skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't like the distinction because for a software whose developers respond to what the users are doing, after every hackish new way the users find to (ab)use it, the developers come and add things that make it easier to do the things done by "hacks" (but at the same time they also need to keep the hacks working). And if the "users" of a software like the browsers are actually developers, it's obvious that they are not going to expect for features to be properly implemented, they will just (ab)used whatever half-assed features they can find.

...in my view, if you can clearly see "the distinction" between authors adding functionality and users abusing existing functionality for new purposes, it means that one party is clearly moving too slow: either the "users" are too slow to discover new ways to adopt and (ab)use the new software or the developers are working to slow and the users-developers need to do too many ugly hacks because the features they need take too long to be released and standardized (unfortunately the current state of web-development seems closer to this state of affairs).

But there are possible solutions: I think things like standardization could be accelerated by having "tzars" in all committees (people that can just choose by themselves how some things over which they have authority get to work without needing a consensus or to justify to others why they choose one way) - I'm using the word "tzar" as in Haskell's "syntax tzar", the guy who could just choose what syntax a certain language feature needs and end the discussion right there because nobody had the right to contradict him [1] (I consider H's design-by-committee the only example where a committee did something mostly right and I wish similar "committees" would work on things like CSS and new ECMAScript versions...). But again, if standards evolve too fast, implementors will have to play catch-up and end-up with half-done implementations, which today happens even for sloth-slow evolving things like CSS.

...but of course, the real "root of all evil" is the backwards compatibility requirement, but we can't get away from this.

...and I know, some people will want to burn me at stake for screaming the "we're not going fast enough" heresy about web tech :)

[1] http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/software-engineering-an...
"Javascript is an interpreted language"

Huh? JavaScript JITs have been around for 4 years now.
I have never used IDEA, but if it is even a fraction as good as ReSharper then it is still amazing. After being introduced to it I feel so handicapped without it when using plain Visual Studio.
I actually think the go solution to this problem is quite elegant (because it also encapsulates info on where the dependencies come from), and preferable to other package systems which have one point of failure or central package repository.

If you want to roll your own mirror simply change github.com/foo to my mirror.com/foo in your code. At least then you document the expected dependency with the code itself and can remove it if required. It also lets you very easily import a local package instead if you prefer. If the maintainer changes the location of their package and you have not taken a copy you might have to change your code, but this happens very rarely in my experience and isn't a big issue.

Go doesn't have versioning for packages yet, and they will need to add this, but that wouldn't be hard to add as an option to the current import scheme.
There are some pretty smart young people behind the Data Protection law, but these US lobbyists seem to want to water it down a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYsE6s2FFqI

In the video they also mention how they maybe get to talk to politicians once every 3 months (because of budget constraints) while lobbyists are there every day talking to them.
Smartphones help University of Washington researchers improve storm forecasts
Thanks a lot for the clarification. Did not know that.

Then it is so much more interesting, to ask, why did apple is going down the path of making jailbreaking illegal.

OK: one might say, that the want to motivate the next generation of Steves...
Your impression that the Raspberry Pi is exclusively programmed in Python and is only meant for tiny little toy projects is mistaken. It's a full-fledged computer running Linux, and will support software written using essentially any programming language.

If you take a look at the linked article, for example, you'll see that the author is programming it in C++.
>Did I miss anything amazing in the rest of the article? Thanks in advance.

Yes, you missed the fact that quitting articles or conversations because of some remark (which could even be tongue-in-cheek) doesn't make you any smarter and that "I stopped reading where he said" is not something to brag about.
"but a good UI should probably involve good UI fundamentals."

That calendar is easy to fix with a little CSS, I have used it. Lack of pixel perfect polish in an example's styling = lack of UI fundamentals, really?
Why are they not funneling all the profits into the creator of iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Webkit, and all number of other frameworks. The app wouldn't run with out them. Rovio made the effort to market and capture the imaginations of people so that they want to spend money on the games, toys and t-shirts. This reminds me of pac-man from when I was a kid. I had a Pac-man birthday cake, Pac-Man clothes, Pac-Man Underroos, etc. I know my 5 year old son is obsessed with the angry birds as characters, and wants to know their back story. This is what drives him, not the framework used.
Do you (or anyone else) have any links for me, as this might just be one more egg in my argumentative basket?

Thanks a lot in advance...
One of my favorite moments of GDC 2011 came during the Q&A session of a talk by Rovio about Angry Birds:

Q: “Hi Peter, could you tell me which physics engine Angy Birds uses?”

Peter (Rovio): “Box2D”

Q: “Great. Would you consider giving credit to Box2D in your game?”

Peter (Rovio): “Yes, of course”

Q: “Thank you! By the way, I am Erin Catto the creator of Box2D”

Peter (Rovio): “Great! I would like to talk to you after the session”
I will again play the grumpy old guy, but this seems like building Eclipse into the JVM.

Firebug/Devtools are obviously ridiculously awesome. For debugging layout, there will never be anything as good as "Inspect element".

But for programming, I want to write/debug in my IDE, and poke the browser via a standardized wire protocol that IE/FF/Chrome/Opera all support.

Not to say they shouldn't be working on this; if this is the workflow you like, that's awesome. I just hope wire protocols get some love too.

With the amazing collective effort going into browsers, hopefully I don't have anything to worry about.
How Mailbox is Using a Clever Tease Tactic to Increase Hype
Media streaming
The last time I checked ministers are part of national governments which are (indirectly, depending on the specific country) elected.
IBM is trying to. No really.

EDIT: Here you go lazy downvoters: http://news.priorsmart.com/ibm-files-the-patent-troll-patent...
Found the article! Very good read: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how...
Neat, but this completely ignores the real reason people have trouble with small fonts: bad eyesight. The size the font needs to be is a factor of distance and eyesight. The real solution is to just use the default font size and have users adjust that to their preferences.
Mobile Tech Tracks Your Every In-Store Move
MSConfig - What Would I Do Without You
I must be one of the idiot complainers he talks about, because his first "good thing" annoys me right off the bat. If you want to change a private method to public, you have to go through all your code and capitalize every use of it?

Yeah, I guess it could be handled with a refactoring IDE... if Go has one.

This feels like a throwback to hungarian notation. Names should just be names, quit trying to cram code syntax into it. Besides, if you do have a competent IDE, it can colorize private vs public names differently.
I have a hard time feeling sympathy for unrepentant murderers, regardless of who they have murdered.
> First off, I'm a developer, not a designer.
"If you want to roll your own mirror simply change github.com/foo to my mirror.com/foo in your code"

This is very messy. If a mirror changes, you have to go back through all of your source code and change all of the relevant imports.

I personally find the node.js/npm solution to the problem (separate the dependency mapping for external resources, allow changes to those without having to modify the source) to be more useful. It lets you swap local and remote versions effortlessly and, using a private npm server, maintain packages for a large internal network.
Sounds like you're responsible for ensuring that your app only sends broadcasts when appropriate. If you create an app that lets end users send push notifications to an arbitrary list of users then that's on you for allowing it to happen.
Ask HN: API to get flight prices and info?
I wonder where do startups like Hipmunk (specially when they first started) or Trabber get their data? I asked the latter and they replied they couldn't tell. Seems like too many variables and changing too quickly (prices) as to be scrapped. Do they scrape when you perform a search? Is there any API that gives you that info for a lot of airlines? If so, is it free or you have to pay for it? Or do they negotiate with each airline independently?
Find your offline contacts on Facebook via email or phone
Did I miss anything else? This point isn't very interesting to me.
Didn't an author from Penny Arcade successfully get a visa or something like that to enter the US because of an online petition. IIRC he was trying to enter for business purposes but the US Gov't doesn't consider an online comic to be a viable business.
Bootstrap was actually build on code from ZURB http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4590315 The competition between the two frameworks just benefits the end user as they compete to out do one another.
Should all of the startups on HN owe the creators of PHP, rails, python, and every other framework a Ferrari too?
It's even more amusing if you go to http://translate.google.com/#la/en/ and start slowly entering Lorem ipsum by hand. Highlights:

Lorem
→ Product
Lorem ip
→ We recall
Lorem ips
→ IPS News
Lorem ipsu
→ Dummy Item
Lorem ipsum
→ Welcome
Lorem ipsum do
→ We give
Lorem ipsum dol
→ This mourning
Lorem ipsum dolor
→ Welcome
Lorem ipsum dolor s
→ The Pussycat Dolls
Lorem ipsum dolor si
→ Contact if
Lorem ipsum dolor sit ame
→ Welcome Home
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
→ Product Manager
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
→ This page is currently
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, c
→ This page is available
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
→ This page is half the battle
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit
→ This page is half the battle WIN!

The results are slightly different if you don't capitalize “Lorem”.

Edit: lipsum.com explains the source of the text; it is a slightly garbled fragment of a sentence from de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum by Cicero: “Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem” which translates as “Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.”
Why I may not be able to help you
"quitting articles or conversations because of some remark"

This is the problem with the internet and with political discourse in the 21st century: as soon as someone says something that seems off-kilter, even if it is technically correct, people stop listening/reading.
KDE is awesome because it can be other DEs
Targeted can be highly effective but it arguably takes longer and is significantly more difficult which is why the majority gravitate towards the wide-net approach.
As someone who is fanatical about both Visual Studio and Raspberry Pi I think this is awesome. It likely won't be a big seller though.

People use the Rpi for hacking and tweaking, and VS is better suited for enterprise development work. You're basically using a space shuttle to drive to the grocery store. Many of the things that make VS great aren't really going to apply to the Rpi anyway.

Most of the "apps" that will built for the pi are going to be homebrewed stuff for education and I think you can build most of those with conventional Linux tools. But if you already have Visual Studio and your comfortable with it, investing $100 in this program would probably be worth it if you want to build a serious pi app.
oh please, someone make a extension for chrome so I can scroll just by nodding.
Thank you!
Maybe (like other comments mention). Sometimes I bring my phone closer to my face because I'm having trouble reading something because of my eyesight. Making the text smaller in response can be counter-productive.
it forces the package names to be globally unique, by piggybacking off of DNS. If you own "lclarkmichalek.com" you can put up a server and then have "import lclarkmichalek.com/foobar/foo" if you really want to.
It's in comparison to the clockwise spiral rule: http://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html
X-Http-Method-Override with NancyFX
Spam for $99 shim for gdb.
Totally in agreement. In fact I think the NYC to LA stuff drags the HSR debate into the mud more than anything else. We should instead be focusing on the U.S. mega-regions and pitching how HSR could help revitalize cities like Philadelphia or Detroit by connecting them to their thriving neighbors within their mega-regions.
I work on Wall st. As many others have already pointed out, excel is the bread and butter of many in investment banking and finance. The power and flexibility of excel cannot be underestimated. At the same time, with all the new regulations/Dodd Frank blah blah, there is a lot of discussions about adding "control points" around these mega spreadsheets/macros/VBAs that are used by Traders. I personally work with traders who use an Excel based addin to push trades into downstream systems.

Few days ago, I built a very simple VBA utility that queries an oracle database to give me relevant transaction information. They love it and I am the superstar already. Reason: this requirement was discussed with IT teams, sent to priority queue for months. After building this macro which took me 2 hours, traders got what they wanted without going through an IT budget.
I agree. I'm going to remind myself of this phrase next time I start to get sucked into yet another endless and pointless discussion over personal preference. One I've been using is Sweet Brown's "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" and it's been very effective. Now I have another phrase to deploy.
Certainly no downvotes from me. I spent more than a decade on the "RMS is a dirty f'ing hippie who will bring down the wonderful open source movement with his intemperate antics." side of the argument too (though to be fair: I never bought into the "Copyleft is an unreasonable infringement on freedom" nonsense that some of my compatriots did).

The guy was right about basically everything. The anti-tivoization provisions that the FSF was talking about more than a decade ago, and that appeared in a usable license almost 6 tears ago, would absolutely have had a place in preventing this nonsense. Yet no one uses it, because RMS is a dirty f'ing hippie.

(And yes, I know the real world is complicated, and that corporate sponsors of copyleft development "refuse" to use the GPLv3 and cannot be convinced. The same thing was said about copyleft itself 15 years ago. The commercial world adapted. They'll figure this out too if we demand it.)
Well, it's impossible to tell without knowing what's interesting to you.

That said, I think the above point is more generic and important than anything Go specific the article could say.
MyESalon-Custom Built Web Design For Salons. Need Feedback
Governments can think a bit further ahead than typical venture capitalists... it is not about making an exit year from now, but instead ensuring that there is enough tax revenue coming in when the current generation of workers retires.

In Finland the current focus is ensuring that the economy can transition from the failing mobile phones and shipyards to something else, and the game cluster is a part of that.

Update: found an article about the role public funding played with Rovio's success:

Rovio Ltd. has benefited from support schemes by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. According to the public information provided by Tekes, the company received grants of € 379,510 over the years 2005-2007.

In addition, the Finnish Film Foundation, an institution backed by the state, has granted Rovio Ltd. € 50,000 of support for the production of an Angry Birds animation movie. Already before, Rovio had announced cooperations for producing “Angry Bird” films, including a cooperation with 20th Century Fox.

http://www.proinno-europe.eu/inno-grips-ii/newsroom/finnish-...
I think a good way or restating your point is that, the better web gets i.e. more advanced frameworks with better testing suites, the harder it is to screw up.

A point I'd like to make:
At the end of the day though, mobile _can_ be fast, but it just doesn't compete with native, yet. When I take a web project after concluding an iOS app, I miss being able to run tests and deploy to my phone or iPad in one place and easily. I miss how formal native code feels over a javascript stack. I hope this changes one day, and I love what Firefox OS is promising, but until then, I will be working with native solutions.
If you're trying to find a valuable niche, anything that helps businesses to get paid quicker or cutting costs (with measurable results) would be an easy sell.

Unfortunately small businesses are usually too wrapped up working IN their business to have the time to spend ON their business setting up any new products that are a 'nice to have'

Simple core features and implementation is key. If it has got a direct link to making them more money or saving them a LOT of hours then that cuts through a lot of friction when pitching the product.

Good questions to ask business owners are :-

* What are your main costs

* What tasks make up your day

* What tasks do you do monthly/annually

Why not pick a specific type of business then you can really hone in on the same pain point that is repeated in that industry.

Random examples

* Ebay power sellers - A tool to find the best shipping provider (lowest cost)

* Etsy Sellers - A tool to add up material costs + time taken to work out a sale price

* Courier Business - A bare bones utility to configure multi drop routes & find low cost fuel enroute

If you don't pick a specific industry it's really tough to reach mass market, have a solid target audience and learn it inside out before you build anything.
You wouldn't get all these downvotes if you put any amount of thought into your comment. Right now it's a one-line potshot at someone who is widely seen as doing a good thing.
Rob Pike's Go FAQ says that this is one of their favorite features about Go, and I agree; it's how I've been writing C code since 1995. So, I mean, if conformance to my C programming style guide matters, YOU LOSE THE ARGUMENT! :)

I'd also contend that no language makes changing the visibility of a variable completely painless. You're fixating on the one case where you can change the token "private" to "public" and write new client code for a class. But you're ignoring public->private, which is a breaking change no matter what syntax you use; you're also ignoring the fact that moving a variable out of or into a class (for instance with class statics) is breaking no matter what you do.

As this article points out, the major win for simply using case to signal this is that the language gets to dispense with fussiness about where variables are; you can just put them in packages when they make sense.

It's all tradeoffs, of course. It's certainly your prerogative to be annoyed by design decisions in Go! I'm extremely annoyed by the import use requirement and refuse to not be annoyed by it no matter how many times Rob Pike and Russ Cox say it prevents bugs.
I guess this "controversial with idiots" is a similar concept to bike-shedding, yac shaving...
I'd imagine that running Android apps on (touch-screen) laptops running full Ubuntu would be higher on the list.
Check out http://auduno.github.com/headtrackr/examples/targets.html (though you'll need webgl support)
CloudSigma’s CEO to Present on Cloud Sourcing for Media Industry Collaboration 
CloudSigma’s CEO to Present on Cloud Sourcing for Media Industry Collaboration at HPA Tech Retreat 2013
How about a C process that only manages audio, which takes instructions over a socket from your Lisp program of what audio to play? You could even stream stuttering audio from Lisp into a user-space buffer written in C that smooths it out.
Biggest offer ever on Shark Tank.
How so? There is a well thought out reason for this ordering [1], and it has taken hold in many other languages, such as rust and scala. Compare with the complexity of c or c++ type signatures.

[1] http://golang.org/doc/articles/gos_declaration_syntax.html
What do you think would have been a better alternative to the raid in which Osama Bin Laden was killed?
Cool site: http://cdecl.org/
CSS3 and CSS4
It's not correct. He's making an allusion to lisp and imputing to it the notion that everything is a linked list, which is not true. The article is a comparative discussion of programming languages. Earlier, it calls critics of the focal language in the article "idiots". That was OK with me while the author had credibility. It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables.

Apparently, I missed that Go could have, but didn't, support a syntax with shell shebangs at the tops of files so it could be used for utility scripts. I feel like I probably made the right call stopping where I did. ;)
Ok, tell me which modern IDE I should spent some time with. Is IntelliJ IDEA mentioned here good enough?

I'm working on a personal project in my spare time which I can use it on. (Except the project is using Common Lisp so it might not be a good match.)

I forgot to mention in my original post that I've also spent time with Unity3D recently although for some reason I didn't think of it when thinking of IDEs I had used in the past.
"If you want to roll your own mirror simply change github.com/foo to my mirror.com/foo in your code"

Instead of changing the code, use a version control command to clone your repository mirror to your workspace.
I know I paid sales tax in California on a car rental.
>I don't doubt you consider yourself "productive". However Rich Hickey created Clojure using Emacs and then, using Clojure, he created Datomic. That's certainly something I'd call productive..

So I guess the information below will rock your world and change your editor of preference:

"I developed Clojure in IntelliJ and still do (the Java part)."

http://markmail.org/message/pon2e77mdtkath26
Sorry; for clarification, you are correct - I am using the term 'enterprise' loosely.. target is the small/medium companies that (as Helen pointed out in another comment) are too busy running their companies to focus on the 'nice to haves'.
Protodata—a language for generating binary data
I wish HN had an option to change the URL after submission. Obviously the domain would have to be the same, but it would be nice to change the ending if it meant showing all pages, the print version, or what have you.