skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I see the pitfals of a non-scalable business model.

Apple has a few parts of their business that do not scale well: retail stores and app vetting process. In either case the per-employee marginal revenue is small in these sectors and so the cost has to be managed.

Same is not true for scalable businesses such Mac OS X development where per-employee marginal revenue is very high and you can actualy afford to hire the brightestand and train them well.
Functional Complexity Modulo a Test Suite
Could you send me any mp3 to kos@cbmsnetworks.com and I will send you chords back.

We plan to add online service.
How Frank Buck Filmed His Tiger-Python Battle
Well, if I were forced to write in C these days, I would seriously write a C/C++ generator in Lisp to speed the time to market.

But if I could do it where nobody was watching, I would use a different compiled language, Lisp (SBCL) that would get good enough performance and get to market before the manly C/C++ coder.

So on a semi-serious note, why is (apparently) nobody going for the real performance kill, which is to write a framework in hand-coded assembler? Would it be twice as fast as C?
Traces of cocaine found in energy drink Red Bull in Hong Kong
Ok, I'm sure this isn't going to get abused. </sarcasm>
We Are Hunted Launches Twitter Music Chart
Thirsty Plants Can Now Send Text Messages
Thank you for sharing your experience and insight with us!

If it is not tech-enabled, then how are best practices and new products spread and sold?
CEO Russ Wilcox on E Ink sale, after 12 years, 8 rounds
This is in our plans to have Mac support.
Hansei: Embedded DSL for probabilistic models and nested inference
I stumbled onto this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFCcvZFP6D8 and found the description of how the filmmakers worked (the submitted article) to be really fascinating. Particularly interesting were the technical comments by the cameraman about filming in the forest.
What percentage of ownership are you looking at as employee #1? What is the industry range for this? Does it vary by how much capital and effort are already invested by founders?
The micrcontroller community today is analogous to the personal computer/homebrew computer clubs in the early 70's - except with more embedded applications.

I've written code for one Arduino to run a python script to order pizza when one pushes a button (this used to be on my fridge.)

I used Arduinos as the processing, communications, and power modules for an augmented reality/robotics project where virtual balls projected on a dry erase board bounced off robotic devices (like a see-saw) and the devices reacted appropriately.

Currently I'm writing a program for the Atmel to query how many days left until YC demo day - and light up a corresponding massive LED display mounted on our wall.

You should check out LadyAda's site - most of her modules totally rock - especially the xbee and motor shield stuff. http://adafruit.com/
Where is the claim that the 48 Laws are the sole culprit?
Neat! I agree with others you should make an iTunes plugin, or perhaps even a standalone app with more features to help learn songs, like http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/
Only winamp supports DSP API, so you could mix chords to actual song. Rest players are less open, but more popular. We are thinking to support other media players without mix functionality
He should be running a credit for that huge NYT op-ed graphic he's got dominating the middle of his post.
I'm also about halfway through my private pilot license and while I don't know enough yet to even speculate on crashes, I really enjoy reading the NTSB reports or crash reports in different aviation publications. It probably strikes many people as morbid, but I find it fascinating to try and learn from the mistakes of others so that I can be a safer pilot myself.
Ruby Alltop
I don't know, I posted this to generate a discussion.

Thinking logicaly there has to be something to it - if a given person is exceited to level X he will call his friends and tell them about it. If he excited to level of 0.75 X he may send them an email. What if he is excited to 0.1 X? How can we make a good use of that person's modest excitement?

If you writing a twitter app this is relatively easy - nudge the user to twit to all their friends about that particular app. The barrier is very low in this case.

If you are writing a facebok app you can also use pre-canned social graph.

But what if e.g. you are writing an iPhone app? What can you do to convince people on a given level of excitement to talk about your app with others?
That's what I'm trying to do (get more feedback). I got such amazing feedback here the first time that I'm just trying to get more of it. I have made all the improvements from the first round of feedback already as well as some changes that were the result of usertesting (from usertesting.com).
Google PowerMeter
It is JRuby based, so it is compiled to Java bytecodes. It is packaged using a BitRock custom stack that is a superset of BitNami JRuby Stack.
No, what I REALLY want are suggestions on improvements on either:

a) the site/design/functionality
b) the idea itself

The site is completely free and the few Adsense ads are not even breaking even yet so it's definitely not about the money.
I think one of the most exciting points here is that they were able to get one of the most popular Rails applications running on JRuby without too much apparent hassle. Hopefully we'll hear a bit more from them about this process and how it went, but this is an exciting announcement for the Ruby community!
Twitter runs under serious load using "scripting languages". The issue is runtime, not language.
You are right I would love to post the real URL but HN seems to auto-reject them even if the posts are weeks apart. I don't think it's too outlandish to ask for a second round of feedback as long as you're not abusing/overdoing it.

I have made legitimate changes to the site as a direct result of the initial feedback I got here. I simply want to see if the people that looked the first time like the changes I have made and have any more feedback.

How else should I do this?
This program is great in my opinion. Even it is 1.0 (actually 1.1 is out already) state, it add a lot of features that a text editor doesn't have. My top favorites include:

1. Refactoring, especially really simple ones like rename method are highly useful.

2. Built in local history including side by side diffs with your version control system.

3. Middle mouse to 'jump to source'. Ever come across a method and go 'WTF is this?'. One click and you can jump right to the Ruby or Rails method source code. This can be extremely helpful for new developers learning RoR.

4. Integrated testing support to run single tests within the UI. (Textmate does have this too)

And last time I checked, Textmate seemed to be a pretty popular text editor with the Ruby community, and that runs about $60 US currently. Unless your time as a developer is valueless, laying out $100 can easily be justified if it saves you exactly 1 hour of productivity over its life time.
Paying for good tools that save time is smart business.

Given how amazing JetBrains' IDEA product was for the Java IDE world at the time, I can only imagine how much better this tool will get over time, especially if the Ruby Community starts using it.
I didn't see this before - your design has legs. I'm not big on the spoiler but otherwise looks to be a beautiful "baby aston" just as you said. But I do see Fisker, and I do see Aston - what about a new brand?
In the interest of full disclosure the site that is linked is http://www.cafecourses.com. I have asked for feedback previously.

I would have included the URL in a comment but HN does not even let the original poster add a comment to their URL post until someone ELSE adds a comment for them.
Doesn't somebody need to use yahoo, msn, etc lest we risk being left with only google?
If you dropped your ego you wouldn't feel an urge to post a fluff piece to justify your decisions to random disparaging blog posts.
I've also updated the "spec" to be a bit more flexible.
I don't know the technical specifics, so I'll take your word for it ;)
That's actually the exact opposite of what I usually do. If the article looks interesting, I read it. If I can see why the article could be interesting but I'm not personally interested I ignore it. If, however, the article looks pointless I click through to the comments to see if it has hidden value or not. If consensus seems to be that it's interesting then I'll read it. If it's full of comments like the grandfather then I don't.
This reminds me of those threads calling to ban TechCrunch from HN - it just promotes TechCrunch (I have no opinion the issue - it's just an example.)

pg doesn't talk that much about this, but it's in the guidelines, and I think it's one of his cornerstones of HN. Actually, he does it instead of talking about doing it. I have something to learn from him in this.

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but what if Google is setting up China?

They gain popularity in China to the point that the country is reliant on it, and the government is comfortable with Google because they're given some control. Then, at some point in the future once enough of a fuss has been made about Google helping China, Google gives China an ultimatum, either they end the censorship or Google leaves China. Google can claim it's bad for their business to help China censor, when in reality they were planning it all along...

Unlikely, but who knows?
I'm excited about this and want it to work. I recently paid an online sheet music service for one piece of sheet music and was miffed to discover that I could only print out the piece once. I could choose which key I wanted it in, then the file would no longer be accessible in my account. If my printer jammed, it would be my tough luck - I would need to pay again.

I had imagined it would be stored there forever - that's what I paid the 3.95 for I thought, but sadly no - the publishers will not allow it. People complain about digital music but the world of sheet music is even more bizarro. Hopefully apps like this might shake up the business.

Having played with it for a minute, it looks decent and something I think I will be shelling out the 19.95 for. I thought that piano/guitar mode would be tabs/notation but it is to choose which instrument accompanies the song. Still, I'm impressed. I hope it evolves.
"the real world (and machines) are stateful/not functional"

This could be argued as being totally wrong philosophically, and is certainly not a proved statement.

I could say that state is only the creation of the human mind in a world that is essentially made of movement, in order to understand it and quantize it. Even matter at the lowest level is the movement or particles, almost as much as it is the particles themselves.

This point is not without link to the current argument about functional/imperative programming, and certainly shows that your view of the matter, while not false, is certainly narrow minded.
i appreciate this, but based on your participation and submission history, your motives seem like they could be questionable.
I never get tired of Hacker News' hatred of Jeff Atwood combined with the fact that Stack Overflow is far more successful than any project the vast majority of folks on Hacker News will ever implement.

Wouldn't the truth of your beliefs about software development be best expressed by the success of your projects?
Wolfram Alpha Google 0.6
eventually someone is going to figure out how to get around it

It's not that hard to do, there's not much figuring out involved. It just doesn't make sense to serve ads to people who have actively taken steps to ensure that they don't see them.

As for YouTube - do you realize how much data they deal with? Their costs are ridiculous; they're hardly the example you should be trotting out to inspire incredulity about the viability of the online advertising model.
Are you saying TechCrunch shouldn't report things like this for fear of being blocked by China?
Actually now that I look at it it appears that Leopard does this now with ssh-add -K.
On a small tangent, getting rejected by the app store probably made the Eucalyptus Reader a few thousand extra dollars.
Atoms For Bits: Designing Physical Embodiments for Virtual Content
Except for the extraordinary fact that a single person can accumulate 1billion (which is probably at least 184x more than most of us will have).

The scale of debt should be applied equally to the scale of wealth, if we're going to go that route.

Staggering figure nonetheless...
I was refering to actual search results, for the same search, with comparison from both search engines. I might be totally wrong, and the issue is in a good part subjective. That's why i did put the words "I didn't like", and not "The results are plain bad".

Implying i was just influenced by the brand, while it may have seemed clever to you, is rude , gross ,and totally unrelated to what i said.
Just remember your summary="" attribute and you're golden.
I've built the budget box from Ars Tecnnica and been happy. The latest guide: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2009/04/ars-technica-...
just chords or notes? just chords seems pointless in my opinion. plus anyone who really plays the guitar will use something like guitar pro and just download free tablature - which is probably the best solution out there.
We're still figuring that out - we're at the beginning of our sales/marketing process, really. The application has spread virally between users through the invitation process, but we're finding that we get good leads from, for example, turning up to conferences and telling people about it in person.

Basically, traditional sales/marketing... find the potential customers and talk to them directly.
Having started out as a meticulous standards-centric hand-coder with Allaire Homesite, and having slowly moved toward data-driven apps over the years, I thoroughly agree with you. It is worthwhile to write carefully laid out and styled HTML during the template creation phase, but the idea of HTML as data and CSS as presentation does not reflect the everyday reality of MySQL/XML/whatever as data and HTML/CSS as presentation.

edited to avoid a rant about CSS itself.
Steve Yegge said this in the comments to his last blog post:
"The short answer for why I'm going into blog-retirement is: insufficient return on investment. It's nice that some people like it, but it's too much work for the stress it's given me over the past 5 years."
Cute kitten photos next. Ugh.
>FP advocates are mindbogglingly ignorant of people and programming in the real

I think i agree with you on some points, but this just sounds like mindless generalisation.

Not all fp advocates are like this, if it were so, we wouldn't see so much real world solutions to the use of fp in non academical languages
"Modern media" don't have money for the quality.
Yes. As you mention in your other comment, trade shows and magazines are generally well attended and read (respectively).

So far the most effective we've found in terms of scale has been a kind of twisted version of word of mouth... involuntary word of mouth, sort of. Since our app is a collaboration tool, people invite their collaborators, both within their own companies and within the other companies they work with. And so the application spreads, fairly consistently.
Can't believe there are so many car guys here! This is awesome. The first production-ready prototype will be on the ground in late summer, and will be at SEMA in November. Production (meaning individual builds) will begin in the Fall of 2010.

Including the community & local Southwest enthusiasts in the design & build process was necessary for LM to know we were bringing a desirable vehicle to market. The "opensource" aspect gained a lot of discussion early on. Now that we have incorporated the community desires in the design & engineering, we have a lot of proving to do. This is an exciting year.

The body will be composite, panels on tubular welded steel spaceframe. We will use carbonfiber and thermaplastics for the panels.

Financing anything is not as easy as it use to be. Our expectations are adjusted accordingly - we only aim to build about 3,000 in the lifetime of the vehicle, and probably only a few hundred in the first few years.

Licensing as a kit car or custom vehicle isn't as hard as you might think - primarily because the engine and other parts are OEM.

Thanks for the humbling, blunt review! Love it or hate it, at least the Rally Fighter isn't like everything else on the road. The pool of sameness can become monotonous.
I tried to cover some techniques from doing that in my last article:

http://danieltenner.com/posts/0009-how-to-make-your-applicat...
Coding Horror didn't jump the shark, it is the shark. Atwood has been dispensing profoundly bad development advice for years, leveraging interesting (but pointless) anecdote and provocative opinions to drive traffic and interest.
Does it really infer them using DSP from the mp3 - or does it look them up? If the former - that's very cool, though I wonder about the accuracy. It would be good to have way to try it out online.

Making it a webapp would make it much easier to trial, it wouldn't be narrowed to one app (winamp) - and piracy goes away. On the downside, you'd doing all that DSP on the server instead of spread over the clients.
The product announcement this article is talking about is by far the most entertaining product announcement I've ever read.

http://ediblepet.net/2009/05/23/web-applications-should-be-c...
It was great meeting you folks. Really learned a lot and helped get the creativity flowing a bit.

I would suggest something on the Maryland side of DC in the hopes of attracting more people from Baltimore, but I might not be in the area for the next meetup anyway.
I agree and certainly see how you might think that. I have mostly been a reader up to this point (as I am on most blogs/forums I read).

I have now posted several (4 maybe? not sure how to see) requests for feedback. The first time was amazing. The next few times (which were spread apart to avoid seeming like spam) got almost no response.

I was unsure if it was a timing problem or what (memorial weekend, buried by popular breaking news, etc.) so I have tried several additional times. I thought that at least the people that were helpful the first time might like to see that their suggestions were taken to heart and implemented in a very timely manner (considering I'm a solo operation).

If you have a suggestion for some other site/forum that can provide the kind of great feedback I got that first time, I would certainly appreciate it and try there and simply continue reading here.
This is a great point. I wish there was some stat on how many people heard of Eucalyptus Reader via the press around its rejection.
This is not solution to pro, rather to beginners. It might take a while (forever?) to find chords for not so popular song.
My feedback:

Why does the site ask for my photo if I'm using Facebook to login?

There's a lot of text after I finish registering. I think it's confusing.
Even though the tone of the article was abrasive, it was far more interesting and insightful than the one-line comment to which I responded. Your asserted arguments for dynamic languages are well-trodden ground:

Assertion: "Some scripting languages are as fast as compiled languages."

No, not really. I challenge you to prove that statement with a non-trivial benchmark.

Assertion: "most of the time, web apps are waiting for something external to respond"

This doesn't survive a few seconds of thoughtful analysis. If a web app is spending most of it's time blocking for I/O, it's poorly designed. There's no reason that it can't be handling other requests while waiting for a DB response or a pipe. And once you've allowed for that possibility, you're back to a situation where you can handle more requests with faster software.

Empirically, this is obviously true: languages like Ruby and Python don't hold a candle to Java when it comes to web application speed. We choose them because of developer convenience, nothing more. Which brings us to...

Assertion: "C programming is terrifically slow for development. <insert snarky comment about Rails applications with a million users here>"

Ignoring the fact that there are other compiled languages than C (that are probably better choices for web development), I can tell you from experience that by the time your Rails app reaches a million registered users, 80% of your week is going to be spent either working around the myriad scalability flaws in Rails and the dog-slow nature of Ruby, or installing hardware to accommodate the load. Scaling Rails is a nightmare.

Now, it may be true that you can develop that Rails app a bit faster than you could a webapp in a compiled language, but it's a wild exaggeration to suggest that the difference is more than a few weeks of skilled developer time. It's a fallacy to imply that all compiled-code projects end up in death-march hell. Truth be told, the real reason that web apps can be written so quickly is because they're easy, and they tolerate a lot of development error. So long as there are good string processing facilities, the choice of language is a fairly minor point.
My fault, I like shorter words.
Hey there Jason, i don't think we were banned - unless i'm wrong? Is there a list somewhere?
I agree. Apple should totally start charging developers hefty fees for those rejection letters they send out, it's just free publicity. Fucking freeloading pervy developers.
Write If You Want Work
We actually analyze the mp3, no need for Winamp DSP at this stage. WE need DSP to mix chords to song, so you hear exact place.

we are working on some web based application, down side is that you have to be connected.
Neat idea but it seem really impractical. A sensor on every plant? What happens when a leaf falls off? Are you going to have a sensor that is saying "water me now!" until it is recovered? Is there really that much different between plants of the same species planted right next to each other that they'd each need a sensor?

It would seem better to have a small cluster of sensors every 100m or so. That way you could water the areas that need it and have a bit of fault-tolerance (in case one sensor in the group falls to the ground you have the others in the group reporting correctly).

Having said that though don't modern farmers already have technology that tells them when to water and how much? I vaguely recalled reading something about that kind of technology years ago.
Couldn't Apple just leverage facebook's 150+ porn patrol employees?

All kidding aside - how could you systematically enforce guidelines on applications when the universe of applications is wide open? In other words, there's no baseline so how could you create test case?

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a group of iphone users (i.e. folks that like to play with anything on the iphone) and have them vote on the app? (apple could reward these users with the app for free or some other random goodies - itouch, ipods, etc...)
Thanks for the feedback. I have not finished fully integrating Facebook. I'm using RPXNow and I think I can get to your profile pic through that somehow but just haven't had a chance yet. It's certainly on my list of things to improve.

As for the text after registering... are you referring to the "What Now?" page? I've been trying desperately to minimize the amount of text on most pages! :-(
There's an out-of-date list here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044

And you're on it. I'd email PG.