skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ya, I agree. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with hashes. I started working on a library for Ruby a couple weeks ago for creating hashes and tracking history of objects.

"kimmy".gibbler # => c8027100ecc54945ab15ddac529230e38b1ba6a1
:kimmy.gibbler # => 52be7494a602d85ff5d8a8ab4ffe7f1b171587df

a = { :magic => :original }
a.gibbler_commit # => d7049916ddb25e6cc438b1028fb957e5139f9910

a[:magic] = :updated
a.gibbler_commit # => b668098e16d08898532bf3aa33ce2253a3a4150e

a[:magic] = :changed
a.gibbler_commit # => 0b11c377fccd44554a601e5d2b135c46dc1c4cb1

a.gibbler_history # => d7049916, b668098e, 0b11c377

a.gibbler_revert 'd7049916' # Return to a specific commit
a.gibbler # => d7049916ddb25e6cc438b1028fb957e5139f9910
a # => { :magic => :original }
That was probably before bonus too.
The phone is the next generation's computer
I found the "Event based modes" concept very useful.

Also:

* Haptic tactile feedback
* Fingerprint identification as input method
* RFID reader
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/07/02/haptic-feedback-fingerprint-identification-and-rfid-tag-readers-in-future-iphones/

Nokia developing phone that recharges itself
without plug point:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/10/nokia-mobile-phone

P.S. Regarding the iPhone patents... Patents take around 1-1.5 years to become public information right? If so, then these concepts were what they were working on 2-3 years ago. I shudder to think what they are up to now.
Yes. I just released a new gem: http://github.com/chriseppstein/compass/blob/master/CHANGELO...
Twitter censors Moonfruit? What does it mean for the future of Twitocracy?
For some reason, I'm not seeing the text, so repeating it here:

I found the "Event based modes" concept very useful.

Also:

* Haptic tactile feedback
* Fingerprint identification as input method
* RFID reader
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/07/02/haptic-feedback-fingerpr...

Nokia developing phone that recharges itself
without plug point:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/10/nokia-mobi...

P.S. Regarding the iPhone patents... Patents take around 1-1.5 years to become public information right? If so, then these concepts were what they were working on 2-3 years ago. I shudder to think what they are up to now.
That's a pretty solid argument, I'd hate to play chess against you :)

Posts like these should be attached to the original article.
This is a good article, because it illustrates the counter-intuitive aspect of computer programming. We would think initially that they both should take the same amount of time, but due to the way information is represented in the computer, the times are vastly different.
Who's network is easier to get into, yours or Google/Amazon? Which one has redundant and tested remote data backup?
I still haven't updated, can anyone tell me is there a plan, or is it in as of now, to have html attributes the output the way I put them in haml and not alphabetically?

I've started using compass/960 a month ago or two, best thing since sliced bread!
While I mostly agree with what you say, I have to admit I find hacker news a tad heavy when it comes to overhyping whatever language fashionable this month. Also I have about zero interest in startups and venture capitol etc etc, unless someone has any cool tech to demo.

Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it get tiring every now and then :)

I'm mostly here for the tech news and civilized discussion really. Call me a proggit-refugee if you like.
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Unless you find yourself in the kind of structure and nice working atmosphere where they'd have the decency to give you advanced notice that you you we're going to be fired/laid-off so you can prepare, you probably shouldn't freely offer to do the same after you quit.
So that way, one password IS complete access to everything.
"If you deactivate your account, we'll kill this kitten."

Actively threatening a life.

"Your friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you."

Suggesting there might be passive harm caused directly by a user's action.

Yeah, those two are ethically correlated.
There is a new attribute syntax that is more html-like. But, I'm not sure if the behavior you speak of has changed. That said, html attributes have no semantic order to them, so that change would be purely aesthetic.
I can't say enough good things about Haml and SaSS. If you haven't used it in any of your projects yet install it right now.
I'd love a rss/feed link for this.
Wow, talk about forward looking statements. When companies start making comments like this, it's evidence of a loss of rationality. If MySpace had said this 4 years ago, they would have gotten press too and everyone would have believed it and it could have been possible.

But seriously folks, look around. The unpredictability of the internet is just too high to be making statements like this, I don't care how much evidence you have.

Andreessen told Reuters that the world's most popular online social network could pile up $1 billion in revenue this year if it pushed harder on selling advertising.

Seriously? Like how much harder? Putting more ads on the site? Charging more for them?

This is bubble talk if ever I heard it. He wants to get press for his new investment fund. He has to say big things so that people talk and want to give him money and want him to invest in their companies. So transparent.

They say: [Twitter] needs to focus on increasing its number of users and improve the features it offers so that no rival can swoop in.

Oh boy. Really? So no rival can swoop in? The more Twitter develops its features, the easier it is for a rival to swoop in. Just copy them. It really isn't that hard. Facebook could copy them. Google could copy them. Lots of people think Wave is a more advanced twitter already.

And then he says this: MySpace focused too much on selling advertisements

Isn't that exactly how he said Facebook could be making billions? So really what he is saying is, "If facebook sold more ads, they'd make more money, but then they'd lose their users, so they wouldn't make money, so really, facebook can't make much more money."

Read between the lines and you'll see that the whole scheme is faulty.
Cocoa's NSNotificationCenter is another one:
http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Reference/Fou...
In theory, trade only happens when it benefits both parties. I might hate the local Exxon selling soda for 2$ a bottle, but I can still buy it at other stores. The only reason you complain is they are charging you for the amount of effort they save you and not their costs.

So, opening a store is a net gain, as is investing 4 billion in the economy. In theory.
Useful Project Management tools
I didn't have a chance yet to say thanks. I've asked about multiple load paths watch on compass group and it works now, and cache issues (bugs) on windows seem to be gone as of today - this is pure awesome!
It's really both. Data comes in from various sources with low latency (you get the data right as trades happen, not the 15-minute delay you'd get at Yahoo Finance or something), then the system runs the data through various trading models they've developed and makes trades automatically.

Once a competitor gets their hands on your model, you might as well trash it, since they could use it against you; and places like GS spend BILLIONS on their models, so if this guy really got all (or even just some) of their source code out, the firm is going to take a big hit, and it's not just going to be a short term bump in the road either.
Volpi gets VC job after abandoning Joost's Web strategy
Why web log analyzers are better than JavaScript based analytics
You could mangle/simplify the "resource curse" theory:

1. Liberal democracy. Economy works more or less, so the leaders have lots to stea.. tax.

2. Dictator. Most everything, including citizens, belong to the dictator. Bad economy and dangerous, since dictators must have external enemies (so all complaints are treason).

3. A country with natural resources. There is no need for leaders to go to 1, since there is enough to steal anyway. Keep people down and fill the Swiss account as long as possible.

This categorization explain why democratizing has gone up for a few decades.

Model "1" generally gives more to steal for the politicians, even though they can only get part of the country. "2" is the only alternative if most people (would) hate the dictator if they got free media. See North Korea. Iran is an obvious example of model "3".

(The only country I can mention that doesn't fit the [broad] categories is China, but they start far back so give them time.)

Point is, oil would help NK's dictators but not anyone else.
Of course state protectionism might help local furniture manufacturers to catch up and grow their own business and that might actually benefit the Russian economy even more. Perhaps the legal, administrative burdens are there with a purpose, or maybe I'm reading too much into it...
Mainly Nathan. I had 64 commits. Nathan had 661. There were a dozen or so other contributors.
You seem to have a serious Full House problem, but an awesome library coming along. I'd expect gibbler_revert to be gibbler_revert!, plus a non-destructive version to fetch a specific commit. If I get some time, I may fork/hack a little.

(For the Google impaired: http://github.com/delano/gibbler/tree/master)
Treat your employees like shit and they won't feel they have any reason to be kind. I have a feeling this is more closely related to people who do not like their job but rather work to provide for their families or themselves and layoffs, cutbacks and everything else threaten that so they get out as soon as possible.
Ah, thank you for the clarification. I apologize for the assumption and not checking further into this.

Great job Nathan and Chris!
You're welcome! It's good to hear that windows is working better; send thanks to Joe Wasson who submitted the patch that fixed it.
Ryan Singer Interview
"Man Of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong" - Full Book
Not completely, Lisp uses let for variable bindings...

(let ((x 5)
(y 10))
(+ x y))

=> 15
How could a trade be executed in microseconds considering that light travels 300m in 1 microsecond? It would seem that low latency connections to NASDAQ trading systems would high priced real estate. Is this something that NASDAQ sells?
That's actually a good point. Didn't know that. I wonder if it's better than it was when it was chinese, tho.

Anyway, a valid point.
How Inventors Always Get Screwed
Great comment. My thought were along the same lines, but I have a lot of respect for Andreesen so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Scala isn't really all that FP. Marginally more so than, say, Perl. It's more like: most of the advantages of Ruby, Java and Erlang in one place, with very extensible syntax.
Tampa Empire - Computer Consulting, Service & Repair, Seminole Largo FL 33777
Sphinx: Search Outside the Box 1/3
Sphinx: Getting Practical 2/3
Sphinx: Queries and APIs 3/3
Ahh yes, the scientific method: If your theory explains the experiment better than other theories it gets more credibility, if your theory doesn't fit with experiment it's wrong.

If only mainstream media would employ the scientific method in their journalism.
Figuring life out doesn't have to take money.

You only get what Mary Oliver calls "your one wild and precious life." So if living it well means giving up the 401k, walking away from the house and filing bankruptcy, then that's a valid choice.

[edit]
I keep that poem on my desktop so I can read the last two lines every day and it is slowly coming to influence the decisions I make:

"Tell me what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?"
Never, ever burn bridges. Even if you feel you were treated poorly and that you'll never see your boss again. You never know what might happen in the future. If you do, your coworkers who are left holding the bag will know who to blame. It also destroys any credibility you might have had.
It says the phenomenon was explained, not predicted. It's an interesting choice of terms.

I wonder if there is a difference?
Explaining phenomena is only one step. What I think is more important for a theory to have legs, is the ability to make predictions using the theory.
Even better than that: http://quietube.com/
And sometimes mutually exclusive.
Facebook revenue to be 0 billion in 5 years: me
I could explain, or I could direct you to this link http://stackoverflow.com/questions/559600/is-getting-json-da...
Need advice on business relationship
Here is the background. I have been working with a friend on a web based service for a little over a year now. He basically had a generic idea one night at the bar and over the course of the past year I have hashed out the business model and coded the application. We discussed eventual ownership and had agreed on the terms before we started. I have just learned, however, that he has incorporated the business as an LLC in his name only. After reading the business charter and other information regarding incorporation of a business, it seems that he "owns" the voting shares of the company and is planning on delegating voting or non-voting shares to me. From what I understand, it would have been more appropriate to be listed as a contributing member in the LLC charter. I was hoping someone in the community might have experience in this process. I am considering voicing my concern about this series of events but I would like to be better informed before that happens.
Partnerships do involve give-and-take, and startups involve sacrifices. Everyone on the planet basically has aspects of one or all of these categories. But I'd like to nominate Mr "I categorize people into one of ten categories" as the no. 11 worst co-founder type.
There is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT

But it goes way over my head.

Explaining existing phenomena better than any other theory that we currently have goes a long way though.
Job Applications and the Entitlement Complex
There are serious jobs in Chicago in the financial sector.
So severance pay is something akin to that advanced notice?
By refusing to pay them?
The iPhone never did need Flash support.

Flash is used for delivering ads (no thanks) and video (already covered by special-casing sites like YouTube). Flash is used for silly game sites, and we've got enough games on the iPhone (thank you very much (said by someone who has a non-game app (http://grafly.com) that's drowned out by all the game "noise" on the App Store ;-)).

Flash is the proprietary web, undiscoverable, unsearchable.

Flash is owned by entirely by Adobe, who make no bones about trying to build an entirely separate world in Flash to attempt to dominate the web and the desktop (AIR).

No thanks.

Edit: And, as antirez has pointed out, HTML5+JS+CSS are working hard to obviate Flash. With Google and Apple and Mozilla on their side, I think they have a good chance.
This. Anyone who is predicting specifics about the internet 5 years from now is selling something. This guys predictions are hedged-bet sensationalist double-speak. Boo.
I was appalled at the Stack Overflow answer; thankfully the author corrected it. This sort of exercise is a first homework assignment in a computer architecture course.

It's worth remembering that C is an abstraction. Even assembly is an abstraction. If you care about performance, you need to understand the limitations of the abstraction level you're working at - where your abstraction leaks, and what it is that leaks through.
Don't forget that Goldman has every incentive in the world to hype the importance of the code, so that they can use the FBI to punish this guy. This almost certainly could have been handled with a lawsuit.

Surely they've had people quit to work for competitors in the past. People who knew exactly how their code and current strategies operated. All this guy did was actually copy the code, which is clearly IP infringement, but not necessarily so much more damaging in practical terms.

Don't underestimate the vindictiveness and competitiveness of these financial guys.
Sounds like you think the world is Russia. If you ever get a chance, try exploring the corporate culture in another country, say, Sweden. You will be amazed at how many things you assumed to be universal actually are characteristics of Russian corporate and government culture. This includes rampant corruption in large corporations and government.

What bothers me with the attitude of neo-patriotic Russians under Putin (which you seem to represent well) is that it considers the logic of "everyone cheats, therefore we can too, even so bad that it goes off the charts" valid.
"Twist" this? I'm trying to answer your question. It's not worth cheating in an online dick-waving contest.

I'm saying, very clearly, that complaining about being bored doesn't automatically make your life boring, not when you have the choice of being bored or not. When I spent all day reading other people's blogs, I was missing the fact that they were probably spending just as much time online as I was. The instant I started walking out the door in the morning, I realized the only thing keeping my life boring was me.

Let's end this line of conversation here, as neither of us benefits from it.
Well, I'll bet Marc Andreesen $100 that facebook will not make multiple billions of dollars in 5 years.

2008: $210 million, 2009: $230 million. Extrapolating wildly maybe 600 million, but they'd have to double their revenue increase for that to work (10% / annum to 20% per annum). I fail to see what magic they're going to pull in order to make that happen.

Also, revenue definitely isn't profit, look at youtube.
Point was, if IKEA had as little reason to complain in Russia as most everywhere else, it would be really good for Russia.

Let us just hope that the Kamprad family (which owns IKEA) aren't Polonium poisoned, like Litvinenko.

(The last few months, I've seen quite a few people like you on discussion forums that defend Iran, Putin, etc. Strange.)
It's much worse. The cost of bribes is bigger then the actual sum, and incomparable for the economy as a whole.

A bribe-based economy has very high barriers of entry, especially when the main client in your industry is the state. Which means low competition which means... lots of bad things.
Anecdotal evidence: I know an inventor that got screwed -> inventors always get screwed.

It does not hold water, there are plenty of inventors that did really well from their inventions, there are also quite a few that did not profit at all. On the whole it is as with any other creative job, if you're not good in both the business side and the creative side team up with somebody who is (it still exposes you to the risk that they'll take your money).

The Armstrong story is quite sad by the way, he committed suicide because he lost a patent fight he should have won.
Apparently iPhone apps are undiscoverable as well... or so your comment implies.

Then special casing is not ideal and i'm fairly sure flash does get indexed these days.

Its apparent you don't want it, but does the iPhone need Flash? I don't know - i don't have one, but i would think its only a matter of time.
Just for a bit more info...most job postings that I've seen for quant positions generally require at least an M.S. in Finance, if not a a Ph.D. in Finance or another technical field (Math/Physics/Comp. Sci./Engineering). This is so you'll either already be trained in the underlying financial math, or will be able to learn it quickly.

Also, the field is pretty stressful from what I hear. Not that some dev shops aren't the same way though...
The windshield-wiper story has always bothered me. I'm sorry, call me a Communist or something, but nobody deserves $30 million for "inventing" an intermittent windshield wiper. Can you imagine what it would do to our cost of living, not to mention the progress of technology, if we had to reward "inventors" across all market segments by that standard?

To me, the Kearns case was just an early example of an obvious patent that would never have been granted by any examiner smart enough to fog a mirror.
I don't think rehashing the flash argument in terms of "it's a proprietary technology" is necessary. I'm writing this comment from my iPhone. I can't remember any time in the last 2 years I have needed Flash on this thing for something mission critical. If anything, I am annoyed by the numerous warnings from various sites that make popup alerts saying I need it. The only time it was annoying not to have it was trying to read various links here on HN that were from scribd. Now they have iPhone friendly versions of their documents and that grievance is gone.

So no, the iPhone doesn't need flash and I would disable it even were it available.
I have a lot of respect for Andreesen as well, which is exactly why I find it hard to assume that he's making these statements simply because he's bored and had a journalist around to talk to.

I agree with pj - especially given how many times Andreesen and Horowitz are named in the article, this mainly reads like a PR piece for their new VC fund. (pg had a great essay about PR pieces, I can't find it right now).
Haha, it's true. I do have a serious FH problem.

I also needed an obscure but familiar keyword so the method could be included in any object with low risk of collision. There is currently near-zero usage of the keyword "gibbler" in any project (Ruby or otherwise).

And thanks for the ! correction. I've updated the repo and docs.
Startup news?
haven't you seen their stats? They are "growing by over 700,000 users a day". That's 21 million new users per month, 252 million a year. At this rate, it won't be long before they have 7 billion users, at which point all they'd need to do is make a dollar on every user and they'll be rich...rich I tells ya!
I asked this at reddit as well, but I think HN may have some better insights.

What does this say for Groovy (the language) that one of its co-creators is out advocating Scala?
Among the reasons others have already mentioned, I also regularly google through old HN articles for advice on which tools are the best.

Searches like "hosting provider" or "server monitoring" will bring up lots of useful comments from the folks in the trenches.

Edit: Another reason: positivy toward success. In my daily life, I'm surrounded by people who denigrate those who are more succesful than them. HN is a place where that rarely happens, even if the subject is as unusual as jocks or jewel thieves.
I'm not Mathematica's biggest fan, but this is just a smear job. He goes way out of his way to write code to do things that Mathematica does automatically. For example, his 32 lines of bar chart display code can be replaced with:

BarChart[numbers]
Ask HN: which functional language to learn?
I'm looking at learning a functional programming language, but not able to decide which one. The language should be fun to learn and also have decent job opportunities.

Based on some initial reading, Haskell and Erlang seem to be good choices. Can anyone suggest a language?

My background (not sure if it matters) I've worked with Java/PHP/Ruby, developing desktop and web applications.
pg had a great essay about PR pieces, I can't find it right now

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html