skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good Flash applications?
After reading http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81594, I kind of realized that I'm missing this whole Flex/Actionscript/Flash world (do those even go together?)

My only exposures to Flash are with Youtube which sucks and Google Video which is awesome. Are there any real interactive apps that aren't just glorified databases or passive?

I've been thinking that the browser sucks for interactivity (no, Javascript abuse isn't acceptable), thick client applications are too much work but something in between could be golden.

Thanks

Update: I guess games could count but aren't what I am looking for. Anything else?
YSlow isn't weighted properly and offers you a false sense of security.

Your site, in current setup, wouldn't last very long if you had hundreds of concurrent requests since you have so many requests. You do realize that most browsers allow two concurrent downloads per IP? You should distribute all these images across many subdomains (just make up subdomains; they can all point to the same server).

assets1.revzilla.com, assets2.revzilla.com etc.

Also, why aren't you running a real server for static content?! Mongrel ain't gonna cut it. Use Mongrel for dynamic stuff (i.e. Rails pages) and use Nginx (or apache or lighttpd) for static content (css and all these images that you have).

Finally, google for "css sprites" and optimize these images.

PS: Site looks good but it's just horribly assembled. You should replace 90% of those images by using CSS colors.
Haskell is excellent for parallel processing -- probably as good as Erlang if you're just talking about multiple cores on one system and not distributed processing.
You weren't kidding about ugly. Looks like 1980s-era PCs.
Can you talk about it here please: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81768
Peter Seibel (Common Lisp) talk - Dec 13 - Why Syntax [Does|Doesn't] Matter
It isn't weighted properly you are correct, however it is a good guideline to cover your bases.

I appreciate the tips, but at the moment we have pretty much all of your points covered

- We are currently using asset hosts (assets0..assets3.revzilla.com) (Rails provides this functionality out of the box with 2.0)

- All static content IS served by nginx, only the rails requests are being served by mongrel. All static assets are also sent with the appropriate cache headers

- css sprites are used sparingly where appropriate, however they are not a silver bullet, and you run into cross browser issues pretty quickly (namely safari)

- We are working on reducing the number of images at the moment. In general I would rather have a site which is true to the original design and then optimize from there, rather then cutting corners early on.
Subsidizing alternative energy that isn't cost effective won't make it more cost effective.

Also, it will increase the supply of energy, and increase the demand of cheap carbon-producing energy to match. Total energy consumption will increase.

My point is not that climate change is unimportant.

My point is that carbon offsets that invest in the current generation of hopelessly expensive alternative energy approaches will NOT help the situation.

While you think research takes a long time, how long will a net harmful solution take to solve the problem?

Investing in research will help. It is the only long term solution.
Ahh, but was the diagram created while procrastinating, or is it actual work?
How and why we lie to ourselves.
I'm on the fence for software as a service. It might make sense for small/large businesses, but the software I'd like to make is consumer level software. It's mostly for web hobbyists.
It may not be glamorous but if you develop things people need and are willing to pay for you should be able to stay in business downturn or not. Your product would need to help there business do something they couldn't otherwise do easily.

Downturns hit highly leveraged companies and companies developing ideas on the 'fringe' that have not yet been accepted widely enough yet to charge anything (or enough) for.
Too hilarious. I've met a lot of the people involved in that. Can't wait to see if they show up in the movies.
Thanks SwellJoe, I guess it doesn't sense that other people would steal my code and release their own product based on it.
Wasn't that called J2EE? :-)
The web language/framework I would like to use (Python/Django) doesn't have any sort of source code protection for it. There's no compiled byte code or source code encoder product.

But if it's an advantage to release the source code, that shouldn't matter. If it's a mistake to release the source code, I would probably use PHP (I'm still comfortable programming with PHP from my day job, but I'd be happier with Python).
Boo, that's just a link to the website. I want my vote back! :/
Yeah, actually, a good bot would be really awesome -- I could ask for messages from a specific account, person, by un/read status, etc. or delete spam, get message history, and so on.

Hell, why not just make a "smart command line" bot-based web app? It's the goddamn twenty-first century, why do we still manually navigate when we can just concisely -ask- (in words, not "commands" or "actions") for portions of sites, definitions, files, apps, etc.? This was how it was -supposed- to be, but for some reason we're still just using glossed up versions of 1980s (or earlier) paradigms. Why hasn't the A.I. scene done anything practical? Or are those guys all just too enamored with the beauty of 1950s technology?
the karma floor is a great idea.
ted is pretty consistently amazing in their presentations.
Forgot about that. I guess that was pretty influential.
I believe this has been requested before and PG rejected it, wanting to keep the jobs page exclusively YC. Fortunately, there is an alternative and you've come across it right here.
i think they did it more b/c they were threatened (by Open Laszlo - an earlier and more mature flash generator) rather than being friendly...
Nice but I think there is too much red, if you put these links in white (or possibly yellow)
Track an Order | Checkout | Wish List | Customer Service
it might make a big difference.
splashup.com is photoshop online
He has a point.
Ruby/Rails/Mongrel/Pound does a great job of utilizing all those CPUs that I have in a production environment. There's a bunch of overhead, but it is easier than having to deal with locking.

It really depends on your application, though. If it isn't a web application, and state matters, then you're going to have to go elsewhere.
Design software to run in multiple processes & threads, and you'll be fine for both multi-core and multi-cpu.

Most interesting systems have multiple dynamically interacting processes, but this might be a bias of mine from the robotics world.
I used to wonder this myself. The answer I come up with is that companies have a check that they can cash pending execution of a series of finite steps. In a reasonable mature enterprise these steps are defined and one needs a person to execute a subset of these steps.

An idea introduces a probabilistic component to this that the person in charge of hiring has not considered because he/she has no incentive to do so. He/she will definitely receive negative feedback if the series of finite steps to the money they are in charge of is not properly executed. In short, no reward and definite risk is bad for a company drone, in general. No straight path to money != good.
I find the following technologies interesting:

1. SERS
2. MEMS
3. Taggants
4. Ground source heat pumps
5. OLPC
6. NMR/MRI
7. ERP

Except for 5 maybe 7, not common topics of interest here.
Have a look at Erlang. Actually, have a look at functional languages in general as being (mostly) side effect free they often have primitives for parallel processing.

Another pretty exciting language you might to look at is F# - presently running under Mono on my macbook.

Finally, if you love your python (who doesn't? ;)) - see http://www.parallelpython.com/ for some interesting work.
666 lord do you know where i am^^^
Why no requests for contract work or remote positions? I'm actually in your area, but I'm always curious what peoples' thoughts are on remote work.
I could buy a linux board for $60, put a screen on it for another $60 and do everything that thing can do plus compile, send phone calls, hack, play games, and post here on news.yc. $400 for that thing is crazy.
Overly-broad copyright law has made USA a "nation of infringers"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SENS
http://www.sens.org/

Death sucks, let's get rid of it.
I generally dislike Flash. It's a CPU pig and horrible for SEO. Also, none of the mobile devices support it. Apple hates it so much they asked YouTube to recode all of their videos so they don't have to put it on iPhone.
I just want to second what what several others have implied about Erlang. It makes the actor model feel right to the point that the fact that your program can run on multiple cores/cpus/computers is seems incidental.
TV set top boxes, exploring haven't figured out how they'll work though.
iminlikewithyou.com
Please explain why you're excited about being able to use C# instead of Javascript. Personally, if I had to use C# for anything, I'd be very excited by the prospect of replacing it with Javascript.
BLUI: Blowable user interface
The real question is, "what process model do you use for multiple CPUs?" Assuming a Unixy OS, you can use threads or multiple processes.

If you choose multiple processes, you have to intelligently use IPC to coordinate them. But you can happily use pretty much any language.

If you choose threading, scripting languages are problematic. For example, Python has a Global Interpreter Lock. In that case, I think the only "safe" choices are C++ and Java. Java's safe because its "synchronized methods" enforce locking, often in a wasteful manner. C++ leaves the entire synchronization problem in your lap, giving you infinite room for performance and for subtle and maddening bugs.

Multi-process is generally a better approach than threading. I've seen too much time spent debugging threaded apps to ever recommend that approach. Every hour poured into debugging a deadlock, or worse yet, a mysterious cross-thread heap trampling is an hour taken away from improving the product.
Can you post an email address in your profile or email me? I'm curious if you're affiliated with KIPR, a Google search for awanson goes to the KIPR message boards after news.ycombinator.com.
Why would somebody actually pay money out of their own pocket for a device that they don't actually own? Well, ok, telecom's a great example, but Amazon does not have the same kind of stranglehold on books... A Sony Reader with a bit of WiFi + Flash will make this lame offering look like the "Zune" of ebook readers.
Yes, I think the book explained that the team mainly recruited Asians, half-Asians, and Greeks to take advantage of the pit bosses' racial prejudices. The protagonist, for example, is supposed to be of Anglo/Chinese descent.

This reminds me of the Starship Troopers movie, where the Filipino protagonist is played by Casper Van Dien.
See how far you can get through this:

http://www.scala-lang.org/docu/files/ScalaByExample.pdf
By the way, Mazen Araabi has some good data on startups outside the U.S.:

"Only one of these companies [consumer Internet startups founded since 2001 that have gone on to be acquired for over $100 million], YouTube, was founded in Silicon Valley. London is home to both Skype (which was also partially founded in Talin) and Last.fm, MySpace was founded in LA, ClubPenguin in Canada, and PhotoBucket in Denver."

http://www.mazenblog.com/2007/11/consumer-web-is-global.html
I didn't say how it works. I'll probably build it first before explaining that.

But basically, it's a way for generating facebook app ideas along with virality estimates from lies made by users to their friends.

If users are unwilling to lie to their friends, then this will be a complete failure.
Five problems with Google Android
Imaginary laptops, as designed by 8-year-olds
C->MIPS.

It's for a class, but it's consuming most of my free time. The classroom instruction is good but we're largely on our own as far as implementation goes (though it has to be written in C or C++).

We only have to finish a subset of C, and I'm not planning to take it any further.
Intel has made a library (TBB) and language (Ct) (both based on C++) that tackle different subsets of how you might want to use parallelism.

http://blogs.intel.com/research/2007/11/q4_itj.php
You were probably exaggerating, but for reference:

public class hello {
public static void main(String args[]) {
System.out.println("Hello World");
}
}

Also, I interviewed with a large company that shall remain nameless (probably not who you would expect), and one of the interviewers mentioned that their build system was a MILLION lines of Perl...
I just started hacking at something similar a few days ago. jQuery rocks.
roll your own.
Without more details I can't be sure, but this sounds like exactly the type of useless Facebook app I would absolutely hate.
Kindle, as in kindling, as in burn the (paper) books?
Vista SP1 a Performance Dud
The Future of Reading (a play in 6 acts)
Wow... good luck using this UI for more than 2 min. The only UI that makes you pass out :)
Desktop UI, Enterprise Systems, Large-scale software. Would you rather write your web-app using Javascript that (hopefully) able to connect to a DB?
The whole .NET 3.0/C#/ASP.NET3.5 and SQL Server 2005.
eh? lots of them are not serious. only a handful are of comparable quality to Aubrey.
I relate to this a lot. It took me a long time to discover Lisp and Smalltalk, and how far superior they are to anything I'd previously seen, because I was so busy with newer, more "advanced" technologies. I simply never imagined that the "industry" could be so massively wrong. But when you factor in economics and psychology this begins to look less strange. The demand for software far exceeds the supply of good programmers, so the industry is overwhelmingly skewed toward the mediocre to begin with. Most decisions about platforms and languages are made by managers, who look for things like "how many programmers can we hire" to maintain the million-dollar messes their large teams build. Then there are the vendors, whose job is to sell tools to those managers (which has little to do with making the best tools or even tools that work). Remember there's a clear precedent for all of this: COBOL, which for decades was by far the most common language.

There's another thing that cuts closer to home. Most programmers, even most /smart/ programmers, are intellectually conservative and reluctant to look beyond what they already know. The smart ones will happily learn something like Java Faces or WPF when it comes out, just like they learned ATL or whatever when it came out; that is, they'll upgrade to the next release of the same old same old. But most will never reflect much on what they're doing and only a handful will ever jump out of the rat's nest. How many of those COBOL programmers ever learned a new language? The vast majority simply retired. Yet I'm sure many of them were smart at what they did.

What all of this amounts to is a vast market inefficiency that will almost certainly be supplanted by ways of building software that aren't insane; it's just a process that takes decades (if not centuries - how long did the industrial revolution take to figure out how to really do manufacturing?) I see YC as a conscious move in this game. Given how soul-destroying most software projects are, that's an inspiring development - to see the balance shifting in favor of the creators.

I'm grateful that I listened to my intuition that there was something wrong with those "new" and "advanced" technologies. For me as well, it is the depth and simplicity of a Lisp, Smalltalk, or APL that is fresh.
Stackless is great, but it doesn't help much with multiple processors.
Now that I realize there's something called Jocaml, I want to learn it too.
Most people on this post are talking about languages. There could be other things more important, like AJAX (which isn't totally new), Amazon AWS, Google Android, but mostly it would depend on what you are trying to accomplish I guess ?
In soviet russia...
"along with virality estimates from lies made by users to their friends"

thats the part i dont understand. it's not that i dont understand how you'll build it, it's that i really dont get the concept.

why do they need to lie?
Was Viaweb first?
Perhaps it involves inviting people to the auto-generated apps, when the app doesn't exist yet?
Like I'm buying a kindle now.
Who shortens Silicon Valley to "Silicon" instead of "Valley"?
http://box2dflash.sourceforge.net/
For a while, they called Scala the ocaml-killer. Because it is fully interoperable with Java, it enjoys a huge standard library, which is one of the main pitfalls when writing ocaml code. I'm not sure it ever really caught on, though. Scala is a nice functional language with a rich type system built on java byte code, and is similar in concept to Microsoft's offering on the .NET platform: F#
SP-Forth (http://spf.sourceforge.net/) to program multithreaded applications, such as acWEB, acSMTP [.sf.net], Eserv/3 ( http://www.eserv.ru/ ) internet servers.
i prefer lol-code on monorails for my prototypes
Too much complaining, with little in the way of suggesting alternatives except for "the iphone is better", which may be true, but Android is way more open. I guess we'll see how it plays out, by my instincts seem to be in favor of Android, even though there are some issues.
Yes, I am exaggerating. I would call this three lines. As there are 3 constructs here.

A million lines of Perl, was maintaining that part of the job description?
They seem to like having a button on the keyboard for everything, which leads me to believe all the major PC manufacturers hired a bunch of 8-year-olds to help them design computers from about 1998-2002.
Stanford Class' Facebook Application Crosses 1 Million Installs
Well, just don't vote me up for it...
Neat! You should write your compiler in the same subset of C, so it can be self-hosting. ;-)
A peek into the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft shopping cart
I love python and use it for many of my prototyping needs but if you really need that extra juice from your extra processors you are probably using the wrong language for the problem.

From my experience average increase in speed gained from porting to C/C++ (even without using multi processors) is about x60-x100.
Nice try, but I believe this was really the first web application:

http://tinyurl.com/133t

I remember using it back in '94, on my Amiga 3000. It was a real time saver.
Exactly. What most studies on racial differences prove are the preconceived notions of the experimenters.

In fact, most scientific studies may be wrong, or at least deeply flawed:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915.html

When one considers the hundred years of horrific racism present in white culture, it's hardly surprising that such cultural attitudes manifest themselves from time to time in the form of sophisticated scientific arguments.

Whether or not there are genetic differences, doesn't the most accurate approach -- if not the most ethical approach -- seem to be withholding all race-based judgement for the time being?
I doubt a good reader can ever be created by an entity that profits from the content.
Javascript doesn't imply that it has to be client side.
OK... so that site has a guestbook. I presume that other cites circa 1994 had guestbooks that allowed clients to modify pages. Were guestbooks web applications?
Isn't there a sailing game for one of the portable gaming concoles, where you have to propel the boat by blowing?
What kinds of applications do you do like that, if you can talk about them?
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/info/about/ckm/it94paper.html
How Amazon killed the printing press
In case you've been hiding under a rock. Amazon has been developing a little gadget named "Kindle"...
Instead of a minimum karma, how about a karma cost.

If you contribute to the community you can expect the community to give back.
There are several somethings-closer!

(I'm typing this about 2 blocks from my favorite Ramen shop in San Jose! ^__^ )
What is it with this tendency to whine about things that people really have nothing to do with. if you don't like it, don't use it. Its just irritating (most of the time).
Don't be ridiculous. A guestbook isn't an application.
I'll agree that a guestbook doesn't feel worthy of the title application, but the line between "application" and "not-application" seems arbitrary, unless there is some other criteria I'm missing.

How complex does a piece of software have to be for it to be an application?
Also,
http://www.news.com/E-commerce-turns-10/2100-1023_3-5304683....
Our software is an installable web application for web hosting systems management...so we have a lot of opportunities to do neat stuff--there are so many useful UI elements that could be added that would make the product more useful without requiring any additional information than what we already collect or create. We're currently building a "desktop" with ExtJS that'll have a dozen or so widgets for presenting various bits of information about the running system. The data already exists and is currently, mostly, presented in simple HTML and CSS graphs...but with a little tweaking we can make the backend spit out simple data structures in JSON and then display them in various dynamic ways.

The first one that is almost wholly free of server-side code is a "news" module that pulls a feed from our forums News category on our company website. ExtJS makes this kind of thing trivial (one of their example apps is an RSS feed reader that uses Google Gears). Other short-term bits will be converting all of our graphs to dynamic versions that change every minute or so. Bigger plans include a terminal emulator to replace the Java applet SSH client we currently include. Interactive terminals are trickier, and I'm not sure if we'll end up implementing the actual full terminal emulator in JavaScript or do most of the work server-side and just pass things down to the server (probably the latter at first). But, very short-term (like being released sometime this week) it's all just conversions of existing widgets to present nothing but JSON--it actually makes the server-side code remarkably simpler to not have any UI elements.