skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> That does not mean they're opposite goals. Having parsing ambiguities means insufficient thought has been given to parsing, or the language has been defined as "as implemented" with an ad-hoc and organically grown parser (other examples of such case: Perl, PHP)

Of course they're not opposite, but you have to choose what to focus on.

> You prefer that languages have broken, inane or completely missing grammars? So you like PHP even more than Ruby?

Sorry if it wasn't clear, I was comparing easy parsing to developer happiness. That is, I prefer a language tries to make me happy rather than be easy to parse. (this goes back to your point above)
Some links for you:
http://www.quora.com/Why-are-Mailgun-and-Postmark-so-much-mo...

http://www.sitepoint.com/email-as-a-service-part-2-sendgrid-...
Mailbox is live in the App Store
Before the rise of the ideal of the "self made man", the nobility was popular, not because they were rich or nobles, but because their self-sustaining income meant they could engage in things society needed but were not profitable at the time, like science, art, culture, defensive military (of course, being a mercenary, or a plunderer, is quite profitable), and so on.

When the industrial revolution happened, the necessity for workers, in all levels, including managers, directors, and so on, made necessary for society to invent a reason for people to do those jobs, to change their old ways, then it became honorable to be a self made man, a guy that would use hard work to earn his income, instead of being a noble.

It was that time, that then being a noble became a thing to be derided for, and of course, the behaviour of many nobles did not helped things for them.

But originally what made a noble, "noble", was being to sacrifice himself, and do what needed to be done, without expecting payment, and he could do that because he already had income (usually in the form of some contract with people that farmed his land, be taxing them, or loaning the land to them, or something else).
First, even if it's empirically true that there are no trained rockstars in the programming field (which is a point I'm not going to concede), that doesn't mean that "at the rockstar level all learning is self-directed." There is an obvious difference between "all the rockstars I can see are self-directed learners" and "self-directed learning is necessary to become a rockstar." Asserting otherwise is a basic failure of logical reasoning.

My theory is that programming isn't any different in this regard from other intellectually demanding fields except culturally. I think the assertion that it is different is the one that requires proof, or at least an explanation for the mechanism by which it might be different.

As for self-directed learning, I'll point to Dennis Ritchie as an example. He's arguably somewhere in the middle between self-taught and trained. On one hand he started at Bell Labs concurrent with/immediately after Harvard. On the other hand, UNIX was something of a side project. Compare him to his father, who was a scientist at Bell Labs working on switching theory, and received his training in the AT&T engineering machine. What's different about the two men? Why is Dennis's field not trainable but Alistair's field trainable? My assertion is that there is no difference except the fact that there was an established framework for training engineers but not really one for training programmers.
Well, that actually might be the case.

More interesting would be if they answered, "yes"
Ah okay. Cool, thanks!
I prefer my reports on relative standards of living, particularly those concerned with welfare and the poor, not to come from libertarian think tanks.

They tend to have just a hint of bias.
"Type this code and run it".

Hey, I can teach you the theory of relativity in 30 seconds: type this "e=mc2".
Might want to swap out the default Bootstrap favicon :-)
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Beyond Vietnam (1967)
Upset about EveryBlock's closure? Check out Nextdoor.com
Sexting isn't necessarily two-way.
Hedonism isn't about hoarding stuff. Working more hours to buy more stuff is the opposite of hedonism. Contemporary hedonism implies something like partying at Ibiza 24/7, but the original meaning was more like the enlightened dad spending more time at home cooking organic meals for his family.
Oh I dunno...I don't think you're ever going to convince me that LESS knowledge is a good thing. We can - and should - all learn new skills that are outside out respective boxes. An affiliate marketer with some php knowledge is always going to be better off than one without...even if it's just enough knowledge to know whether the dev they hire is snowing them over!
my point being that 'simple trespassing' + tos violation is a muddy issue whereas simply violating a tos is an easy-to-parse flavor of civil disobedience.

more to the point, it's like getting arrested by a usda strike force at a buffet for eating in the kitchen after being told by the manager to that you're moving through the line too quickly. I agree that this is a disproportionate punishment, but... why are you in the kitchen again?

I would prefer that we only argue about TOS violations and the ethics of open-access journals, but instead we have to preface everything with "but look, he was only criminally trespassing because MIT changed their network access policy for community members" and that caveat by its very nature weakens the discourse around open-access journals, silly terms of service and so on.

You're right that the behavior on some level is 'technically correct' but it doesn't change Byrne's point that civil disobedience is most effective when the execution (and 'crime' committed) is unambiguous and focused.
Thanks a lot. Checking the code now.
I completely agree, that is what I meant by saying that it is a valid complaint.

My disagreement with the article is simply that saying its better to be rich than not is understating it.

Of course wealth is not a panacea to the human condition. It is however a better way of living by at least an order of magnitude than the average middle class life in the harsh, socially atomized globalized economy of the developed world. At median income levels in a nation such as the US, essentials like proper health care, education and marital stability are difficult to grasp.
The stability of real prices per piece over the last decade or so even after substantial work on reducing costs suggests that Lego is pretty close to the limits on cheap manufacturing of Legos.
Every page on the site redirects to a login/signup page on my iPhone. I cannot read anything about the product or company.
Why after months of research, stringent requirements for data centers, and general hand-wringing, would you consciously pull the plug for 9 minutes?

Edit: That sounds snarky; didn't mean to be. It just struck me that a lot of energy was put into choosing The Best[1] data center and still there was down time.

[1] http://dcurt.is/the-best
Murder Suspect Chris Dorner's Online Manifesto
The first comment is a self promoting alternative (daPulse) whose website looks very similar and whose product, much like the one being promoted, just looks like a slightly different Yammer. This seems to be an unnecessarily crowded space.

EDIT: Not the first comment...just the top one at the time I read the article (didn't realize comments on TC are sorted as newest first by default)
I didn't go through a service---I contracted them directly, so there was no real way to dispute except via small claims court.

Because of that, I ended up contracting someone else for the work who finished it on time. The originally contractor dripped in the work over the course of 8 months with many weeks delay in communication between each dribble of work done. In the end, they completed the job but I had no use for the work at that point, and obviously won't be recommending them to anyone.
I'm pretty sure that's his point: that it has become acceptable to completely ignore a bug report for 3 weeks with no indication that it will EVER be looked at.
You work at Valve? That's cool, and this may sound kind of dumb but oh well: you guys are my heroes. I am an engineer who does a lot of computer graphics programming and I have always looked up to you guys.
In a cruel case of irony a MOOC crashes and burns
Now this is an impressive argument. Particularly the first section about the tool chain (and the assembly part is really cool too).

I have been holding back because I don't like the lack of exceptions. But it occurred to me that C doesn't have anything like exceptions either, and even though that lack causes some serious irritation, the C language as a total package overcomes it and is really powerful.

I don't know if any language can beat that list of tool chain benefits. Maybe I will give go a whirl.
In 2011 my income was 30k USD.

This is a truckload of money in Brazil, it is harder to get more money than that, I was a "Solutions Architect" and R&D head of a medium mobile solutions company.

To me, I was bloody rich, I mean, I never had this kind of money before, my whole extended family were envious and made lots of really mean jokes (and people made lots of "jokes" asking things, obviously expecting that maybe you will buy it for them).

I noticed then that many things I wanted, I decided to buy them later, for example I still don't own a single game console, because I thought: "Aaah, I will only buy PS3, and I will do it when Final Fantasy Versus get released".

The most expensive thing I bought, were my glasses, because since I need them every day, it made sense to expend some more money seeking quality (I hired a good custom lensmaker and all).

In fact, I did not knew what to do with my money, so I ended throwing good part of it at bitcoins (and losing it doing crazy leveraged trading).

It was a time that I worked because I liked the job (by the way: when I sent the resume, I asked for 18k, I got 30k because THEY offered it, it was not me that asked!)
Know what to do with at the moment is not the same as having no idea what they would ever do with it so should give it so someone.

Having cash reserves sor which you have no immediate plans is itself a strategy that may have extra benefits, like it or not.
Why does HN not like MongoDB, but does like Meteor. Meteor uses MongoDB if you don't know.
I programmed in CL for several years exclusively, and think it's an awesome language. But I also really love Clojure, and think it's the the most beautiful Lisp (or S-expression-oriented language with a read-eval-print loop, if you prefer) I've had the opportunity to explore. To each their own.
Surface Pro Is Not Restricted To Windows 8, Can Run Other OSes
Yes! This is my overarching goal currently. I'm trying to make as much money as possible building line of business apps so I can work on something I think is more important. I would still write software, even if I was filthy rich, but the difference would be the resources I'd have at my disposal. I currently volunteer doing web sites for charities and schools from time to time. If I were rich, I could spend more time doing that, as well as paying other people to do that. I would love to build software for under served philanthropic organizations.
That's really unfortunate. I just signed up for an account on Freelancer.com so I could get some side work. It sucks having to drop my rates because there are so many out of country individuals and companies that will do the work for pennies on the dollar.

Hopefully if I build up my reputation, ratings, and feedback enough my work will speak for itself.
Hedonism is doing whatever you do, seeking pleasure.

Sometimes yes, this mean working your ass off to hoard stuff.

Sometimes it means using your daddy money buying fancy cars and crashing them.
Your link doesn't work for me:

> We've limited requests for old items. If you're running a crawler, you can get this data a lot more easily from http://hnsearch.com/api.

In any case, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_clone#Legal_challenges
> Can't most of these great injustices be solved by the newly rich person not bragging about it and living roughly on what they were consuming before plus 25-50%?

Not if you listen to those (many) who consider it anti-social behaviour to hoard money instead of spending it (because spending feeds the economy, pays salaries ...), or even getting interest as a "no-work income".

[I disagree with those people: if your money does not participate in the economy, the relative value of other people's money increases]
From the article:

"You’ll only see Ribbon listings from your Facebook friends or the pages you follow on the social network, which in theory cuts down the number of unwanted postings"
Even reasonable JavaCards don't appear to be easily available. I was really surprised when I started looking into these things - I was expecting the improved security afforded by these cards to be easier to come by and use.
Yes, the name can be difficult to search for. Same with C. Nothing is going to be done about it so most of us have moved on.

Also, it is pretty easy to find this story by searching for 'go' in the HN search box. You can further reduce results by selecting 'Stories' and search by date.

So in practice it is not a big deal.
www.patch.com
And why it was so important to ensure the bit pattern was the same?
Why is this getting downvoted so much? Just the language I hope. because there is a point there.

Everytime I see a meteor post, I get the feeling the article is telling me I'd be a fool to use anything else.

Assuming that's so, can we start talking about things like PCI compliant meteor apps. And what the security landscape looks like since you can interact with the data store via your browser's javascript console.
The idea that typography has nothing to do with design is ridiculous on its face. I get that you don't like webfonts and you are welcome to that opinion, but it's silly to suggest that font selection and the placement of text isn't properly the job of a designer.
Very cool idea, I like it.

> You need a public email address on GitHub to sign up you can add an email, sign up for triage, then remove it from GitHub.

You could request the 'email' permission scope to get my email.
Posted this the other day, but got no traction:

http://computinged.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/gt-and-courseras...

If these courses are still experiments, what measurements do we take to know when they are ready?
Funny how predictable

There's also your name, which narrowed it down to Russian or French, and I don't think the French care about Byron :)
Hmmm, $160 for a cubox or $35 for a RPi model B.

Given one can get a Windows 8 laptop on sale at Fry's for $260 I don't see what market this is aimed at.

http://images.frys.com/art/ads/020113_0pH1uChus/images/P1_FR...
Getting tired of this response.

Understood, but the problem seems to be growing lately in the sense of "shoestring funded" startups going for broke. When it finally becomes apparent that the business can't continue there are not always a lot of resources left for a graceful shutdown.

My opinion is that the "you owe it to your users..." idea is dangerous. That line of thinking could eventually lead to a class action lawsuit over something like "lost images" from the next failed social pic app. Which increases the costs and risks associated with trying new ideas, which discourages that innovation.

I think that users need to better understand the web-things that they grow "attached" to, and not just continually expect all web sites to be free magic unicorn tears from the sky. This "fremium" model is honestly not scaling very feel, yet people are becoming more expectant that simple sites are free. The ad-supported avenue isn't working out all that great for advertisers, site owners, or users either.
It is 500. I remember exactly when I crossed it and received the ability. That said, certain threads have downvoting disabled.
I use it -- I subscribed years ago to an RSS feed for my neighborhood and it's been feeding me useful little tidbits ever since.
The User Interface Sounds of the Wii
> Frequently cited uses were to “send funny pictures to my friends” or “make silly faces for my friends” or “send jokes to my friends.”

I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual. If it's not being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad that's going to die in a few months.

All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little reason to use Snapchat except that it's (briefly, for now) the popular new thing.
If by better touchpad, you mean better placement for the touchpad, then yes I agree. And in this scenario, the best placement is on the screen.
A language which is hard to parse for a computer is often hard to parse for a human. For instance, computers have fewer problems with the amount of short-term context memory. 'Magic' is often considered bad because it's inexplicable, while clarity is a principal virtue of a programming language in the eyes of many.

This is the key problem with DWIM interfaces in general. When it does what you mean, it's so nice. But sometimes you're stuck with ambiguity and lack of a precise means of expression; then you have to jump through hoops to push the 'intuitive' thing out of your way. (Curiously, both MS Word and Perl, of all things, manifest this problem.)
You may be either very young or not an American English speaker, but the phrase "X Nazi" is American slang denoting somebody who is overly strict about whatever X is. It comes from the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld, in which a soup shop owner would evict customers from his shop with the declaration "NO SOUP FOR YOU" if they didn't follow a very precise procedure for ordering. It is not actually an accusation of Nazism.
Survata co-founder here.

Good point. We had the same thought and did consider running a survey variant with the fixed 6 mo time frame. And we may just give it a try to see how the results are affected.

Even with the current wording, I find the SMS comparison useful. It demonstrates that people are willing to admit to sexting in the anonymous Survata survey format. I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to admit to "bad behavior" in the distant past than in the recent past. My intuition is that anonymity weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to know for certain.
Ask HN: How can a developer become a good CEO?
I worked for a startup.

I work as a freelance developer.

I'd like found my own startup, but I don't know "anything" about economics and entrepreneurship.

Where can I learn basic economics as a developer to run my own company?
List of programming and software development blogs
Your comment made me realize that the humor in mine must not have come through. Every time I use that tone online, I end up regretting it -- not that this one is a big deal, obviously, but the phenomenon is interesting. "The online comment" or even "the HN comment" is its own little genre.
Does anyone have any idea what the ASCII art in the HTML of their homepage (http://everyblock.com) is meant to represent?
I think this would be great because it would really let people use what they want. Office is good at what it does. There are lots of people who run Linux who could benefit from it. If you're not one of those people and Google Docs or LibreOffice works for you, that's fine you can keep using that. And from Microsoft's point of view, allowing more users to have access to Office makes setting up a Microsoft ecosystem an easier sell for a company. There is plenty of expensive enterprise software to be sold to companies that ties into Office. If companies can buy it without worrying about forcing an OS change for employees who are already productive with their current setup, that makes for an easier sale for MS.
I just don't get it. If you think that Apple exposes you to too much risk then don't invest in them.

it is their duty to pay it out

How so? Did they commit to giving out dividends as a part of your purchase of their stock? Are they siphoning the cash out of the company to avoid giving shareholders value?

Sitting on cash has been an Apple strategy for a very long time, even before Jobs came back. How have they deceived shareholders by continuing with it?
Why Does High Availability Matter for Your SharePoint?
Also, here's a direct link to the source:

https://github.com/prismatic/plumbing

and a literate test with lots of real examples:

https://github.com/Prismatic/plumbing/blob/master/test/plumb...

We're also working on other kinds of compilation, including 'direct' ones that compile directly to a single fn, and 'async' ones that handle asynchronous functions and are smarter about spinning up threads:

https://gist.github.com/w01fe/4710008
Also on Github https://github.com/dkukral/everyblock
What To Focus On As A CEO
Ah, if the original bulletpoints for go are wrong then ghc may be more comparable than I figured. Can you statically link go binaries? As in, if I am using a go postgresql binding, can I build a binary with libpq (the postgresql C library) linked in statically, so it can be deployed on servers with no postgresql libraries installed?
This looks very interesting.

It seems to be similar to something I've been thinking about and trying to build lately, so I'm definitely going to check this out.
I don't know the details of this specific situation (beyond the article here), but the scenario in general is not uncommon. Employees at avionics companies can receive FAA training to act as internal FAA delegates, reviewing work in line with FAA guidelines, just as an employee of the FAA would do.
What Comes After Services? Interpretation
Negative marketing never works.
I disagree with the premise that the FAA might understand modern aircraft design better than Boeing. Or that Boeing doesn't have plenty of incentive to make the aircraft very safe.
aguynamedrich, What Yammer did well is reinvent the social intranet for making announcements inside the firewall. It allowed for one person inside a company of 1000s to broadcast to the entire company.

What Yammer never had a chance to perfect before being purchased/killed was how to be the place where people actually work... The way people work has changed in the last few years. People are working 24/7, using multiple devices, working in distributed teams, in teams that are cross-company etc... These changes making communicating in real-time a necessity which is why Hall is focused on real-time communications.
5 minutes _once you know it_
I didn't suggest typography has nothing to do with design. Placement of text is not at issue here, font face choice is. There are many font faces already available. They were created by designers. Ones who specialize in creating fonts in fact. They are much better at it than web designers. Breaking a website so it is entirely unreadable because you feel a non-standard font is prettier is something a bad designer does. It does not help the user, which is the entire point of a web site.
Yahoo properties to start showing Google ads
That's a mobile redirect bug on our end. Thanks for pointing this out. Expect an update soon.
It’s interesting that people refuse to believe this, even though they’ve almost certainly experienced it on a smaller scale.

For example, when you’re a poor student, you undoubtedly covet the nice gear in whatever field you’re into. If you’re into photography, you want that new camera or lens. If you’re into computer games, you want the newest rig. If you’re into cooking, you want some Le Creuset cast iron or some copper pots. But interestingly, once you start making even semi-decent money (say, $75,000) you could easily afford these things. And yet, most people no longer covet them when they reach that level. They may make a few initial purchases, but they soon realize that, because they can buy a $2,000 lens or a $500 french oven without much thought or planning, the shine is gone. Instead, they shift their sights to the $200,000 Porsche or the $2,000,000 home.

There’s no reason this doesn’t apply at $20,000,000 just as it does at $75,000. There’s always bigger, better, and more to covet.