess you never heard the one about premature optimization? And who in their right mind 'splices in native code' to java? You sound like you learned how to program from reading slashdot.
I don't see the point in this as a serious production language. As a project to just have fun, of course it is a cool idea.

Lisp systems moved to generic functions for a reason - Lisp dialects for some time used a Smalltalk-based message sending model, but it just isn't as flexible.

But if the desire is to get Ruby semantics with Lisp syntax, I think the much more reasonable approach is to run a Rubyesque Lisp on Rubinius (which the lead devs have already talked of doing). At least by doing that you get the advantage of piggybacking on an advancing VM and a language that already has libraries.

Establishing a new language is hard.
Google initially claimed they would only bid if all of the open access standards they proposed were accepted by the FCC. Not all of the rules were accepted, and the ones that were are now being challenged in court by the Telcos. It is rumored that FCC chairman Kevin Martin is now working on a proposal to at least partially reverse some of the open standards that were ratified, in response to the Telco's uproar. It is not looking good... Despite this, Google has publically stated that they will "most likely" still bid in the auction.

I have read of at least one analyst who believes that the Telcos are more likely to win the auction than Google. Possibly out right by a single carrier or through collusion between multiple. As much cash as Google has, It could be difficult for them to justify spending >$10B on a wireless spectrum when they are still perceived as an internet search company. Investors may not be very happy about that. For the Telcos, this is their core business and the expense is highly justified. While this is all speculation at this point, the consensus so far does not paint a very pretty picture for open access unfortunately. We will just have to wait a few more months and see how things play out.
That's nonsense, though. Debugging is much, much easier than programming.
>>> Say I have a lot of users and servers where authentication fails. I'd love to be able to pick a period (by dragging along a timeline of logs), zoom into to a period, and get any messages regarding LDAP from that time. Then I'd like to take that group of server and regenerate a certificate for each of them to fix the problem

>> I have no idea what you're talking about.

> It seems like you haven't used Splunk at all.

Hehehe...You misinterpret my remark. I'm saying that what you're describing isn't our problem set with Virtualmin. I'm saying I don't understand why you're talking about something completely outside of the problem domain Virtualmin sets out to solve as though we've failed in being unable to perform the tasks you describe. I'm simply confused by all the smoke and waving hands.

> I know your a lot of your competitors (eg Plesk) are similarly basic. This doesn't mean that it wouldn't be good to innovate.

Here you're exhibiting a lack of knowledge about what we're building (you've already done that earlier by saying, "Virtualmin doesn't really differ from Plesk in a significant way", but I wasn't going to really argue that point), rather than pointing out why we're "similarly basic". The problems you describe aren't the problems the vast majority of virtual hosting customers need or even want to solve.

Splunk seems like a wonderful product, and I'm glad you like it. But it doesn't compete with Virtualmin. It's not even in the same general area--there are some places where Virtualmin overlaps with products that aren't direct competitors (because we are innovating in far-reaching ways and stepping into a lot of different areas that effect hosting providers and their customers).

There's even more where Webmin overlaps, because Webmin covers a lot more ground, including system monitoring and alerts. Splunk doesn't address any of the virtual hosting management problems our products set out to solve--that doesn't make Splunk "similarly limited" to other products that don't do what Virtualmin does. If you don't need Virtualmin features, and you do need Splunk features, then by all means use Splunk.

> One doesn't have to build something to have an opinion on it. If you think otherwise, you may enjoy other forums more.

Certainly. I'm just not sure you've really grasped who our customers are (hosting providers), and what they do with our products (enable their customers to build full-featured websites or applications quickly and without human support). This awareness is a rather vital component in our decision making process. ;-)

That said, we do have timeline features coming in a new analytics product that we're developing (and it shows up in a limited form in the system data analytics graphs provided by Virtualmin). I'm not disagreeing that there are many areas for massive improvement in the analytics and reporting fields...there are. It's barely been touched, even by the best products in the field. But Virtualmin remains a virtual hosting management tool--not an analytics product. It'll work seamlessly with these other products, but their job description is quite different, and their customer set will vary quite a bit.
Sure, monochrome fonts look bad.

Since font are rendered with smoothing by default, rather than the monochrome option, it's not really a supporting argument.
It is understandable why you think that way, given Google's aggressive ventures into other areas such as mobile services. But I personally think they will bring good things for both users and startups. The reason being that Google is committed 100% to openness. I think their interest in the 700Mhz spectrum is an example of this commitment. The fact that they are willing to spend the money to purchase the spectrum and then build out an open access network for others to freely use (including potential competitors) makes me think very highly of them and their efforts.

As far as the Chinese censorship issue, that is a tricky situation. China is a gold mine of growth potential, which Google obviously has interests in tapping. They cannot risk losing access to that market over censorship issues. In a business sense, censorship seems justified to me given the situation. China is just that important.

Apple is the company who I worry will become too big and powerful. The difference between them and Google is that they are decidedly NOT in favor of open access. They are exactly the opposite from google, building walled gardens around their stuff to prevent competitors from sharing in their glory. The iPhone is a perfect example. As someone interested in wireless startups, I lose sleep over the Apple and their iPhone. Its hard to compete with Apple when they dont let anyone else in on that platform. I think there are a few things startups could do better than Apple on the iPhone, but as it stands right now this is a nut that just cant be cracked.
I'm somewhat tempted to load up on underwater put options on Verizon.
"... How valuable was the Y Combinator backed Zenter to Google? Chris Sacca, Google biz dev guy: Y combinator comes down to two kids in a room with two computers and ramen noodles for a summer. .."

Still trying to work this one really means because I'm sure yc is a lot more valuable to google than is made out in this quote.

@sacca RU quotedok "Donna Bogatin:YC
comes down to 2 kids in a room with 2
computers & ramennoodles for a
summer" http://tinyurl.com/37ca5s

Maybe I should ask? ~ http://twitter.com/sacca
Wow those numbers are bizarre compared to what I see in Belgium. Programmer jobs don't make much more than average other jobs here actually.

Junior programmers get paid around 25000 EUR per year (before taxes) - that equates to 35000 USD.
Go read some of her other entries. Donna Bogatin is consistently one of the most ignorant blabber heads on the interwebs.
Have you ever used a Prada? It's not nearly as cohesive an experience as the iPhone, and it's not easy to use. The screen is far too touch sensitive. My point is, the iPhone is the first practical touch device, and it's the phone that will mark a paradigm shift-- the Prada would never cause a change like that in the industry. LG is simply not a respectable company, especially in the US where they sell the crappiest phones on the market.
At less than obscene resolutions, I greatly prefer monochrome fonts over smoothed fonts, which look blurry to me. Whenever I'm running at 200DPI, I'll switch to subpixel anti-aliased fonts.

Windows gives me the option of having incredibly readable subtly smoothed monochrome fonts and Linux only lets me have smoothed fonts. This is one area (the only area, I admit) where Linux is less configurable, or at least has less worthwhile options than Windows. But text readability seems like the single most important issue to me in an OS, so I have to stick with Windows until I find a Linux kernel recompiled for better monochrome fonts.

Or I need to download a pixel font for all the standard web and system fonts, but copyright makes that illegal and impossible.
"... I have no idea what the purchase price was, but let's take a wild-assed guess and say both founders made $1 million in Google stock. They ended up with jobs at Google, which is probably the best of the big technology companies to work at, plus the chance to see the stuff they'd developed used by millions of people as an eventual component of GDocs. So on the whole ..."

I also couldn't understand the point of the article. Certainly getting bought out to make your product work is better than A) dying a slow death B) being beaten to the punch by google C) being bought out by Microsoft and having to work there.

"... I think they did pretty well for 6 months of work, and fairly limited risk. ..."

I don't think so. They sacrificed 3mths work. One also had a newborn. For their spouses this is no holiday. Indeed they are taking risks here. The ones left behind are picking up a lot of slack.
How the heck did you get your hands on a 200DPI display? The highest I've ever seen is 132DPI.
(It was an arbitrarily high number for rhetorical purposes. I probably should have made it smaller. I was trying to imply that I will switch to subpixel smoothed fonts at some later date.)

edit: here's one from 2003 that sold for $8,400. http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/03/28/ibm-t...
Agreed. Going short on the wireless Telcos is starting to sound like a good idea :)
"As Greg Butz, a senior vice president at cable operator Comcast..."

That company has multiple kinds of vice presidents? Jesus christ. Try getting a straight, plain English answer out of them about the difference between a senior VP and non-senior VP.
I've been meaning to pick up a breathalyzer.. but that's just asking for trouble if you've ever read that Tucker Max post about them.
Contradiction, there. If you can't modify or fix the code, it's not "killer".
The AntiPatterns book says (without citation, although this seems to match my personal observations) that only 1 in 5 programmers "get" abstraction.

This has a lot of implications; they pointed out the one for "democratic" design processes (those with a clue get outvoted, thus the architecture of so many systems is garbage), but this obviously extends to this "LISP is a ball of mud" (Moses) approach of designing and implementing a small language in which to program most of your stuff.

And in any language. LISP is used as an example since this is its natural style of use and it's lot easier, but if you can't get the proper abstractions agreed upon in the first place, it matters little how good or bad the language you'll then try to implement them in, boiler plate style or LISP....
You could just learn to compile a kernel. Not that tough, really -- and a valuable skill if you want to know about Xen and other things.