skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"You will hardly be seen as a hacker if you don’t know C++"

Yeah right!
You are "seen as a hacker" if you write code that is useful to others and/or is brilliant in some respect. Nothing to do with knowing a particular language.

If knowledge of a specific language is a criterion, I'd rather have someone be an expert in C/lisp/smalltalk/haskell/prolog.... C++ originates or embodies no concepts that weren't discovered or done better elsewhere.

e.g: An expert smalltalker is more likely to understand OO than a C++ programmer.
I'll go for a point-by-point critique.

Point 1 tacitly assumes that learning C++ not only teaches you a common subset of many other popular languages, but also is the easiest way to learn said subset. This is wrong: a lot of simpler languages can teach you the same, e.g. JavaScript or pre-1.5 Java.

Point 3 says a given code sample in the wild has higher probability of being in C++ than any other language. This clashes with my impressions.

Point 4 assumes that the main difficulty of C++ is due to pointers and manual memory management, and that knowing your way around those issues will help you in other programming areas anyway. This sounds wrong to me: C shares those "difficulties" with C++ and isn't generally regarded as a hard language. The difficulty of C++ mostly stems from design decisions unique to C++ and useless elsewhere, like template metaprogramming or the dangerous combination of manual memory management with exception handling.

Point 5 implies that C++ invented parametric polymorphism and that this facility is essential to make algorithms work on a variety of data types. Wrong on both counts: ML and Ada generics predate C++, and Smalltalk-like dynamically typed languages solve the same problem without type parameterization.

Point 6 assumes more libraries have C++ interfaces than C interfaces, which is wrong by an order of magnitude at least.

Point 9 assumes most programmers are more interested in performance-oriented and algorithmically complex projects. Can't give statistics here, but I'm a data point to the contrary: I love UI and frontend work.

Point 10 is valid.

My own reasons for knowing C++ are a combination of point 10 and the need to muck around with http://mapnik.org - the only C++ library I ever found useful. And its code sucks, I'd kill for a C/Python alternative.
Have you subclassed any GObjects lately? Or otherwise implemented custom GTK widgets? If so, you might know why GTKmm exists (nevermind that PyGTK, GTK# etc are arguably the intended ways to use GTK.) There is a good reason everyone in the Linux world screamed with glee when Nokia LGPLed Qt, and C++ (even the basic stuff) is a big part of that reason.
Class and the Wealth of Nations
Haven't seen anything yet either.
"How can you find a free company to take over? Check out business brokers on the web, Craigslist, and the classified ads in your local newspaper and any trade journals."

Only if you want the leftovers that the insiders have passed over. OP is in a time warp. Anything worth acquiring gets acquired long before in reaches the advertising stage. You'll need a network to find these.
Thanks. That's odd. Maybe I kept glancing back at the decimal one they give first. I even ended up doing stuff like

for n in '' -n; do for a in '' ' '; do for b in '' ' '; do echo $n "${a}ABC$b" | sha1sum; done; done; done

to try and get the output they give for http://www63.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=SHA+ABC and thought I hadn't managed it.
The quotes seem to be the problem, works without for me.
really? with python/ruby/clojure/erlang/lua/js coming up in the world? ... i thought this was going to be a 1991 article.
Requested change to the Hacker News RSS feed - items should link to the comments
Each item in the RSS feed links to the original article, with a link to the comments in the description.

This means that if I'm navigating the RSS feed through a reader using the keyboard then selecting "open item" takes me to the original item, not to the comments.

I'd suggest that the Hacker News comments add value to the links, and that the default should be to drive traffic to news.ycombinator, not to the third-party site.
Chinese mind-body training reduces stress
Natural Therapy, Herbal medicine
Dupe:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612360
Mountain Lake Packaging with Natural Fibers
Mountain Lake offers a line of 100% pure and natural beauty products and accessories for hair care, body care, spa & bath. You will find in our range combs, brushes, spa and bath accessories,soap, containers, boxes, gift. All made of natural materials such as wood, bamboo, rattan, jute, ramie, hemp, sisal, cotton, buffalo horn,stone. We also propose eco friendly packaging made of recycled materials and natural fibers. Our factories are located in China and closely supervised by our Operation and Quality Control office in Guangzhou (Guangdong Province). If you have any special ideas different from what
Eat Indian curry to lose weight
Poll: Do you use RSS reader?
I'm making some research on this topic. Already have a date from casual internet users. As a group of reference I want some more advanced users. Thanks for help in advance.
after Twitter I've stopped
other tool for news aggregation
Eventhough I do not read HN through a RSS feed I'd have to agree with you. I have to say sometimes I enjoy reading the insightful comments more then the actual articles, and I can imagine a lot of HN users feel the same way.
The ML family of languages is my favorite (second only to C++, natch.) but their brand of parametric polymorphism is equivalent in C++ to MyTemplate<T*> (or, if you like boost, MyTemplate<reference_wrapper<T> > would be more accurate.) They are not the same as MyTemplate<T>. This is by choice of ML language implementors, as they see it as a defect of C++ that every template instantiation has to be compiled independently. Instead, they turn static compile-time polymorphism into run-time dynamism using indirection and function pointers. (Maybe MLton doesn't do this, but I know GHC does.)

It's the difference between C's qsort and C++'s std::sort. The latter blows the former out of the water when sorting small things. This brand of polymorphism is unique to C++ and until someone does it better (which no one seems to have any interest in, except maybe Walter Bright) then C++ will always be "the best C."
Nor can you with Google: someone wrote the page you found using Google, which in all likely-hood has it's own terms of service and associated copyrights. Copyrights you would infringe upon by republishing without payment or attribution.
I thought this article was going to be about the tenancy for mild mannered programmers to write obscene and libelous things in comments, but alas.
If server-side javascript gained more traction that would be the only language you would ever need in the web world.

-Wishful thinking-
Record Your Voice to Help Free Speech Recognition
Former MySpace Execs Get Funding For New Venture; Some Details Leak
Chocolate bar that clears acne
Wages are expression of price for labour. What's your price?
I'd prefer a way to add tags so I can exclude them from the feed. I'm simply not interested in reading about Ruby, Erlang or any of these obscure languages that have little relevance for me.
The Secret Advantage Of Being Short
My unenforceable contract can beat up your unenforceable contract.
Or is it more akin to you commissioning them to create those results for you?
I don't think that this should be a change to the core RSS feed, most likely the majority of the RSS subscribers have adopted to it in its current state.

However I do think an alternate RSS with this change is merited and would be highly beneficial.
I don't care about comments, I care about informations, so i disagree.
Thanks! I'd forgotten about the fit-PC. I now have need for something small and miserly on power for home automation (and maybe another for an mp3 player in my car).
I completely disagree. For me, most of the value of the feed is the link to the original article. If I want to go to the HN comments, I can just click the comments link.

If you really want this feature, maybe you could use Yahoo pipes to modify the feed the way you want it, instead of everyone being forced to use the RSS feed the way you want it.
Fonolo: Freedom From Phone Menus
This article is terribly confused. The declining state of media organizations has nothing to do with journalists and everything to do with the manner in which the businesses have been run over the past 20 years.
Life is too short for c++. That's what I always say (even at job interviews..)
Twitter-like Applications with Demos.
"If"? What, you think Apple's just going to close up shop? Move on to something different, maybe?
Want to Fool Apple’s App Store? Plant an Easter Egg
I guess you're asking Apple for that. In the meantime Google have a webapp, just save it to your iPhone's homescreen.

http://gmail.com/tasks
Except, of course, that's not the official price. It's actually $300 with a $100 mail in rebate.
Geology
himadri
The comments are information, in many cases, better than the article. I submit a lot of articles here because I care about what you guys think as much as I care about what OP says.
Ask HN: Do "Lite" versions "work"?
I'm preparing the marketing plan for my next iPhone application (currently in beta) and I'm trying to decide if I should create a free "Lite" version to accompany the paid-for application.

I'd like to hear from developers and users; do Lite versions "work"?
Can't agree with you more. To create anything humans must utilize their labor. That is where the real value lies. The "market," "capital," and the "financial system" are nothing but totems (created by our labor) that we worship as if they were given to us by the gods.

Interesting, too, that the author pairs harmony and beauty as having "intrinsic" value. We <i>might</i> think of beauty as intrinsically valuable but, once you name any created object beautiful, that beauty is rife with cultural baggage that defines what is and what is not valuable. Which brings me to my next point.

To call one object beautiful necessarily means that other objects are not beautiful, or are less beautiful, or are beautiful in a different way. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing "harmonious" about this act. Thus, how can beauty and harmony be intrinsically valuable or "good" when beauty necessarily excludes harmony?

I guess I'm not a big fan of moral philosophy.
I agree with everything but (1), (5), and (10).

(1) Other languages may be influenced by C++ (especially at a syntactic level, and, superficially, in their object models). But those other languages are far easier to learn and become facile with than C++ is. Point (1) advocates for learning languages in the wrong order.

(5) Templates and generic programming are just tools to mitigate the badness of C++.

(10) Though a majority of the smartest hackers I've worked with know C, a minority of them are C++ developers. And that still leaves plenty of room for smart people who know neither language.
I have download lite versions of iPhone apps and then later upgraded to the full version. In fact I have never just bought an app just to see if it is any good.

YMMV
Human ethics guides often fail.
what about two feeds?
I have the same configuration and love it. But will second the strange keyboard layout. I had lunch with a Mac user and the first thing he said when he saw the keyboard was "that keyboard frightens me". I couldn't have said it any better.

As I use the Mini9 for mostly web browsing and chatting I simply bypass using apostrophes and inform my friends that if I'm missing them I'm obviously on my Mini9 ;)

From performance perspective, for most mundane UMPC tasks it works flawlessly and I can't tell much of a difference between my Macbook (black) and the Mini, but for some things like video streaming it seems to hiccup a bit. All in all though I can't complain, it's a perfect machine for going to the coffee shop or going on a trip with.

If I was to do it all over again I would definitely go for the 1.3MP camera, a slightly larger HD (you need at least 16GB for OSX) and possibly the wireless broadband option.
The Future is Now
Thanks for the heads up. I'm on 10.5.6 and haven't updated to .7 yet.
Why Are Rich People So Bad at Sports?
I found it interesting that he said that winning that $8k was, "Up to that point, that may have been the happiest moment of my life." How many kids did he have by that point? Just seems odd that this would rank above your kid's birth.
I've used cdgcommerce.com for payment processing. What stood out from them was their rates and customer service. You get an authorize.net account which exposes a rich api.
T-Mobile allows anyone to pick up any of their standard plans without signing a contract, and without even requiring you to purchase a phone from them; they'll gladly sell you a SIM chip with a plan, and you provide the GSM phone. The only reason I still go with the contract is because I'm perfectly happy with T-Mobile, and I decided that I wanted to upgrade to the G1 at the $179 rate, as opposed to paying almost $400 for it without the contract.

So, if you don't like contracts, pick T-Mobile; they're the closest thing to Europe available in the US.
The "but I didn't write that function" argument is somewhat asinine. The API he's provided --- which provides a high-level key scheduling interface --- is radioactive without the functionality he's forgotten about. It's like writing an article about how to build a nuclear reactor to power your skateboard, including schematics, and ignoring shielding.
Make that thirty-six.

http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product.aspx?product=TAK1...
The points a useless. "Knowing C++ you will not be immediately seen as a hacker, but the inverse applies here."
Learn it if you are curious, but don't learn it just to get a job.
This is thinly veiled posturing. The idea is as ludicrous as an "ethics guide" for nuclear warhead guidance systems. The entire concept of autonomous fighting machines is inherently totalitarian:

http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/global/the-second-amendm...

"So the response ... from the Pentagon has been to fund the development of weapons systems which are capable of defeating the Iraqi population, with their rifles and improvised bombs, so that the next population that chooses to resist the US military can be swiftly and effectively defeated. What this effort will do, if it is successful, is defang not just the population of Iraq, but all populations, overthrowing the protective effect individual firearms ownership, destroying the intent and effectiveness of the Second Amendment, and unbalancing the Constitution permanently through evolving technology which end-runs around the original intent of the Framers. It is the one blow that the Constitution cannot recover from: bad laws can be unmade, and unjust men can be hanged, but once the technologies to upend the Constitution exist, it is indeed finished."
Yes.

http://www.iphonesavior.com/2009/01/iphone-developer-quits-d...

namely:
"iShoot Lite" went live on January 3, 2009. Less than ten days later on January 11, the original iShoot rocketed out of obscurity as the number one Top Paid App in the iTunes App Store with 16,972 downloads in one day. It virtually blasted the reigning number one iFart app off its perch overnight. iShoot simultaneously grabbed the Top Free App number one spot as well.
I can't find the GTD flow in your app. Seems more like a todo thing.
Wolfram Alpha is Encyclopedia Britannica
One nit, though: don't let the really terrible website and phone service get you down. If you go to a T-mobile store, everything's easy, fast, and efficient, and the reps are either knowledgeable or willing to ask someone who is, on the spot. It's a totally different experience from that on the T-mobile customer service line, and I wasn't able to use the website to do anything I wanted. At the time, what I wanted was to buy a G1 full price, but I would have settled for "with a contract", and I never managed to get it done, finally going to Wal-mart and picking one up for slightly less anyway, and then using AT&T for a few months before the lack of 3G service (the G1 doesn't do AT&T 3G) drove me back to T-mobile. However, it hasn't been useful since I came back to them, either. The in-store service is really excellent at every store I've been to, so just go there physically.
Fellow entrepreneurs, let's get back to the meat of his blog post which is in the third paragraph.

One sentence from that paragraph "If you cannot bring fresh ideas, energy, and skill to a business--any business--then it will not succeed." perfectly describes what makes or breaks every entrepreneur (and her/his business). He probably reminded a few people who have "fresh ideas, energy, and skill" that there is another path to being an entrepreneur (taking over a company).

And it's the path taken by quite a few people. Warren Buffett (according to Wikipedia, Berkshire Hathaway - a textile manufacturing company - was in trouble before Buffett) comes to mind. Another example (especially for the last sentence: "Don’t worry about what the business does in terms of revenue right now; look at it as a start--a platform that over time can be morphed into what ever you want.") is Martin Sorrell (WPP, the largest advertising network was, prior to Sorrell, "Wire and Plastic Products plc" and made wire shopping baskets).

PS - Kudos to the OP, great blog that I didn't know of even though I visit and read inc.com quite often.
Website Security: When “Backups” Aren’t
Yeah, there are lots of people who have the current feed as their daily interface to the entire site. It seems a little mean to break their daily routine. I'd prefer there just be another feed that takes you to the comments (which I would use, as well, because I like the idea).
I'm going to go against the grain of this post and say that a merchant account isn't for everyone. I was surprised the author did not mention one of the big drawbacks to merchant accounts: fraud and charge backs. PayPal and Google Checkout, for example, handle most of that liability while a merchant account will make put that responsibility on your shoulders.

Generally it's not something to be afraid of, but if you're bootstrapping a business and/or your product tends to draw a lot of fraudulent shoppers (high price, rare, etc.), then it's something to consider.

During college we use to sell customizable, fix mounted projection screens online; they would range in price from ~$800 - $4,000+ depending on the screen material. We had so many fraud attempts in our first few months that we almost shut down the ecommerce section of the site. Getting our merchant account was a big headache and not something we probably needed to deal with given the low volume of transactions (less than 10 sales a month) in regard to the high number of fraud attempts.

I think it makes a lot of sense to deal with your own merchant account if you're doing high volume of sales, especially when it's usually relatively low cost goods/service/subscriptions. Scaleable web startups that rely on subscriptions apply here, our projection screen business wasn't exactly a "startup".
Flex 3 In Action: Free Chapters
The new economic imperative for open source app dev
No qt is the reason. qt is well designed and thought, contrary to gtk. And it's not because qt was written in C++.
Die pseudoscience sugar coated in marketing babble. Die.
Apple warns of static shock from iPhone, iPod
So wait - because this one, single iPhone application's "Lite" version worked, that means "Lite" versions work? I'm not so convinced. What worked for this guy doesn't mean it will work across all application types, for all developers, or for all audiences. OP, I'd be careful reading responses that are absolutes. No one can tell you definitively whether a "Lite" version will work for you. They can offer stories/stats of what other apps' successes/failures have been but do not misconstrue the reason behind the success/failure as being solely due to having a "Lite" version.
Unless you give individual citizens the ability to create similar machines.
and what "other tool" for news aggregation?
Check out this thread: http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-9-hardware-upgrade...

There's a replacement keyboard (~$20) that alleviates most of your problems. It's still a bit cramped, but at least the key positions make sense.
Might be true. I want to see what they mean by "high-fat diet". It's hard for outsiders to interpret nutrition research; insider they don't list specifics enough.

But cumin and tumeric are quite powerful antioxidants: http://oracvalues.com/ (Look on the left)
It should be noted that the "ring around the rosie" story is an urban legend:

http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp
China has lost its position as the world's lowest-cost components manufacturer
Are you suggesting that someone in a marketing department somewhere is twisting reality so that they can sell more products? No way!

Okay - seriously: why ask? I don't get the point of the question so I'm not really interesting in answering. We all know what "real time" means in reality so asking us what it means to us is odd.
Absolutely, I deliberately left the definition of "work" vague to try and solicit a range of responses.

There are are obvious costs to develop/maintain a "Lite" version but I want to discover the hidden costs (and benefits) of providing two versions.

I've read somewhere that having a Lite version can impact piracy, which is one angle I wouldn't have predicted.
How vague........ I don't think you've gotten any responses b/c people don't know what you're asking. That question could mean several different things. It might be best to re-formulate and re-post.
Great. Now Apple's going to take even longer to approve my apps. Thanks jerks.
but it proves it can have an effect. Certainly it was not the single reason that app (or any other) did so well - but it shows that people will buy something if they can try for free :)
I'd say autonomous firing is inherently violent, but not totalitarian.

A cruise missile is inherently violent, but doesn't necessary mean the group using it is good or bad.

I can definitely imagine a scenario of dropping a robot in place of a cruise missile that would kill or incapacitate everyone automatically. It wouldn't destroy the area like a bomb, so it is less violent than current tools.
Automated sentry guns are largely banned as "booby traps". Soon, toy UAV kits which anyone can build might be banned.
While reading this I thought the author didn't seem informed on the subject at all, and rather more interested in creating panic.

Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism

Okay. Right.
To me, I would rather read the comments here than on the sites themselves as they are usually more intelligent and insightful than the dross you get on other sites ;o)

Normally, I just scroll through clicking on both links as I go. I would love to be able to read a summary description in the RSS though to give me a better idea of whether to click or not...
It would be nice if the Twitter accounts that broadcast an HN feed also linked to the comments. There's a lot of value in these discussions. I've learned a lot from just lurking here.
Using something like PayPal or Google Checkout is false security as far as chargebacks are concerned. They do have extra security features but, PayPal at least, has a lot of fraud.

I'm unfamiliar with Google Checkout but I have handled chargebacks through PayPal before. The buyer has exactly the same freedom to issue the chargeback through PayPal as they would if they had purchased with a card through your merchant account. PayPal hold you liable for any chargebacks, especially if the customer does it through their bank instead of the PayPal disputes console.

Having a merchant account allows you to do your own fraud checks against payment details - address, IP, etc. Good payment processors will do this for you. You can also do your own checking using something like MaxMind.

In terms of fraud, you're going to have to deal with it regardless of whether you use Google or PayPal (or anyone else).
Visualizing Security - The Challenge of 2009