skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think "Ask a question of" and "Ask a question to" are both wrong. Why not just "Ask Cyberdyne Customers a Question"?
Good hackers do not find PHP bashing interesting

Well, let's not go over the top here. Many of the most famous hacker writings are passionate critiques of computer languages.

I work with PHP every day. But if I were not allowed to use rude words to describe PHP I'd never get through the day without biting through my tongue.

I think what you mean to say is: "Good hackers find interesting criticism of PHP to be interesting."

(It also helps to be constructive, and polite, although those are not hard-and-fast rules provided you are interesting enough. Have you read Steve Yegge's Kingdom of Nouns article? Have you heard Paul Graham's hilarious line about recruiting Python programmers vs recruiting Java programmers? They are good writers, and funny, but they are also scathing.)
Ok, I'll grant you that it's not strictly in the guidelines of the site here, but... I found it funny. Hackers are people too, and not everything needs to read like a textbook. We should certainly discourage these sorts of posts, but I think that it's not a real crisis if this sort of article gets through every now and then. There is a reason that HN has voting, and it's this exactly. The people found it interesting, and they voted it up. Oh well. To be honest, posts like this seem like more of a distraction to me. Do we really need meta-reminders of the site rules?
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Sadly, Spain will be the next.
Language bashing for geeks is like ball scratching for baseball players. It's one of our ways of being social. Not everyone likes it, but it can be fun.
Conficker downloads new instructions via known infected domains
I disagree. While both are grammatically sound, "of you" sounds better to the native ear. This is largely due to repetition (humans tend to process language probabilistically, almost as if language were merely a series of Markov chains). Ponder, for a moment, these famous lines:

"Christine, that's all I ask of you." - Andrew Lloyd Weber

"Nor would I ask of any fellow American in defense of his freedom that which I would not gladly give myself - my life before my liberty." - Manchurian Candidate

"And ask of you forgiveness; and so we’ll live," - Shakespeare (King Lear)

These classic lines have made their mark on our culture and/or the English language.

The notable exception to this is when "to" is used to show cause, i.e.

The student asked permission [in order] to go to the bathroom

The man asked a question [in order] to understand the answer
Or perhaps it was the part where they stole his passport and forbid him leaving or looking for other means of making a living.
Nobody ever complains when you finish a project under the estimated time. In fact, it looks good even if it's only by a few hours.
Allright i stand corrected. As i'm not yet making a living out of programming, i kind of failed to see the troll in that. But that must be me :)
you have a good point, but for what it's worth here's the practical example that is the basis of my opinion on this. I had a very large corpus of text and I wanted to construct a word association graph. This involves multiplying together lots of sparse 10^5 x 10^9 matrices that are too large to fit in single memory. This is out of core.
Getting together 6 computers and setting up hadoop and HDFS took me about 2 days starting from nothing.

Figuring out how to do all of these out of core sparse matrix manipulations honestly took me about a week of tinkering before I had anything worth even trying. I'm certainly not an expert at this stuff so maybe a better coder could have done it a lot faster but that's my problem.

What would be a real advance in bringing massive scale data analysis to "the people" would be something like hadoop R or MATLAB that makes doing things like this completely automagic.
Very cool. I've actually been playing with Farser Physics and XNA the past few weeks and you can get something up and running very quickly.

The samples and code itself of Farseer is very well done, and pretty well documented.
The most accurate method I've used is "1 week per page". This is for backend development and not web design.

Surely such an overly simple estimate is going to be wrong? Well yes, but reality is complex and no calculation is going to capture it correctly.

If you find 1 week per page is too inaccurate you can update your future estimates based on past performance.
What you seem to fail to see is that you're an outlier.

When PG says stuff like "I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows", I think he's more of an outlier than the parent poster.

Gmail can search my mail much faster than my computer can.

There's no technological reason for this to be true. Gmail takes a second or two to answer search queries over my mail; that is plenty of time for a typical desktop machine to process full-text search queries over a few GB of indexed and largely static data.

The reason Microsoft are 'dead' is that they don't get it.

I think most of my objection to the original PG article is the shameless hyperbole it engages in. Microsoft isn't "dead" by any stretch of the imagination -- they are poorly positioned for cloud computing, but the game is certainly not over yet. Claiming that Microsoft is "no longer a factor one has to consider when doing something in technology" is simply wrong -- even if you narrow your focus to consumer-facing web apps, Microsoft still provides the dominant client platform (IE), and a very popular backend infrastructure (SQL + ASP.NET + CLR + ...).
That other article was a joke. Did you even read it?

I thought it was funny and interesting, and it certainly gratified my intellectual curiosity. I liked the stats on Ruby vs. Perl vs. PHP.

Lighten up, dude..
For a self taught programmer, I find it quite interesting to see which areas I've gotten up to 3 or 4 and which are 2. ( Thankfully none are lower! ) Though obviously it's going to come from one industry bias, it's still useful as a reminder of what areas I should do more reading in.
Regarding the real advance: That stuff is the very 'revolution' thats coming that I talk about :) Visicalc kindly sucked, but Excel is pretty good. Its still very early, but the way forward has become clear.
DNS response time can be a huge issue. The type of software you use can also make a difference. I noticed a significant increase in the speed of lookups when I switched from using BIND9 to djbdns.
Perhaps these are of interest?

PHP in Erlang: http://github.com/blog/354-php-in-erlang

Erlang / Ruby Bridge: http://www.rubyinside.com/erlang-ruby-bridge-its-erlectricit...
Yahoo's Connected TV Widget Platform
Actually, I have more trouble with the non-humorous X vs. Y articles. At least this one tried to be funny (successfully or unsuccessfully). Worse are the myriad posts that say "Here is why my technology is good and yours is bad."

Unfortunately, even humor doesn't play well on the internet when it is seen as criticism. "5 joking reasons why your technology sucks" brings the trolls out in full force.
Actual time taken to complete tasks is a good input to future estimates for similar work.

Agile folks have the concept of 'velocity' which helps them to predict delivery dates based on accuracy of previous estimates.
That's why Microsoft has two different levels of managed Sharepoint hosting: Office Live (very small businesses), and Microsoft Sharepoint Online (small or large businesses). Similarly, they have Microsoft Exchange Online, which is managed Exchange hosting. They are building caching infrastructure into Windows 7 so they can offer even Active Directory and file sharing as remote, managed services.

As far as I can tell, all of their server-side software is or will be offered in a Microsoft-hosted-and-managed configuration. And, it won't be trivial to switch back and forth, but it will at least be possible to do so.

Additionally, Microsoft seems to be working with Amazon Web Services since AWS supports Windows Server. If you don't want Microsoft to host your applications then you can do it yourself on AWS or on your own servers.
I was curious about the "domain authority" point as well. He linked to another blog post at the bottom of the article that talks about that: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-personal-opinion-90-of-the-ran...
I think this is interesting, but wouldn't judge yourself too heavily on it. I think many of the lines are far too easy to get to the '3' category, and leave considerable room above for really gifted programmers.

My results are about 1/2 three, 1/2 two, a couple ones, and nothing in the gifted category. :) Background here is some (very bad) programming before undergrad, undergrad CS from a good school, then 6 years working in enterprise software.

I really don't think this chart categorizes what makes a programmer competent though. I value the knowledge of a programmer that is extremely deep in a couple categories more than someone who has a sprinkling of everything.

Jeremy
"It's a balanced bill for a legal and civilised Internet," said Culture Minister Christine Albanel.

That's another way of saying: kill the Internet.
Ask HN: where do you share and discuss ideas (just for the heck of it)?
As most people here I presume, even though I don't necessarily do anything of it, I have ideas about stuff to build. I like to think about them as some kind of exercise, to think about different scenarios, how one could monetize it, the basic architecture, etc.

I'm wondering if you have a place (online or offline) where you usually discuss these ideas (the kind where most probably nothing will happen but which are still interesting to kick around), or a group of hacker friends you exchange emails with...

Personally, I discuss that with one of my friends by email. But I'm thinking I could find a bigger group for more discussion.

As an example, the release of Tipjoy's API (http://tipjoy.com/APIcontest/) sounds like something to spend some time just thinking about what could be done, even if we don't get to the implementation.
I did but I thought that it was focusing on a one-of remark in many, many hours of congressional testimony designed to prevent a mob with pitchforks and torches storming wall street.

I just don't see this as something that will be policy, but I guess I could be wrong and too trusting of the Obama administration.
If states can do it, so can the nation. Yeah it's HARD, but it's not that hard. Practically every piece of legislation is this much of a hassle. So call me a VP.
+1

I use PHP and Ruby all the time, but I'm tired of reading about how shitty PHP is.

I'll take PHP over VB any day!! /hypocrisy :)
Why does he deserve royalties?

It probably took him, oh I don't know... less than two months to co-write, 22 years ago.
Python’s lambda is broken
Sun Launches VirtualBox 2.2 Virtualization Software
Nevertheless, it's encouraging to see Google officially support what many consider an essential tool in running modern web applications. It's also helpful to have cron integrated with the GAE dashboard, so I can see everything scheduled to run and the result of the last run.

The release came at the perfect time for me, the day after I launched an app that requires regular update tasks to run in the background. It was a boon to simply add a yaml file to my app and not have to hack the functionality in.
Adventures in Android Development
Inventor turns cardboard boxes into eco-friendly oven
changed title :)
Yeah. I've been on Grooveshark for over a year and I love it! The clean interface really makes a difference.
This looks a lot like the list in Steve McConell's "Code Complete".
I really appreciate the time you took to reply, and feel like I have a much improved understanding of the landscape.

And now: a short thought on default passwords!

It feels like default passwords should not mean "operate normally". When you have the default password set on a router, it ought to keep bugging you to change it before it works as expected.

It'd need to be an industry standard to avoid companies touting theirs as "easier" because it doesn't require setting a password.

Though this would make it harder to steal a neighbor's wi-fi while one waits for one's own installation after moving into a new apartment.

Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.
I agree. It doesn't matter! I prefer stories that has something to do with Start-ups. That said, I did find the Ruby / Scala Twitter story interesting.
I'm beginning to agree with this more and more. Consider something you have done in the past that is similar to the the task at hand and use how long it took as a guide.

It also helps if your development cycles are fairly short (i.e. 1-2 weeks and no longer). I have found that it is much easier to estimate how long it will take if the amount of work you are estimating is smaller.

Keeping your development cycles short also has the beneficial side effect of reducing the shock factor when you have to double it.
They should hire 37signals to design the page.
This is fair. For what it's worth, I think PHP kind of sucks, and interesting criticism of any language is worthwhile. I love Steve Yegge's Tour de Babel article (http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/tour-de-babel), and I even generally enjoy Zed's loud criticism of my day-to-day language.

What I don't like is language trolling, which often comes in the form of claiming that one language is better than another. Unless you're looking at a narrow slice of the language (performance, documentation, expressiveness), you can't just say that one language is better than another.
The Promise of a Better Light Bulb?
Since this is all a black art and guesswork at best and pseudo-science at worst...

The most obvious and simple method is to get an average PageRank of all pages and if it's higher than average use that figure to bias the results as 'domain authority'.

I think there is some sort of bias towards newness, so more recent links are worth more, and newer sites are biased to have a higher initial PageRank.
I "pitch" ideas to everyone and anyone who will listen, specially if I know they're entrepreneurs, I will flood them with feedback and can spend the night visualizing ways they can improve their business, etc.

It's good sometimes, but it mostly overwhelms people. I am also known to express dismay whenever a friend tells me he will take/keep a full time job. A few days ago I was at a party when I ran into an old gym buddy. I knew he was a pharmaceuticals post graduate then and I wanted to kick back and forth a few ideas someone else raised to be about starting a medical software business. My friend said he was working full time at his university and he wasn't interested in losing that lazy but paying academic gig. It really ruined my night and I kept trying to talk him out of it.

Sometimes people will come to me with ideas and I will take them and run with them. The next day I would have been exhausted all possibilities and now I have several pages of business analysis in my notebook. Only problem is, people usually "have" ideas but they're not convinced of them. It than falls on you whether to put the 4 weeks of coding necessary to launch the service and start marketing it and make $, along side your other projects in the little time you have. It's a judgment call you have to make, and I always choose to ignore it and just apply the lessons I "learned" to my own projects.

Ideas are cheap, just make sure you're not telling them to an _executioner_ if you're not yourself a taker. You will waste his time and put him in a moral dilemma when he finds out you're the one dragging his feet.
On the same note, I don't see how 'trying out' a DVCS makes you suddenly level 3 on the "source code and version control" metric.

Programmer competency articles are sort of a macho, nerdy equivalent of "do these pants make my butt look big?"
Why should people help a company with an unethical/shady business model. It's not a "bad design" you had a problem with, it was a design that too-accurately reflected your business model.
Unfortunately, it isn't available as a ringback tone.
What is interesting is how "optional" it actually is. Being very tall is also "optional" if you want to become an NBA player (Nate Robinson is 5'9"), having working legs is "optional" if you want to climb the everest, etc.
I think focusing on selling to other companies is a difficult trap to get out of. After the first sale companies can be milked for an extended period for support contracts / upgrades. Innovation is not really needed and growth / profit are an easy to understand process. You can even make money by bribing middle managers (see: drug companies for an example of this).

However, individuals require far more bang for the buck. So the margins tend to be far smaller and you need to sell to large numbers of people constantly to keep up.

At the same time selling to companies tends to focus on boring products so most of your innovative people tend to leave. It's not exactly a binary choice, but companies like AT&T often go from selling to individuals, to making money from companies, to making money from the government. In the end the quality of your competition tends to drop the closer you are to working for the government which is why I think it's a death spiral. Overtime the company becomes unable to deal with change and the next round of innovative companies tend to disrupt them.

PS: Which is not to say old companies like GM can't sell products to customers it's just they stop being able to make much money doing so unless they can leverage a monopoly.
I certainly think HN is the wrong place for such articles. However they will continue to exist regardless.

I hold the opinion that good hackers should be able to use the most appropriate tool for the job, not debunk one language over another. Twitter was always used as the big example of "Ruby doesn't scale", but I think it showed more to the point that languages don't scale and not that one was better than the other.
IPhone OS Upgrade Cycle
If you can't explain an idea in a sentence or two it's general appeal is likely quite limited. The basic premise is sound, but why can't I just buy something from Ztail and then have an option to return it a year later directly to them for a fixed price (like Chegg for textbooks)? I don't want to deal with eBaying it myself. There are way too many intermediaries involved for me to feel comfortable as a consumer. Are they planning on making all the affiliate revenue first and then figuring out how to handle the refunds a year down the line?

I like the example in the TC article of the $900 stroller. Forget the guaranteed return, just buy a cheaper stroller!
I use a separate email account for newsgroup subscriptions, but beyond that, I have every email I've ever sent or received for the past 7 years or so. Before gmail, I have my old thunderbird email files zipped up and archived incase I ever need them (doubtful), but it's there. And most of those would be business related for a job I haven't had for 5 years.

But yes, I keep everything.
As an european guy, this article sounded very weird, even if very interresting.

I understand the shortcomings about working in an industry wich is not easily talked about , even if everyone knows it exists, and a large share of people in the world are using it's products.

But when Jeff says :

"And I don't expect every programmer to be doing noble, selfless work for the good of humanity. All the same, it's difficult for me to respect software engineering in the service of such least common denominator interests."

I just wonder how 95% of the work available in CS and internet is more "good for humanity" than working for porn sites. It really really doesn't seem clear to me.
I strong agree about the greed, but would like to add one more entry to what their primary focus should be on: the customer.
I haven't heard of djbdns... did you measure performance before and after? How did you measure it?
It's more likely than not that it'll sneak in somehow. But it's less likely than it would be in America. Americans lack the ability to form strong emotional responses to abstractions; we'll only riot in the street over actual video footage of somebody being beaten or shot by police. In France, they'll riot when a law that allows things they don't like is passed, not just when someone identifiable as Authority publically does something they don't like.
Seeing something like this in graphical form really drives it home. Those of us in the US should be very grateful that we have such a good labor pool.
Bingo. If I see resumes like the ones he describes, I wouldn't blink if it was ultimately to serve porn or gambling.

I do agree with Jeff that you should care what the ultimate value of your work is.

But I don't think standard business apps are more purposeful then porn, they are both commercial enterprises and don't have any great spiritually transcending qualities.

I care about biotech and robotics. And if you want to change the world though business apps or social websites that's great!

But don't pretend that porn-IT work is somehow intrinsically less admirable then any other run of the mill coding job that pays the bills.
Python does this - sum/any/all are standalone functions, and join() is a member of the string class instead of the array class. Python also gets a lot of flack for it, as it seems like every month you can see someone complaining about why you use `"\n".join(lines)` to join an array instead of `lines.join("\n")`. People can't seem to wrap their head around it.

Personally, I think the big mistake is to think objects should represent things in the real world instead of adapting to the needs of the program. For example, it's very common to need to split a class into FooLike (an interface), FooImpl, and FooRenderer to avoid coupling specific display logic to business objects you may want to reuse in other contexts. These have no analogs in the real world. They're there largely to make sense out of the different things your program needs to do with a Foo.
> congressional testimony designed to prevent a mob with pitchforks and torches storming wall street.

The job of a community activist is to rile up a mob, or threaten same, and use that threat to extract concessions.

Remember the AIG bonus scandal? The bonuses that Congress approved, the approval that Obama specifically approved for folks who were cleaning up AIG? (Wall-street often uses back-loaded contracts, so they're not really bonuses, but I digress.) The bonuses that Congress and the president then used to bash AIG and wall street?
the use of "retarded" doesn't help either.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232192
When you talk about PHP being too "web centric [... and] just not flexible enough", how do you mean?

Would less web-centric mean being useful in making desktop apps? What other dimensions of flexibility do you have in mind?
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