skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even without the persistence you can say something is a database. It's not a coincidence that the term "in memory database" exists for example.

Then why is redis not advertised as an "in memory database"?
It likes to be compared with MongoDB or TokyoTyrant but is clearly not playing in the same league.

Moreover it glosses over this issue in quite a self-righteous fashion almost everywhere. One example of many would be this gem from the "TwitterAlikeExample":

This means you can serve millions of users every day with just a single Linux
box, and this one was monkey asses slow!

That's just false advertising if your "millions of users" actually use the service. Just storing the plain account data for 1 million users would push the database into the 1GB realm. Go figure what happens when these users actually begin to leave a footprint.

Btw everything is used to store data permantly, reliably or not for your specific needs/tastes, is a database.

I'm not normally nitpicking about terminology. It just left a bad taste in my mouth in this particular case because the redis homepage doesn't bother to mention this critical difference to most similar offerings. The current blurb is highly deceptive.
This is so true, if I could upmod you again I would.

Micromanaging your productivity, trying to find out if you use a few minutes too much on facebook, or whether you could save some time having only one cup of coffee instead of two during a workday will only help your bad conscience. Not your actual productivity. The real booster comes from having a good overview, experience, knowledge and knowing what to work on. Hacker News is great for this.

I remember reading an article (posted here of course) about the guy that programmed Chrome's V8 engine. He works on a farm in the countryside, he only works 8 hours a day and goes home at 5 o clock. No long hours, and no micromanaging of time. I don't think anyone questions his productivity.

I often have whole days where all I do is think. This is time well spent because once I get coding I know exactly what to do, and have thought out many of the problems that I will eventually run in to. The more experience, overview and broad knowledge you have the better you are able to do this.
http://www.slimtimer.com - awesome service, pay what you think its worth.
I think we should define productivity, here's one definition I like: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/what-is-productivit...
10 hours. I like down-time.
25 Best Programmer WebComic Strips
I now know that Festplatte is German for hard drive!
I work a lot with different (human) languages in settings where i sometimes need to escape special characters in different web environments. That is why this Unicode converter tool often comes in handy:

http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/uniview/conversion.php
http://www.doitfuckingnow.com/
feedus - got it installed in several applications so that all the hardcoded text can be changed by anyone in our organization.
The game engine still fails if to many people gather in the same area. The game design and zone limts artifically avoid this, but it has nothing to do with stackless python.

What I should have said is each zone runs on a seperate physical server (or part of one) and their innovation is to build a game that let's move across HW systms with little issue.

Note: They use a shared database for some game states, but they don't let any CPU read memory from any other CPU directly. It's a question of system archtecture not language features.

Stackless pyton is usefull for other things.
I would tend towards the higher price as long as your app is good value. You always have to compete the the "I could write that myself" viewpoint - but make it clear that the $25 will save the customer several hours work and meet their needs and you probably have a sale.

Try before you buy is the time honoured way of proving utility and value but that adds the cost of adding security to the app. Perhaps an unconditional money back guarantee?
Dropbox. I don't have to worry about backing up files, and I know if I screw things up I can revert to old versions. Not to mention, sharing files is as easy as dropping them into a folder.

I've been using BackPack for to-do lists, but it doesn't have the depth of features I need. Can anyone recommend a to-do list app with good nesting functionality?
I had the same initial reaction. Then I thought "well it's not an application".
I've having a particularly bad time right now (big and manifold responsibilities, not enough time) and only getting 3-5 hours / night on weeknights. This has been going on for months now (with some regular 7-8 hour sleeping nights once in a while).

Results I've found: Mornings really suck. I'm putting on weight. I also feel terribly unhealthy. I'm not as sharp as I am at full power (though this is subjective and very hard to discern). I can fall asleep in minutes if given a place to lay down. Also, I get sick much more often than usual (which was hardly at all). Subjective opinion: it feels like I'm prematurely aging myself.

Trying to "make up" the sleep on weekends doesn't work for me. Oversleeping just leads to bad headaches.

When I do get a solid 8 hours I feel like Superman the next day.

I'm hoping that I'm not doing any long-term damage to myself, but there's really no way out right now. :( The current job ends very soon (2 weeks!), and then I'll be able to resume normal sleeping habits (7-8 hrs/night).
How much money does the federal government drive to Microsoft?

If they really got into it Obama could make a very public push for "Greater Opennness and transparency in government through the use of Open Source Software", it wouldn't have to be aimed at Microsoft, but it would kind of suck to be concerned about Microsoft's share price that week.

And if Microsoft whined about it he could just point to the fact that they've decided not to be an American company anymore.

Not that it's going to get that far, Ballmer is just bluffing.
Disappointingly dull I thought - shame there is potential for a great post under this title.
Help me choose: A new development language/platform.
Both the language and platform should fit these criteria:

* Developing under windows. Where I work developing on Linux isn't really an option.
* Web Development preferred. Most of the applications I make are web applications.
* I like to create very clean interfaces but a platform that can make a good looking interface wouldn't hurt.
* Pulling data from SQL and updating SQL is going to be the core of every app. I'd rather not go with a language that makes this painful.
* I'm looking for something more than my current Visual Studios (VB.net) while at the same time I admit I'm no genius and there are probably some languages/platforms I won't be able to teach myself.
Will Oracle kill the Java community?
It's just like cell phones. I always see commercials saying that if you switch to their network, you get a free [insert trendy phone here]. The catch is, you have to pay their monthly fees for at least year, otherwise the phone isn't 'free'.
Redmine. It's not perfect, but it resolves all of the shortcomings (IMHO, of course) in the other major project management / issue tracking apps.
My wife swears by Dropbox for a way to fetch big files that everyone can use. She'd use Basecamp if her office hadn't paid for MS Project, which she hates.
Often in the UK, you get "cashback".

eg they give you a free phone, and some cash, to sign up to a contract. It seems to work as well, which is a depressing thought.
I expect these kinds of apps - single purpose, but useful tools - TuneUp, or that Mac SSH filesystem thingy, etc, - to cost $15.
Thanks for this link: http://www.freshbooks.com

This is really something I can use.
this is an insane statement. High transactional capability is exactly what you'd use RDBMS for. Or are there not that many credit card transactions per hour ?
So much nerd rage and finger pointing in the comments there... really makes me dislike being a rails developer. I love RoR, but sometimes I really feel like the 'community' is just awful...
Instapaper - browser plugin that sends things I want to "read later" to my Kindle.

Amazon Subscription Payments is about to get used on Feed.Us

Quickbooks online - used it solidly since 2001, though I hate it. (new design is really nice)

Basecamp is helpful (though I hate it)

Campfire would be great if the other guys I work with liked it.
Interesting comment, mahmud (as usual), but it made no sense in context. I read farther, and see that you simply responded to the wrong comment here!
It's amazing how it's never the guys with the blogs full of bombastic prose that really blow you away, it's the guys who just engineer something fantastic.

This should be exhibit A, B, and C in the death of the idea of the "rockstar programmer".
More...

Disqus for comments.

Zazzle for selling tshirts.
> I grew up in Central America in the 80's. The term "being forced to do something at gunpoint" has different connotations for me than it must for you.

Try not paying your taxes and see how different it actually is. (Granted, our jails may be slightly better and the police are less likely to simply shoot you if you obey their orders.)

Yes, getting to vote is different from not getting to vote. We're talking about what happens to folks who disagree with the result, regardless of how it came about.
We the people of HN, in order to form a more perfect community, do not ordain and establish articles about politics.
Sorry, but that's the most idiotic hypothesis I've heard in a while. ;-)

Being able to guarantee that all your data will always fit in as much RAM as you can afford is a luxury that almost nobody has. There's still an order of magnitude between common disk and DIMM sizes.
Balmer's point is that MS can make more money by making Windows in China and selling it in the US and other places than he can by making it in Seattle and selling it in the US and other places.
And if there is other software that does what yours does, what is being charged for it?
It's a great way to organize and display search results in certain situations, but I wouldn't call it an 'exponential improvement in search' just yet. Getting the actual data (i.e. the search) leaves a lot to be desired. It's the format itself that I think is a great idea.
It calculates trajectory, drop, etc of a bullet depending upon caliber, grain, powder, etc. It's command line only. It's windows only. No GUI, but it's very simple to use and accurate. Very useful for folks who reload their own ammunition. Covers all calibers from smallest to largest.
Oh wow...I like it! In fact I like it so much I may even overcome the inertia I referenced earlier and switch over. Thank you!
It also depends on your level of activity. My sweet spot is 6-7 hours. I can function on 4-5 but it's a painful day and I end up making up for it on the next night. Anything more than 7 and I feel off kilter for the day.
The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc. So to clarify. I have to pay for web hosting, bandwidth, storage... as those things cost me money.
Around 9. But just a number doesn't say enough by far. I've been through about one year with only 7 hours and have been perfectly fine - I used to wake up by myself because I had something exciting to do. Most of the time though waking up an hour earlier will cost me a full day of drowsiness.

Also this, about 2-3 hours. But freelancing, so it's ok. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
Digg Will Charge Less for Ads Its Users Like
What can I say? I tried to make it a long-term, big-picture post. Nothing about current politics, parties, leaders, or anything.

I like complex systems, and observations about complex systems. It was interesting to me, and I could have a discussion all day long without bringing up any political party or current event. Now -- whether the board could do the same? Probably not! So point taken.

It'll probably just die a quiet death, david. After all, it's not nearly as exciting as Erlang innards!
Difficulty with the W3C validator is actually why I designed this. Their validator doesn't allow you to check all of a site in one go. You have to go through page by page. Even on a relatively small site that can take a lot of time!
I would say $9.99 but $15 is good too. If I find something that genuinely helps me out, spending under $10 allows me to buy it without feeling guilty about spending money without asking the wife. Not that I need her permission, but in our relationship we clear most non-household purchases with each other if they cost more than $20. If I'm spending $10, that's like spending my lunch money. :)
"just happened to launch a few days later?"

They'd probably been working on something, but they didn't have the name twitvid.com, and (as they've said themselves) they didn't just happen to launch a few days later: they rushed to launch something after Twitvid launched.
umm btw... If you take good care of yourself I don't think it's likely you'll end up "stuck" in a home. I know plenty of older people who are vibrant and energetic.

Also, to me it makes intuitive sense that degeneration can be exponential. So a lil bit of carelessness all the time can accrue some major interest (ie. if you're outspending your body's budget on regeneration costs per day).
Stick with asp.net - it works and scales. You could always break out in C# if you need a change.

Database integration is a snip (and I avoid data bound controls like the plague) and Ajax works just fine. You can even use JQuery at the browser end.
Ask HN: What makes you adopt an API?
What are the key factors for developers to start adopting your API if you offer one?

There are so many things they can do - how and why will they spend the time and effort to integrate your API?

Conversely, what "excites" you enough to jump an at API?
Remember we've only just recently managed to accumulate all this data in a mainstream way. It will take time for that breakthrough to happen, but it will happen.

Example: when AOL released their "anonymous" data, it took the NYT a few days to personally identify a user. It took humans, working on it for a good few hours, being creative, and produced only one data point (one person), but it still happened. We need to find ways to make deep data mining happen much faster... in real time :)

Emphasis on mainstream, by the way, because data mining is not a new field by any measure.
> After all, it's not nearly as exciting as Erlang innards!

Au contraire - it's more exciting to more people. That's the problem - it attracts a lot of people who are only marginally interested in Erlang innards and who want to keep posting articles about Obama or Berlusconi or Sarkozy or whoever. I think it'd be quite fun to talk politics/economics with many people here - over a bottle of wine, though, not on the site. Anyone from here who makes it to Padova and/or Venice is in for free drink(s), BTW.
30boxes.com - My online calendar of choice

Gmail

Twitter

Google Docs

Pandora (the ability to choose the mood music, use headphones and block out the rest of the office)

Twine.com is up and coming as I use it for bookmarking between home and work, and for sharing links with coworkers.

Tweetcore - This was a twitter client I was developing that had a few features which I really liked and streamlined my twitter use, but I've abandoned the project as it was proving more and more complex for less and less a chance of success.
web development on almost any non-.net platform can be done on both windows and/or linux.

you should pick what you want to use and see if you can use it on windows. because you probably can.
http://nowdothis.com
Yes, I was responding to alxp below. Edited to reflect this.

Thanks dhimes :-)
I am new to this place so I am not sure I know what you are talking about. Is it about motivation? Reading about successful stories makes you less procrastinating or what?
It can't be that hard to slap a GUI on it with something like Tk, and that would probably make it a lot more attractive to people.
Announcing The Europas - The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009
If the software's any good, cracked warez versions will end up floating about anyway.
Indeed, I almost laughed when I saw the URL.
E-gads man, you're right.

I just can't bring myself to read another Ask HN post about "how long do you sleep?" "What types of vegetables go with hacking?" "Do you pick your nose with your left hand or right hand?" "Was Big Endian really much better than Little Endian?" or worse, the 158th post about Wave.

Ok. Now I've ticked off half the room. Sorry about that.
Redirecting errors with exec
Super-charging TechCrunch Europe with… you
You might get more money from making the application into a web application and getting commission from click-through sales of actual hardware.
#1 - functionality. if it doesn't do something i'm interested in using, i won't use it.

#2 - ease of use. if its ridiculously complex, i'll still probably use it, but i'd jump ship for something easier if something were to arise. simplicity = productivity.
Bing Travel Arrives
As a general rule, I don't pay for command line utilities. Put a shiny GUI on it and I'd probably reconsider. Plus command line applications are not user friendly (especially Windows based ones) and take more effort to run than a nice clickable icon and GUI. My suggestion, either give it away for free or develop it to a point where you can add a GUI to it (shouldn't be hard with a couple hours of C#) and then charge for it. I wouldn't pay more than a couple dollars for something so basic though. $25 is way too much.
Skype, especially combining text chat with voice for telcons

Central Desktop for developing/managing documents and meeting agendas, minutes, specs.

Webex Office for calendar & contacts

123SignUp for registration management

Spellr.us for spell checking blogs/websites

iContact for e-mail newsletters

There is also a great list for startups at http://startuptools.pbworks.com/
When I was a student, I used to go to bed at 7:00-8:00 and wake up at 12:00-13:00, so that's about 5 hours. When saturday came, I visited my parents, went to bed at 12:00, saturday noon and woke up at 16:00, sunday afternoon.
I really miss those days.
I though it works by charging one customer for three items in one transaction (like iTunes Store). Is it really a single transaction when you charge three different customers?
Or you could try both... limit the web version some, and sell the desktop one.
It's C++. I do have a GUI written using WXwidgets, but it's only 75% done. I thought I'd try to sell the CLI version first and if it is popular and pays for itself somewhat, then finish the GUI as I could then justify it with the wife.
> The wife told me I can't spend any more time working on it, unless I can break even on web hosting, etc.

That's not what he asked, though.
My guess is that it's not so linear - you might not sell any copies at all of a command line thing, and a bunch once you get even a simple GUI on it.
Hence, "are designed", not "were designed".

Interesting data point, by the way. I have a little USB flash drive that stores 4 GB. It was about $10. That's probably more disk storage than existed in the entire world until Y years ago -- any idea what year?
"How much money does the federal government drive to Microsoft?" If they really got into it Obama could make a very public push for "Greater Opennness and transparency in government through the use of Open Source Software".

Good point. The government does have a lot of leverage on that. But, seriously, why doesn't the government go open-source, thus saving billions to the taxpayers, and why doesn't MS move a lot of its developers overseas? Taxpayers would win, MS would probably save tons of money and partially compensate for the lost revenue.

I have never worked at Microsoft, but I have a bunch of friends working there. None of them are U.S. citizens. Many of them are Indian, and half of what they make at MS in the U.S. would buy them an upper middle class lifestyle in Bangalore, allow them to be closer to family, to enjoy a high social status (developers have no status in the U.S.), and they could even hire maids to take care of their children and cook for them.

From an economic point of view, it would make sense to move towards greater efficiency, wouldn't it?
Maybe I just need to learn ways to make my applications look less generic. Whenever I hear about some new development platform I feel like maybe I'm pigeon-holing myself by sticking with Visual Studios. I want to be a valued contributor and no better way to do that than to create applications that WOW those above you.
Can Washington Charge Unauthorized Downloaders With Tax Evasion?
Wrap a GUI around it and package the program as a single executable. I'd suggest $15. Asking for $20 seems like too much (to me), but I've been told that I have bad judgement in such matters. :)

Also, I agree with others that trying to sell a CLI version will probably go nowhere. In fact, it may stifle adoption after you switch to the GUI version (since prospective users might think "Oh, that's that terminal program, right? Yuck!").
Y SIN EMBARGO magazine » thanks for sharing, alicia pallas: yse #20
Noted! It may not be feasible for the first stage of the process though as the system does not actually know how many URLs are in the site.

I'll definitely have a look into that though.
The guys from Eatlime filed a federal trademark application for the name "Twitvid" the day Twitvid was covered in TechCrunch. They themselves weren't launched yet, and they filed a trademark application for a name they knew another company was already using. That is not mere carelessness.

Up to a certain point the Eatlime guys were unaware of Twitvid, but that point was probably several days before the TechCrunch article.
Between 6 and 7 hours on weeknights, probably between 8 and 9 on weekends. I don't think it's working for me that well, though. I usually go to sleep at midnight or 1, then get woken up by my alarm at 7:00, but snooze until 7:30 or 7:45 and it's really time to get going. I feel like it'd be a much better idea to just consistently go to sleep at 11 PM on weeknights, but I never really feel tired at that point. Also, I tend to stay up reading in bed.
I am jealous of that kind of wealth, yep. Even a million dollars can stretch around half of a lifetime of food, rent, water, electricity, and leisure.

I was speaking in terms of that site that claims how much each individual person "is in debt" for the government. It doesn't take into account that certain people profited more while that debt was incurred. So yeah, people that earn more while the country is gaining debt should theoretically owe more when it's put in those terms.

It's actually more logical that the rich are to blame since they have done very well for themselves during a period in which very bad decisions were made. Some of those decision were made by political agendas, to which the rich have some level of control. (And some were not, I do realize.)
Google Docs

Pbworks

http://smacklet.com/
eCalc - Scientific Calculator
http://www.ecalc.com/calculator/scientific/

Supports both RPN and Algebraic

Includes integrated unit converter with on-the-fly conversions

Handy when you forget your HP or TI
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