skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The way I see it, Merb is an implementation of Rails from the ground up- it appeals to Rails users and follows very similar conventions as far as configuration, directory structure, support for REST and included helpers (form_for, input_field, etc like in Rails)

Ramaze, on the other hand, is very Ruby oriented in its implementation- it follows KISS and POLS religiously. It does not force any convention on you, you are free to choose your own directory structure and there's no configuration files involved.

Ramaze allows you to write an entire web-app in one file (see http://source.ramaze.net/source/examples/facebook.rb and http://source.ramaze.net/source/examples/ramaise.rb), which is not possible with Rails or Merb. Merb is great for RESTful applications and handles content negotiation very elegantly (with a simple 'provides :json, :xml' in your controller).
Yeah, if anything it makes them money from ad clicks.
The Arby's on El Camino in Sunnyvale had front-counter touch-screen ordering over a decade ago. (Do they still?)

Essentialy, you could walk up to any of ~5 screens to place your order, and some smaller number of counter staff would take your money and give your change.
The whole thing. Which is odd, because the information isn't actually that spammy, it just looks that way for some reason. Sorry I can't give you a real reason.
Interview with Dopplr founders, the social network for business travelers
Well, I'm pretty passionate about comics, but I'm always having trouble finding the next really great Batman graphic novel. We're trying to appeal to consumers who know something about an area, but are still looking to find new stuff within it.

The scenario we imagine is this: I'm looking for a new Batman comic. I google 'Best Batman Comics' and Seekler appears in the first page of results (we're not there yet, but we on the front page for a few of our lists). I go there, and hopefully quickly find something I hadn't heard of. But, during this process, I find that 'Batman: Year One' is ranked above 'Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'. I think that's obviously wrong, so I create my own list to rank the Batman comics I have read, putting TDKR on top and adding another Batman comic that wasn't even on the list.

So in our mind, the scenario is reversed - most people will come just to find new stuff on lists built by experts (who will be us and outside sources, initially). Eventually a small percentage of them will start contributing back to the site and make the lists even better.

Thanks for the feedback. You're right that we need to clarify the benefit on the home page - and narrowly targeting a list-centric audience is a great idea too, we're planning on doing exactly that.
Hey guys, mind hookin some brothas up?
http://digg.com/microsoft/Xobni_inbox_spelled_backwards_The_...
You would probably want to send the sensitive stuff to your own address and not them.
I used xobni about a month ago after a friend got the invite. I must admit, I didn't find any of the features useful. It looked really nice, but I just didn't care... Sorry guys.
We are planning on adding some example use cases on the homepage, a box like "What can I find on Seekler?"

best movies featuring Morgan Freeman

best batman comics

favorite female American Gladiator

and having all the examples link in to the lists that answer these qeustions. Do you think that would help get the idea across?
C++. That way, I'll look forward to my death.
Mao and the art of management
Is that listed by frequency? If news.yc existed in 2000 I wonder what the list would look like.
Nope, didn't see anything like that last time I was there ~3 months ago.
> The author of this piece winces at hearing "but that's how Jamis does it", but I think the lesson applies equally to "but Paul Graham says...".

BLASPHEMER!!!

;-)
What happens if I don't pick anything?
Wanted: Software that helps you make money
Haskell - If I was in some timeless eternity I wouldn't have to bother with monads. Otherwise if I get bored I might hack together a big bang with Lisp.
Myself and my company have used dreamhost for the past few years. Decent service, although my site has gone off line at least once. Email has broken more than once.

They almost always respond to customers within 24 hours, but it often takes at least 1-2 hours.

Even if you don't sign up, their blog is worth reading.
Call me naive, but I think that's counter to the spirit of Hacker News.
Lisp, because it can consume any other language's functionality, which means that I don't have to choose.
What are they going to do next? Resolve all failed DNS lookups to their paid search engine?*

*This was done by VeriSign, but at the time, VeriSign owned Network Solutions.
I think the point is more that they never pay. If they were actually paying and then getting their money back, they really would lose money on this (in float), and it would be easy enough to write a script that would make them run out of money.
C#

with C# compilers running on almost every platform. It can do old things like c & c++ can, and it has advanced string and memory management set up by default. c# has more control and ease of use than any other language i have played with.

If i need to consume a DLL i can do it through old ways like C methods, OLE, COM, or through new managed methods.

other languages are nice, but if i had to use just one from now and to forever, C# is the only language i see that has the ability to span the gap. Ruby, PHP, Perl, Lisp, erlang, Java, smalltalk, etc... do not seem as flexible across all of the needs to program both software and hardware.

C# can be used to program Dirext X, and OpenGL, it can be used to hack your GPU and to program your portable device. Mono runs on linux and so you can use C# in any embedded app.
A lot of spam websites I've seen have slightly similar colour schemes. You know the ones with a ton of text, with selected words highlighted with a yellow background.. ok so it's orange, but it's the only thing I can think of.
And I do think there is just way too much text on the front page.
javascript: it's "like scheme with syntax", necessary anyway for cool web apps, expressive, has closures, lexical scoping, and with Rhino you can access any of the Java libraries (without writing Java code) and run it efficiently on any platform (for server-side or desktop apps). It's really the do-it-all language.
"understanding the advantages of something is far superior to accepting it solely based on the recommendation of an authority"

This is not as obvious as it sounds because it costs time to get to your own understanding. It depends.
Cool New Projector for Cell Phones from 3M
3M is showing off a tiny projector at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show that's small enough to be used with cell phones, cameras and other mobile devices. Cool stuff.
Actually using "free" software, I'm not sure how to view its developers as anything but suckers. I would have paid for development and infrastructural software. But I didn't, because there were always suckers out there who thought they were philosophers rather than professionals.

The best thing you can say about free software is that it lowers costs for operating a business. It's the difference between going to Sam's Club rather than Walmart, only moreso. Again, philosophers may disagree.
The key is to provide software that helps business increase customer value :)
are you trying to start a religious flame war on yc news?
Yeah, but if you use c or c++ you can implement a Lispinterpreter over the weekend, so you'd have both. The other way round it's rather hard.
With this approach, you'd not work on Google.
Very interesting. We actually got feedback that we didn't have enough on the front page before (and as result, we weren't getting the main idea of site across).

Do you think the 'too much text on the front page' issue is primarily because of our example lists (the 'popular','recent', and 'featured' lists)?

Thanks for the thoughts.
"However costs are finite."

Probably doesn't seem that way to most business owners.

After all these years of applying IT to business, there is still a long way to go.

And don't forget the incredible effect of margin multipliers. If I'm running at 10%, then I could increase my profitability 2 ways, either by increasing revenue by $10 or decreasing costs by $1.

Say I sell $100 worth of stuff and earn $10. If I want to earn $11, I could either increase my revenue $10 and sell $110 worth of stuff. Or decrease my cost by $1 and earn $11. Without spending anything to increase revenue (people, marketing, fixed expenses, etc.)

The formula: IncrementalRevenueIncreaseNeeded * margin = IncrementalCostDecreaseNeeded. Pretty powerful stuff.

In many cases, it's still much easier to decrease cost than increase revenue. As one wise man once said, "It's all gravy (profit)."
Jason Fried: Say No More
He sounds like Hank Rearden from Atlas Shrugged.
But as coffeeaddicted said above: if you give someone C/C++, he can implement a lisp interpreter easily and then have any language he pleases..
We are currently on serverbeach with a debian system. I have been using serverbeach for years and been quite happy with the support.
If you had to pick one single tool to use from now until the end of time, which one would you pick?

Choices:

Hammer, Drill, Screw Driver, Saw.
you will live a better life!
90% of everything is crap. Except crap, 100% of crap is crap. (tmcm)
"Typical employees can't even keep their Windows systems free of spyware."

He also predicts the demise of the PC.

"As long as someone accidentally backing a truck into a power cable in San Francisco can immediately take down a third of these bratty little Web 2.0 outfits, little of what Carr says is going to transpire anytime soon."

You can make the same argument for on-site power generation. That didn't keep companies from using the power grid.

"Oh, and good luck getting companies off Exchange Server."

This is actually a good point, for reasons of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. Corporations likely want tight control of email for legal reasons, at least for now. If that gets solved by an off-site email provider to the satisfaction of corporate attorneys, on-site Exchange installations won't last long, either.
Yes; I changed the page to clarify. Though in fact it would be hard to generate such a list without it being in order of frequency.
If you want a VPS for Lisp (SBCL), I recommend Slicehost.

I tried Linode out for a week, but had trouble getting SBCL (w/threads) running on their new Xen nodes - but their support was spectacular.

I've also been a long time customer of OCS Solutions. Not the best pricing but they're just too friendly and responsive for me to move.
You say inane, others say hypothetical.
That's easy. My wife has PhD in Statistics and works for a large bank. She spends her life building predictive models using archetypes. She has made hundreds of millions in revenue for the bank but now is working with the Australia Federal Police to detect both fraud and money laundering.

According to Mastercard her bank has one of the lowest fraud rates in the world.

Most large companies could increase their revenue by millions if they only knew how to understand the data they already have. It would only take 1 or 2 seriously smart people but the limiting factor is the political will to do it.
Bad example. People who send morse code (there are still a few) seem to care a lot about which they use. And since Edison was famous as an an extremely fast telegrapher, he'd probably be especially picky.
You could make them lose money on this.

1.Search for a lot of domains that no one will ever go to (aebubibabaabaabaabba.com).
2.Hit the domain a lot of times, follow links
3. network solutions will register the domain, pay their money, and no one will ever go to the site.

I wonder if there are safe guards, ie the program can only spend $50,000 a day to register domains. To give network solutions the least lead time, it would be best to flood the websites at the end of the 5 day period.
gotta agree - the common problem for any serious BI implementation is getting the executive buy in.
Rubinius Update - irb working
Donald Knuth: The Complexity of Songs
Cool. Did anyone try this?
Slicehost.com is great, but its hard to get an account.

Linode.com is another great VPS with a better admin interface.
Given Lisp, I can implement a Lisp interpreter easily:

(loop (print (eval (read)))
Declutter Your Desk
Newsgator turns NetNewsWire free for everyone
ASM

because if I don't have ASM, I'm not going to get much of anything else done.
The biggest difference is cost. While "Web 1.0" actually went bust because of funding, it costs practically nothing to build something and run it on a dinky little server. As long as nobody is throwing millions of dollars towards crappy businesses, they just won't scale and not matter.
Yes, but can you write a standards-compliant C++ compiler?
Not yet, but soon. :)
I don't know about Flame War, but I think it's an interesting question.

Personally, if I had to choose one language right now, I'd probably choose Javascript, simply because the syntax is easy for a PASCAL/C/C++ user, and it still manages first-class functions, much like my first real (non-BASIC) language, which was PS-Algol (think Java reflection, first class functions, easy persistence, but in 1987, not 1997!)

Once Javascript gets a mainstream in-browser JIT, it may well become even more my language of choice than it is now.

Other than Javascript, Rich Hickey's Clojure, is a pretty good candidate. I love the syntax, and being able to work directly with the JVM libs.
Easily, because in bizarro-one-language universe, I also have an infinite supply of monkeys. Hah!
Wanted: executives that want software that helps you make money.
Demise of the PC? To be replaced by what? Thin clients?

Will it maintain backward compatibility with all the unmaintained proprietary software people use to run businesses? Probably not (Windows is very unhip and everyone uses Linux).

Weren't thin clients supposed to take over long ago?

I think everything he says will eventually happen, just not soon.

"You can make the same argument for on-site power generation. That didn't keep companies from using the power grid."

A major selling point of these stupid data centers is supposed to be their high uptime and resilience against power problems. What went down is a data center, and that killed dozens of hip Web 2.0 services. If all your computing stuff is in the cloud and a major part of the cloud goes down, you have no computing and you have absolutely no control over the situation, because after all, the data center never goes down. Oh well, you're doing what the pundits tell you to!

I'm fucking sick of how people on this site don't care that web applications often have shitty uptime.
AideRSS Raises Money To Attack Information Overload With RSS Filtering
Technology Decisions - Where to Invest Your Brainpower
The white square boxes on the two sides reminds me of google ads.
Coldfusion. Name another language supported by three commercial vendors plus a fourth open source version (smithproject.org)? My goal is simple - rapid application development.
EmployeeSuggestionBox - Share Your Good Ideas
Note to self: like best hacker make way good (10) ruby application time future
If the press pays attention to this, it could make them lose potential clients.
I presume you're implementing search?
Exactly. They would lose 5 days' interest on the money, and more importantly, whatever money they alloted to this scheme would be exhausted quickly. Then they wouldn't be able to keep doing this.
C# (with MS .NET on Windows, ASP.NET on the web, and Mono on *nix)
Beautiful nanotechnology images from the Science as Art competition
"Students see math as hard, boring and irrelevant, and do not respond (at least not sufficiently) to motivational factors such as easier admission to higher education or interesting and important work."

In my opinion, this is almost wholly a function of broken curricula and overworked, insufficiently experienced teachers. Learning mathematics by rote is a) tremendously boring, and b) doesn't work.
We recently moved our startup Feedity (http://www.feedity.com) to ReliableSite.Net (http://www.reliablesite.net) - a load balanced multi-server clustered hosting platform. The customer service is good, and uptime is well maintained. So far so good!
I think that anything that accelerates the product development process would fit into this category: e.g. CAD/CAM, collaboration tools, prototyping or software development tools.

I accept Peter Drucker's thesis that a "firm has only two real functions, marketing and innovation, and everything else is cost," and would broaden the "make money" definition to include innovation.

As a side benefit many of these innovation tools also help to cut costs, although if there is unmet internal demand for a function you may actually get more usage and not affect total cost that much. Lowering the marginal cost of an activity can increase its frequency. In other words, even though the transaction cost is lowered, the total amount of time and dollars spent may stay the same or go up slightly because the firm is consuming more of it. Examples might be the amount of time spent on E-mail vs. hard copy letters, screen views vs. plots or printouts of a complex object, or daily builds of large systems with integrated regression testing vs. weekly builds two decades ago.
This is fake. Google doesn't actually let people do this.

http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=mietwagen&btnG=G...
Thinking of Mathematics: an Essay on Eyes-Free Computing
Interesting. I wonder what the results would look like if the popularity (in points) of the submissions were incorporated.
Thanks for the tutorial
I heard it's the same way at Stanford. CS, math,physics and engineering majors go to Wall Street, consulting, or Silicon Valley. Guys from Caltech frequently go to either tech companies, Wall Street or Grad School (and research/academia). Ironically, engineering firms (like Bechtel) don't attract as many engineers to build things like bridges because they can't pay as much for them. They get their engineers from less hyped schools.
Unfortunately, this has happened to some extent with CS programs offered through the math department. CS is so severely impacted at a lot of UCs, and a lot of students (probably pretty good ones) are denied access to the major, so some students look into doing an alternate CS-style major through the math department. The reason I say "unfortunately" is that I think the students who get bounced from CS but make it through math could have made it through CS if there had been more resources for them. It's stupid to have people who really want to be majoring in CS working through Real Analysis proofs that they don't enjoy or even particularly care much about.

Some of this is just because math is a bit cheaper on the budget. A whiteboard and a room is all you need for most math classes, so they tend to take most people who want to give it a crack. It's pretty hard to get into an upper division CS class as a non-major, because they barely have space for the majors (again, I don't think this is the case at well funded private universities with small undergrad populations like Stanford or MIT - it's more of a problem at Berkeley and other large state-supported institutions). Maybe it's also cultural within the field. If you go up to a math professor and ask if you can join his class without the pre-reqs, he's more likely than a CS professor to say "well, as long as you think you can handle it, sure." I suspect math professors are just a bit more laid back than the CS ones.

But overall, I do agree with you - nobody drops out of a "hard" major to take the "easier" classes in the math dept.
hahahahahaha :D made my night! thanks!
And look! The domain tyhrwqblknklnlkandasdasdasd.co.uk is taken! /www.upload-images.net/imagen/357846aac7.png
(and it wasn't me)
Well I was wondering how long that would take to happen. (thought about that dirty trick years ago and hoped no one ever did it).
Possibly - it just read more like the elitist types rather then the actual 1% elite (who are so rare you almost never know them).
Tragically, no. I briefly worked at a company where the receptionist was seriously called that. It was a very large australian software company (well large for .au standards, which is not huge).
Ah ok. I am waiting until I can actually get an android phone before I would try. As fun as emulators are, there really is no substitute when its all about the user experience (ie how your app works when you are hurrying to catch a train or something - I have an iphone and I have to say its not too bad in that regard so far).
I like the end: "problem platform. next website need computer better."
Lisp - its not really a language to much as a meta tool to allow you to build DSLs to solve your problem.
Whatever language, I just hope it comes with decent documentation.
I think (and hope) you are right. Its not to ugly either (I guess depending on how you "grew up"). Lisp for people who can't program without braces ;)
This is the only crowd where "money" comes almost last.
The question isn't what compiler you would want to start off with. Its what programming language (one SINGLE programming language) would you want to use if restricted to use only it.
If saving $100 (or even $200, or $300) on hosting is your competitive advantage, you're in serious trouble. Don't get me wrong, I believe startups should be frugal to the point of comedy, but being secretive about who you host with is just silly (if someone wants to know, they can find out, anyway...IP addresses contain a lot of information).
As I replied to ca above, this would be breaking the single rule in question. You are limited to a single language, not a single compiler/interpreter to start with.
i really need this my work outlook is a nightmare - no address book, 3000 emails in the inbox... no folders
We haven't had a waitlist since early December.
Poor analogy. These are, for all intensive purposes, tools for mutually exclusive tasks. Programming languages are in general for the purpose of writing programs. While they may different slightly in capabilities they are for one purpose. A "better" (IMHO) analogy along those lines would being choosing a handsaw, bandsaw, circular saw, or kitchen knife.
I agree.

Even if we commit for life to the best saw there is, we are excluding all future saw-innovations.
Alignment is broken. The title does not align with anything else. Similarly for the three boxes (featured lists, etc.) - they don't align with the title, etc. Just put things in a simple (invisible) grid and everything might just look much better.

Also, the list-details page is very crowded. When I go to the list-details page, I am interested in that list, not everything else. The left and right columns could easily have expandable boxes (unopened by default) for Popular, Featured lists, etc.
dreamhost! and mediatemple of course

Its hard to find hosting with 24/7 phone service though...
We (Virtualmin) have two boxes at The Planet, who we've always been happy with, a couple of Amazon EC2 instances, and we're about to try a box at LiquidWeb (maybe...I'm still shopping around). We also have an account at SourceForge.net for our Open Source stuff. Given that we're pushing out over two terabytes a month in downloads, not paying for it is good.

ServerBeach has always provided good service to me in the past.

Joyent are really smart guys, and their Accelerators are a good deal. (And I'm not just saying that because they are the biggest host offering Virtualmin.)
Dr. Seuss wrote 'Green Eggs and Ham' with only 50 words. Can these 100 be strung together (allowing repetition) into something remotely meaningful and grammatical?
Thanks for the feedback, we'll continue to try to simplify the page so it's less crowded.
OK, good to know. We'll definitely try some tweaks to decrease the spamminess of the site.
Hmm this reminds me of that book...oh yeah, Donald Trump's "Success University" series I think.

"I don't sell buildings because I'm famous. I sell buildings because I build good buildings."