skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's true. I intended it to be feature-comparable with JavaScript, since I think JavaScript is a pretty cool language, and that is what it is interpreted in.

I don't think it is possible to make a program without conditional branches.

Somebody posted a link below about "Data Driven" design in C++. In it was an example of a pattern where each object has a "dirty" flag, which determines whether it needs processing, but they found that failing branch prediction here took more cycles than simply removing the branch.

My thought was, instead, what if you created two versions of that method -- one to represent when the dirty flag is true, and another to represent when the dirty flag is false -- and then instead of toggling the dirty flag, you could change the jump address for that method to point to the version it should use. If this toggle happens long enough before the the processor calls that method, you would remove any possibility of branch prediction failure =].

I have no idea if this is practical or not, but it is amusing to consider programs that modify jump targets instead of using traditional conditional branches.
Hmm...

I think an interesting way to frame this problem is to take the theory that entrepreneurs should solve problems close to them as fact.

If we do this then we have two related problems. Why aren't people close to big problems becoming entrepreneurs? Why aren't entrepreneurs closer to big problems?

A solution to the problem of "useless" apps might come from finding ways to bring big problems to entrepreneurs, or making it easier for those closer to big problems to become entrepreneurs.

Thoughts?
AWS is nice. You have a lot of control over your infrastructure and you can control it easily with APIs. The one thing to be careful of with AWS is that they have a lot of nice services that can be tempting to use but will lock you into their system. Don't make your application dependent on services like their messaging queue or NoSQL db, build something that can run in any data center easily. If you do that, it doesn't really matter where you're hosting. It's easy to move from cloud to cloud, so there's also no need to unnecessarily invest yourself in AWS (which is complicated) from the beginning when a $5 VPS on Digital Ocean might have better performance and be cheaper anyway. When you're just getting started, do what's easy and focus on your product. For something simple, AWS, RackSpace and Digital Ocean are all good options that won't make you sorry. Anecdotally, we started at Rackspace and have started moving to AWS for their APIs / powerful feature set. We have servers both places and they're mostly the same, each with their own strengths.
Could we please change the headline? No need to scream in HN headlines. Edit: thanks mods
SlidePay (YC W12) Tries To Be The “Android” of Payments
Just personal experience, sorry.

* it deadlocks. Often.

* it often doesn't recover from network partitions. Symptoms include both sides of the partition never merging, and deadlocks. Recovering requires rebooting the entire cluster at once. Due to their locking strategy, a rolling reboot of the cluster isn't enough.

*some of the developers didn't seem to demonstrate understanding of races, or distributed systems. When I reported racing bugs, they asked if I could attach reliable unit tests.
Love the WWV suffix! I'll be looking for you on the internationally allocated standard carrier frequencies.
> So, giving people the correct file instead of making them know what they need (which many people dont... especially if it is browser specific) is not a good reason?

No, it is not. Give the user the option of what to download. What if I want the Windows version even though I'm running Linux?

> What if a server wants to provide a client with native order endianess (for RPC for example), that shouldnt be allowed?

RPC should have a standard byte order defined.

> Tell that to my browser which countless times doesnt fetch a new file because it has a cached copy.

That's based on cache control, which isn't affected by the Date header sent by the server.

> Often times, the server isnt a single server, but rather a set of load-balanced servers.

I know. I've set these systems up before. There shouldn't be anything of consequence stored on the client. So what if someone changes the session ID? Does it really matter? If someone has someone else's ID they probably have the signature too. If it's a random search, using random ids goes a very long way. Also, beyond sessions, there doesn't need to be a session. There are now ways to store data on the client that don't require sending it back and forth to the server on every request.
I've been involved in a number of recruitment processes, on the employer side, recruiting technical people.

The main thing that I look for is a good balance of technical aptitude and cultural fit. I will generally prefer a person that can communicate well (in writing and in person) over a similarly technically skilled person that cannot.

Current skils are not usually as important as an ability and willingness to learn.

I don't like it when candidates are obviously just looking for a paycheck and really don't care what they'll be doing. These kind of punch in/punch out, 'take the money and run' people are a slowly debilitating cancer that it is super important to root out as early as possible.

So overall, I'd say for me it's attitude and communication skills more so than anything else.
Can't there exist a company that accepts Bitcoin transactions on behalf of clients (shops) and guarantees them? Even if a transaction fails, the company coughs up, and to make ends meet they charge a small per-transaction fee.

Even without this, it's quite possible that bad bitcoin transactions will be far less costly to shops on average.

If a shop sells a coffee for $2 paid for by a bad bitcoin transaction, the shop seller has made around a 50c loss (stock mainly).

If a shop sells a coffee for $2 paid for by a later charge backed credit card transaction, the shop seller is charged $15[1], plus the 50c stock loss for a net $15.50 loss! You'd have to have over 30 bad bitcoin transactions to equal that level of loss.

Chargebacks are a money making operation by the credit card companies, at the expense of merchants. Bitcoin helps a lot.

[1] https://stripe.com/help/disputes
Why make a newer smartphone with 2x faster graphics when... you could buy a proper gaming machine for the same price.
Ben Kuchera of the Penny Arcade Report has a scathing and spot-on review of Microsoft's advertising strategy for the Surface (as well as for the rest of their product line).

It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/microsoft-is-killing-...
You can tear me to shreds for this, but until I can code Haskell in Visual Studio, it's going to be hard for it to gain any traction in $BIGCORP.
It writes a .huxley dir that contains screenshots and a log of user actions. It can replay these user actions programmatically and if the screen shots have changed it will save new ones to disk. You can use a tool like Kaleidoscope to compare the old ones with the new ones (we use git to keep the old ones around).

When you commit, the tests will be updated and the new screenshots will be part of the code review.

Additionally, you can run it in continuous integration mode which will break the build if screenshots are out of date.
Just to clarify, it's written in Python but you don't have to write any Python code to use it. Just a teeny config file that contains a test name and a URL.
Indeed - I've talked a sitter on Rover who was planning on listing their profile in NYC as a traveling sitter as a way to get a free stay in the city, while also watching someone's home & dog.
1. coding -> direct manipulation of data
2. procedures -> goals and constraints
3. text dump -> spatial representations
4. sequential -> parallel
Very cool! I've spent the most time with angular as far as js frameworks and really enjoyed working with it. It's good to see a strong sense of community, makes me feel like the time investment will pay off for a c# guy in the near future :)
"We"? Some cancers have been cured, not by programmers, but by huge well funded teams of researches - biologists, chemists, administrators, lab technicians, interns, etc.

Sure, you could join such a team and possibly end up being a part of the cancer cure, if you're lucky.

That's quite different from what we see with solo projects and startups.
LLVM and Scala come to mind as PL projects born in academia and enjoying wider adoption. Not all researchers are interested in solving the "real problems out there", but some do, and are successful at it.
Yet they say their revenue is only "well into the 6-figures"? How is this possible? If only 5000 of those customers are paying the lowest per rep per month rate of $25 than that amounts to $1.5 million over the course of a year. And I have to believe a lot of their customers have more than one rep. Churn couldn't be making that much of a difference could it? Knowing Dan from his writing I'm sure he's going out of his way to please customers.

Not trying to call them out. I really like Dan and have learned a lot from his writing. I hope they do actually have that many customers paying $25-99 per rep per month. Just wondering how it adds up?
OK, so you run a company with practically infinite resources, an OS that is portable across architectures, and a managed language runtime that's portable across architectures that powers hundreds of thousands (millions?) of useful applications with a suite of languages including what is arguably a nicer language than Java.

You see Android running the same apps on multiple mobile device architectures using Java and the Dalvik VM. That's a technology you had since 13 years ago with NETCF.

Hmmm. What to do? What to do? I KNOW: Let's segment the market by blowing off compatibility with a gazillion apps my enterprise customers have written and use and let's use Surface RT to go for a Quixotic attempt to beat Apple and Google with Modern apps which are over-sandboxed and can't talk to .NET apps.

That comes off as derisive, but how do you say it nicer? They lost a billion dollars in a write-down - not a write-off - doing that, and not one word about "Gee, can we fix the product formulation?"

Well, at least they didn't buy Motorola. That's going to be a write-down that leaves a mark.
Google dismissed the don't be evil mantra a while ago and has little resemblance to the company of integrity so many of us fell in love with. They're so big and pervasive - it's a juxtapose of government and multinational corporation with vastly different set of goals and values. Incidentally, not very favorable for us, users. But it will take 3 Stallman's and another Snowden some time in the future for people to finally realize that :)
Looking at CPU/GPU Benchmark Optimizations in Galaxy S 4
So you're making it easier to make Android apps that look like iOS apps. Great...
Anyone remember Microsoft's last huge push into the hardware market, the Xbox? How would this headline have looked in 2001? If we remember, Microsoft took seven straight year-over-year billion dollar losses until the Microsoft gaming division finally posted a profit in 2008.

I don't mean to directly compare Windows RT with the Xbox, the point I'm making is that Microsoft is used to sustaining huge losses for long time periods until they finally capture the market they want.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/148982/xbox.html
I appreciate the additional context and totally get where you're coming from. The only nitpick I'd make is this:

Merging two versions of a source file is many times over a solved problem

Granted - but isn't this also a limiting factor? It's not that I don't think anything should ever be reducible to code form, but why is that visual mapping of a complete program isn't a standard everyday tool? I mean, it's all very well that we have syntax highlighters showing keywords, variables and so on, but why is it that when I open a program there isn't a tool to automatically show me loops, arrays and so on?

Loops are one of the simplest programming structures; 90% of loops look like:

LOOP foo FROM bar to baz:
something
something
something
profit
foo = foo + 1
END LOOP

I mean, software engineering shouldn't be about syntax, it should be about structure, and yet there don't seem to be many tools around that open up a source file and build branching diagrams and loop modules automatically. Why is that? Why don't we even have structural highlighting rather than syntax highlighting?
> It's because the above list of things are not trivial to get right...

It is a hard problem but solvable. We've been working on it for a few years. The "hardest" part was figuring out how to design away the need for complex interfaces (complex APIs). Once we solved this problem, it was a lot easier to build out a visual object language and associated framework (or lack thereof).

Something that is a bit difficult to figure out in a visual language is the merging of branches.

I would like to get your input on your experiences with visual coding in the past.
I recently reviewed a resume of someone who was 69 or 70 years old (I can't remember exactly) who had tons of older (cobol, fortran, et. al) and new (iOS, android) experience.

I was very impressed with how up-to-date he had kept himself.
I would've liked to see it in Go, but alas.
There are significant risks to such an experiment, and it's a shame that there isn't any record of what happened to him after the fact or his long term health.

There is a significant body of literature suggests that in addition to risks during starvation, there is significant harm and danger in trying to eat again [1]. The GI tract atrophies (much like when we don't use a muscle or a limb for a long time with a neurological disorder), and there are many metabolic complications in restarting to eat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome
There actually is a rather large program in there:
http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/f2983238d90bd3e0a...

Use the arrow keys to move the box around. I suppose that's still a bit primitive, but I'll make some more involved programs once I fix up the scoping model a bit.

When I first started on this project, I thought at some point I would need to make a "zoom out" feature, because you might end up making a lot of nodes in one function. However, I have never needed this. As soon as you have too much stuff going on, you can just box-select some things and hit the "Join" button to get a new function. The restricted workspace actually forces you to abstract things more, and the lack of syntax allows you to reduce repetition more than would be practical in a textual language.

For example, in textual languages, reducing repetition often requires you to introduce intermediate variables, which could actually make the program's text longer, so people will avoid doing it. However, in my language you get intermediate variables by connecting two sinks to the same source. The addition in program length hardly noticeable.
Didn't this article topic come up a few years ago?

Weren't people saying there was a limit on the number of people you could get into a single social network (like 250k or something like that?) and would never surpass Myspace?

Weren't people saying that Facebook wouldn't figure out mobile monetization?

These types of bold predictions, without really any data or strong evidence, are meaningless and should be down-voted by a tech community that makes changes in the world through science and fact.

Plus, consistently rooting for failure of the thousands of people that work there isn't really cool to begin with.
It's not just the vehicle, they also got the use of the driver as a patsy.
sounds like a hell of pivot. best of luck guys!
From http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/history/

1996: "BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university."

1998: "Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park."

I wonder, were those business class connections? Or were they maybe bending the rules just at bit at times?
I fasted entirely for lent one year (40 days) and after the first week, the hardest part was indeed that I was missing the social aspect of eating meals with friends and family. I took vitamins, and drank more water than I normally would but was quite happy.

I should also mention that I stopped running so hard during this period and took a multivitamin each day. I've fasted for shorter durations and it's amazing how even 2-3 days without food seems to sharpen the mind. You'll feel less sluggish and simply feel more alert.
I predict Hacker News will disappear in three years !
> Happened to MySpace and I know that will happen again

One data point doesn't really establish an unavoidable trend.
Yea but the Xbox had user adoption. What does the Surface have?
1. By all reports Google is shying away from Android.

2. Apple losing market share to hoards of cheap spam-ware phones? I'm sure Google isn't as excited about this as you think.
Is the Nexus 7 posting huge losses? I'm pretty sure it's profitable. Microsoft is doing something wrong. Years of unprofitability is not a prerequisite for profitability.
A lot of people think it does.
In this case, they didn't just branch out in to a new market. They took their flagship product (Windows) and redesigned it in to something that most would consider to be a massive failure.
Thanks! I'll give this a go for sure!
They spent quite a bit on the Zune without getting much traction. Sure, they "pivoted" some of the experience into Windows Phone, but that product basically sunk to the bottom of the market.
No, the use of a "route" that is known to be ineffective doesn't count.
How much fat and muscle did you lose?
"Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.acercandonaciones.com"

The site disappear already
Android developers, stop making casual games
> It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves.

Surface Pro is quite a different beast from Surface RT. I think Gabe was just in love with the Waccom stylus, which is not really unique to the Pro (other tablets have this also).
> I'd love a link to the paper to draw real conclusions

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6125791
Not always. For example, speaking truthful factual statements with malicious intent to harm someone's business by damaging their reputation is totally legal, provided you're not defrauding or blackmailing anyone or otherwise acting sketchy.

There're a lot of actions based on malicious intent that are (and should remain) legal.
Google bought Motorola as a defensive patent move, it's almost completely intangible.
Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. My initial take too. But having played with several Surface Pros, i found the device so lackluster I opted to buy a Yiynova display/tablet for half as much money, i don't need to mess with Windows 8 or buy new software.

The real problem with Surface is that it's a crappy overall device. The two keyboard options both suck. Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate so the serious applications such as office are weak.

Yes, it's a great portable sketchpad, so Gabe is sold.
Do you really think that in 20 to 40 years from now, we will still be hacking away in some computer language that only a very few "elite" people know?

Programming needs to be Democratized and I think one of the best ways to do this is by removing coding as a necessary step in programming process.
> If you allow parallel importation then you are in most cases obviating the need for a local subsidiary. Service? Sales? Support? Not a problem. Just contract it out.

That is not the observed and observable outcome of parallel importation in other goods.

> And the Australian government is not going to take legal action in the US to create border import tariffs.

Your terminology is incorrect. It's not a tariff. Making geo-segmentation harder or illegal is not a tax on imported goods.

> I continue to be astounded by all the self-righteous outraged people here demanding cheaper Photoshop and cheaper Steam games like it was some basic human right.

I'm likewise astounded that people think Australia's quite utilitarian, transactional political culture is going cleave to any particular ideological position.
If you had 20 similar functions, the tables would occupy 5k in total, using only 1/6th of the L1 D$ on a typical "big" CPU. In actuality, temporal locality is such that you don't often stride through all table entries uniformly, so the actual cache pressure is even less.

The point that you're going after is a good one, but its important to keep in mind how enormous modern memory hierarchies are. It often is very reasonable to trade memory and cache pressure for speed.
Do people know about fraud by third party IT consultancy companies?
This is just an effort to inform the folks on HN (Future CEOs of big companies :) ) about the routine fraud by many IT consultancy companies with fake resumes and fake phone interviews etc.
Since I am from India, I know of many small scale IT companies run by Indians in US which cheat both the clients and the candidates, with these tactics, but I suspect the thing is not necessarily limited to Indian companies.
Here is a typical situation:
1. The company recruits students / graduates without any experience promising them training and job placement. They don't need any CS or IT experience whatsoever, but they are promised they can get 60K+ jobs in whatever technology is.
2. The consultancy creates fake resumes for the candidates and starts forwarding them to other consultancies and clients etc. The guys routinely put 5 or 6 years of fake work experience without knowing a thing about the area.
3. Many companies don't pay anything to the candidates while they are being "trained", though they are paid on paper because of the immigration requirements.
4. When it's the time for the phone interview, the guy you are interviewing may not be real candidate. Or he may have a couple of other people also listening in and helping him with written answers.
5. Since it's just a contractor job many big companies don't even bother doing an in-person interview trusting the consulting companies.
6. It's possible that some of the managers in the big companies have indirect associations with these consultancies forcing them to stick to some consultancies despite getting really bad people from them some times.
7. Finally the guy who knows very little about the field will join the big company as a contractor, and the consultancy takes big cut out of his pay check.
8. The employee may get fired easily first few times, but he will gain legitimate US work experience in the meanwhile and the the previous experience becomes irrelevant.
I hope that in another 40 years the fact that programming and programmers ever existed is seen as temporary blip in the evolution of computing.
And bebo... but yea.. not enough data.
References:
1. This is a very popular classifieds service where many of these shady consultancies advertise free job training opportunities with free boarding etc. : http://ittraining.sulekha.com/itcourses
2.http://www.scholarshipforusa.com/2009/01/the-truth-about-ind....
3. This website has reviews of many such companies: http://goolti.com/faq.php, http://goolti.com/
4.http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...
The way I see it, client Internet connections are for data consumption, i.e. mostly download. Servers, on the other hand, create and provide the content.

Kind of like being the manufacturer of a watch and being its end user.

The line is getting pretty blurry, but I don't think you can put the two in the same bucket - not yet anyway.
AWS Adds Support To Make Tracking Apps A Bit Easier When Using A Load Balancer
Is there a way to receive news updates w/o registering or subscribing via e-mail? I don't see a Twitter feed, or even an RSS feed for the blog.