skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
GitHub API v2 in Ruby
This is a Major update to octopi library (that is a Ruby interface for the GitHub API v2). Written by Webbynode’s Felipe Coury.
Gem installation

Yes! Now you can install octopi as a Gem:

$ sudo gem install fcoury-octopi --source http://gems.github.com

Progress

I am now focusing on having complete coverage of the API features that anyone can do as an anonymous user (not authenticated to GitHub, that is).

Once this part is done we’ll start working on features that requires authentication.
Some code snippets for your delight:
User API

Getting user information

# user information
u = User.find("fcoury")
puts "#{u.name} followed by #{u.followers.join(", ")},
following #{u.following.join(", ")}"

Followers and following, rendered as an User object collection

The bang version of followers and following creates one User object for each user login found and obviously is a lot more expensive and should be used with parsimony.

user.followers!.each do |u|
puts " - #{u.name} (#{u.login}) has
#{u.public_repo_count} repo(s)"
end

Searching users

users = User.find_all("silva")
puts "#{users.size} users found for 'silva':"
users.each do |u|
puts " - #{u.name}"
end

Repositories API

Search

repos = Repository.find_all("ruby", "git")
puts "#{repos.size} repository(ies) with 'ruby' and 'git':"
repos.each do |r|
puts " - #{r.name}"
end<pre lang="ruby">

<strong>Getting a repository</strong>

<pre lang="ruby">repo = Repository.find("fcoury", "octopi")

Getting a repository for a given user

If you have an User object, you can easily do:

repo = user.repository("octopi")

Repository information

puts "#{repo.name} - #{repo.description}
(by #{repo.owner}) - #{repo.url}"

Tags

tags = repo.tags.map {|t| t.name}.join(", ")
puts "Tags: #{tags}"

Commits API

Commits of a given repository:

fc = repo.commits.first
puts "First commit: "
puts "#{fc.id} - #{fc.message} - by #{fc.author['name']}"

Single commit information:

puts "Diff:"
fc.details.modified.each do |m|
puts "#{m['filename']} DIFF: #{m['diff']}"
end

Stay tuned for upcoming updates.
They can't be as thin as a Kindle - they are different devices designed to be used in different ways - a netbook is usually used the same way as a notebook (I use mine mostly on a desk, hooked up to a big monitor, a decent keyboard and mouse) while the Kindle is designed to be used as a book.

I would happily trade a couple millimeters thickness for longer battery life, wi-fi, a hard-drive and network-printer emulation software so I could print my stuff to "paper stacks" on the device. Unfortunately, the absence of such device indicates strongly that those needs are mine only.

I look forward to hacking the Tech Crunch thingie to suit those needs.
Happy to point out that our own Stephen Ridley worked on the reversing segment of this class, and that Dino Dai Zovi is Matasano emeritus, not that I'd ever think to take any credit for his success, oh no, I'm just happy to name drop.
Zonks! virtual desktops are better, but don't look nearly as cool.
I would probably trust a random HNer's Top 50 list over BusinessWeek's.
The new Task Queue API on Google App Engine
It applies to us. Maybe it's a bigger problem than you think.

(Edit: I just looked at clicky. It's great, and looks like it has a lot of features that we'd use, but your most expensive plan isn't even close to the capacity we would need.)
I lost my 1st gen iPhone a few weeks ago. Waiting for the 3GS has been quite an agony - I didn't realize I use it so much in my daily activities. To me the iPhone is an interface to the collective wisdom of the internet that is always with me. I feel stupider without it.

To many people the iPhone is just a fashion item. The number one reason I have heard from my friends for not wanting one is that it is so common: everybody has one. Well, obviously some of us don't care about this... what surprised me with the 3GS is that Apple apparently doesn't care too. They didn't change the appearance of the phone at all, even though that would be an easy and cheap way to get the more fashion-oriented users to upgrade. Does anyone has an explanation for this?
If you're trying to make money, dump your iPhone strategy
I believe it was a civil suit (that's really the only possible way that 80 grand per song couldn't be considered cruel and unusual).
Imagine the outcry if all punishments were meted out on this kind of scale. Jaywalking: 10 years hard labour!

And no, I wouldn't steal a purse, because a purse is a physical object, owned by an ordinary individual human being, who would be materially and emotionally harmed by the theft.
This case of Copyright infringement involves imaginary property of enormously rich corporations who would not be materially affected by it in any measurable way. It's more akin to stealing an invisible mote of dust from the bottom of someones purse, without them being aware of it at any point.

All the evidence actually suggests that music sharing increases income for commercial music as a whole, yet sharing these 24 tracks has resulted in a $2m fine. Ironically, you would be punished enormously less for actually mugging someone and stealing their purse.
Google App Engine Task Queue API released
I've rarely heard someone argue so strongly for inserting middlemen back into the supply chain. It's interesting, in a twisted sort of way.
I really like the well designed site.
Well laid out and easy to use.

However, your paid model feels a lot like ExpertSexchange.com, a much loathed site, and it seems you are dealing in very small dollar amounts which means that managing the cost/payment process creates increased overhead and adds complexity to the system where it may not be needed, and the dollar amounts may not be high enough to be worth the extra headaches. (if an answer was worth $10-20 I'd be singing a different tune).

There may be other revenue opportunities outside of advertising (though you're in the right market for lots of advertisers).
I would think a pacemaker battery could be charged off the body itself better and more efficiently than via ambient radiation, but I'm no expert in the field.
Interesting to see the attachment to the physical object:

I love my iPhone. I’d lay down my life for it. If it fell onto the subway tracks, I’d jump in and grab it — ignoring the posted signs and tempting fate to strike me down for my worship of a material good. A bright, shiny, covetable material good.

The iPhone isn't a singular object however, it's an instance of a dataset. The iPhone gets backed up every time you sync. Drop it on the subway tracks and it's no trouble. Plug in a new iPhone and restore from backup and you wouldn't know the difference. Same data. Same icons. Same phone number.

Watching the upgrades to the iPhone 3GS is going to be interesting. It looks the exact same. The software is essentially the same 3.0 on your old iPhone. Will people feel ripped off? Will they place less value on the upgrade?
What a Hamsters teaches about Adwords
Paints and paper are also an abstract technology, and time spend working on paper takes kids away from walking and other physical, outdoor experiences. Obviously it can go too far, but most of us feel that painting and drawing and writing and reading have become part of the appropriate mix of experiences for children in our culture.

Computers are no different. I do make sure my toddler spends almost all her time away from glowing screens, but I also remember that I first really got into computers over twenty years ago by spending hours with MacPaint. My daughter is growing up in a world where her parents work all day on computers, play on computers, and talk to friends and family through computers. She's going to be influenced by that, and I'd like it to be as an active participant and not just an observer.
This is a really good point, I had not thought of that argument. Very very true. Facebook is NOT the public square.
Spam, propaganda, and not true.

"While I know that there are thousands of apps you can buy for your iPhone/iPod touch, I've never actually met anyone who's ever bought one."

Did you forget about 1 Billion+ App downloads? Sure, a large portion of them are free. Those free apps can make money with ads+incentives for a freemium upgrade to the "Pro" version. Yes, Apple is harsh with developers. Yes, the iPhone app game is way harder than it seems. I'd rather deal with Apple's process as a small dev, than dealing with carriers and their nonsense. Do they even want to deal with someone making a game on the weekend for fun? Probably not. GTFO and don't come back.
How about just: “war against пошлость!”?

(See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poshlost

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/images/0002uN-5267.jpg

)
I'm not sure if you mean it to, but something about that strikes me as derogatory toward 50-year-olds with landscaping companies. They are taking a big risk too, and doing something important, even if it's not as sexy as a 20-year-old making a web startup.

(Or maybe it's just the older I get, the less enthralling the young, inexperienced founder appears to me?)
I don't think the OP is in need of money, at least the few coins you get from Amazon programs:

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2008/10/derek-sivers-go.html
I understand the comparison with expertsexchange but I think Studylance is different. Expertexchange is all about spamming the search engines with common problems, Studylance is more like Elance or Rentacoder, in that individuals get a real response, rather than having to pay for the answer to a previously asked question,

The amounts are in £pounds for the moment, I'm going to add the option to view in USDollars soon.

The values are low for the moment you're right!
That is the other danger zone. It seems that more and more this is determined by how the speech makes somebody else feel, but what is to stop me from going to court and saying that Microsoft new ad campaign makes me feel hated for being a Linux user? It's so subjective.
Nearby Photos on Your Phone
I personally know 2 developers who have made in excess of 6 figures, and one of those over $1 million. Yes, he buys the beer. =)

As @jasonlbabtiste points out, there are over 1 billion apps downloaded. Yes, the majority of those are free but many, many, many are not. Even if only 20% of all apps are paid for, at the minimum of $0.99, that's over $200 million dollars. That number is of course much greater, considering that apps for more than $0.99 DO sell, and quite frequently.

So this guy's rant is just that, a rant. Completely unfounded and only based on personal opinion.
He basically concludes that non-iPhone development has huge sunk costs (i.e. less competition), so it is where the money is:

"The bar is set too low. Anybody can play in the iPhone space. All it takes is an idea and few thousand dollars to pay someone to build it. The entire process, from idea to launch, takes only six weeks.

In my world--the Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T world--a game costs $50,000 to build and $100,000 to port."
Ask HN: How do you deal with domain squatters?
I work for a well known, but very small startup that does not have a dedicated legal staff, nor the money to pay for one. A more-well-known competitor of ours recently registered a domain that is a one letter transposition of our main domain, and redirected it to their homepage. The name of our site is not a generic term, and as far as I can tell this is a willful violation of anti-cyberquatting laws: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.1255.IS:=

The problem is, how does a small business like ours approach this? We have attempted to contact the competitor directly, but been blown off. Do we bite the bullet and hire a lawyer, hoping that we can win enough money to pay for them? Do trademark attorneys work like personal injury attorneys, and not collect unless victorious? We've never had to deal with major legal issues before, and this is somewhat overwhelming.

(I've created a one-post account for this as I don't want to needlessly complicate the matter by divulging the identities of the involved companies.)
Top 4 Reasons Why Gary Vaynerchuk is so Incredibly Persuasive
Because it's been duped 3 times?
I think maybe there needs to be a distinction between initial traffic - where you might need to shout above the din to get noticed - and long tail traffic, which is almost the opposite.

Also, see Filthy Linking Rich: http://www.keyworddriven.com/filthy-linking-rich-and-getting... - a good read and ironically long on content and from 2004.
Something is broken in this country.
Granted, I haven't really educated myself on this whole "Push vs. Pull" thing, but is there some good reason I can't get mail pushed to me? Is it up to the mail provider (i.e. Google) to supply that functionality? I've heard it can be done using Exchange, but I'd rather not setup my own exchange server to route my gmail through...
Er, ok... assuming that by "post Opera unite era" you mean people running servers on their machine to share content, why adding framed stuff to the mix make it so horrifying? I guess I'm lacking imagination or the right security mindset here :)
He posted the same comment 3 times?
This is not a new idea, but a very old one. When companies first started to be funded by people unconnected with the management (railroads for example), they generally had classes of stock that offered some prespecified return.
Google Apps does an awesome job at displaying PDFs in pure HTML without using flash. Not sure how they do it, but it's pretty awesome.
Oh, the irony!

This tab has been open for a while in my browser ;)
I wasn't trying to say that we should have equally barbaric punishments for purse-snatching but rather that we should have equally fair and reasonable punishments for file-sharing.

I can see how my point was made unclear by the unsuccessful joke, though.
Facebook Re-designed, Re-thunked: A Weekend Thought Exercise
Spend at least some to get a real lawyer opinion. Should cost you a few hundred dollars for some hours of his time. Ask him to present you with several options, there's a whole spectre in the middle of lawsuit and doing nothing.

For example, you've already contacted the company, so at least it seems you've made them aware that you think there's a problem, which only a lawyer can tell if it'll help you in the future you decide to sue them.
Alan Kay’s reading list
New ATM hack uses "trigger" card
Yes. In a recent case, SCOTUS ruled that punitive damages more than 10 times the amount of compensatory (actual) damages is per se unconstitutional except in cases of malice or fraud. Of importance, in followup cases by SCOTUS and the federal appeals courts, the courts have determined that punitive damages in excess of 2x actual damages (or $100,000), which ever is greater, is probably unconstitutional, except in cases of malice or fraud.

When malice or fraud are involved, there is no limit on punitive damages. Note that the fraud must be part of the crime itself; Thomas' perjury on the stand should play no role in punitive damages.

The award will almost certainly be reduced...however...it is likely that Thomas will settle before then. Though $200k was outrageous in the first trial, unique circumstances in this trial make it unlikely that the judge will reduce the amount to anywhere close that number, given that a separate and independent jury found such a large number.
I prefer this to any of the similar lists I’ve found around the web (e.g. the one discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=663662 ). Nearly everything from this list that I am familiar with is wonderfully insightful.
I'm a 4th year CS major. During the second year, I seriously reconsidered changing majors. I felt CS "wasn't enough programming", and therefore not relevant to my future.

However, I stuck to it. It's only recently that I've discovered that all that set theory, automata theory, and architecture theory has actually made me a much better programmer than I would have been otherwise.

On the other hand, a CS major alone will not make you a good programmer. You must also program in your spare time, continuously, constantly learning, whether it be work or personal projects.
Fifty Tech Startups You Should Know
Punitive damages are not meant to be proportionate. They are meant to be penal, and to "send a message" to other potential tortfeasors. (Civil trial for damages = tort).

However, SCOTUS has ruled very recently that punitive damages must be proportional to the income and assets of the defendant, for example, $1M is nothing to Bill Gates but is beyond devastating to the average man.
> There are any number of processes that will occur easily in one direction, but can have... dramatic... results in the other direction. Consider, by analogy, breaking H2O into hydrogen and oxygen, vs. recombining them.

Ooh, dramatic. Except that the issue is irreversible.

You can split and combine hydrogen and oxygen repeatedly and the same thing happens every time.

We don't see evidence of dramatic effects from the last time CO2 levels were high and went down. (We also don't see evidence of the predicte runaway temperatures either, but I digress.)

If you're going to argue that this time will be different, shouldn't you have something better than "we don't know"?

Yes, we might see species changes. However, niches don't stay empty. And, the claim was "irreversible temperature changes".
is there some good reason I can't get mail pushed to me?

It's because Apple wants you to pay for MobileMe. Not necessarily a "good" reason, but I suspect it's "the" reason.
FYI -- your blog seems to be down: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.stubbleblog.com

Would like to read the post but can't, currently :)
I already pay for MobileMe. Which allows me to get emailed pushed to me via my MobileMe email. Which I don't use.
Vinyl Sticker Printing Makes a Big Difference
IQ and the Values of Nations: Part II
A landscaping company is structurally different from a startup. That kind of service business only scales linearly.
Civil case.
Your example is not analogous. Theft is a crime. Thomas committed a tort.
The difference: police get involved with crimes, and you can be arrested for a crime. You cannot be arrested for a tort (unless the tort is the "civil" counterpart of a crime allowing the victim to recover for injuries from the crime).
So a guy who works for a company promoting non-iPhone development says we shouldn't develop for the iPhone? Right, I should listen. Because, you know, everyone I know with an iPhone just downloaded a few trials and gave the really expensive device to their kids.

I also get the feeling that there were some fake accounts involved in getting this to the homepage.
Interesting analysis - design is wild.
Thanks. Was fun.
Heh. Well, I dunno what to tell you. You can probably do some sort of auto-forward + reply-to: address kludge to fake it.

It sucks, but to be honest I personally don't mind. I've been making apps with the push API and beta testing the AIM client with push and I have a feeling I'm going to be turning push notifications OFF for most services - I'm already getting too many notifications and I'm not using any "real" apps yet, just beta stuff. If I had push email on, my phone's battery would die in about 45 minutes.
Can the VC Model Help Cure Alzheimer's?
Honestly I have a hard time taking anything this gentleman says seriously when he starts his article saying he doesn't know anyone who buys iPhone apps. How can you have an accurate view of the iPhone app market if you don't even know any consumers who use it? I know plenty of people who buy LOTS of apps. I've personally probably spent over $100 on apps of different kinds.

"Instead, EA had to sell it to me for $5.99. What a shame."

Yea it's a shame consumers are benefitting from competition and getting higher quality software in the process. I would think by now software developers would understand if you don't offer me a good product at a good price I will just steal it and you will get $0. Be happy with my $5.99 because you could have much less with this attitude.
Both the OPs list and your list, and everyone else’s list for that matter seem, for lack of a better term, white collar.

What about books not for the academic but for the eminently practical? Books on gardening, needlecraft, cooking or auto mechanics, for example? Do people who work with their hands not like to learn? Or do they just not hang out at HN?
Not usable for my needs due to a maximum of 10,000 insertions per day and 10 executions per second.
It has been said that Fortran and Cobol programmers can write Fortran / Cobol programs in any advanced language. Bit like the C programmers using C++ where they only use "//" for comments.

It is possible to architect and write enterprise software using OOP, but it takes talented and dedicated OO-ADP (analysis-design-programming) team to pull it off. Most projects don't have the time-frames to accommodate such an ambitious goal. Hence the adoption of Spring / J2EE, et al. Frameworks are always a compromise compared to carefully crafted systems.
In short, what this guy is saying is correct...but only for major mobile software houses. (Which I assume you guys aren't part of)

Here's the longer version:

I've been a mobile software developer for 6 years. I've written software for BREW, JavaME, Android, to name a few. I've also published a book about Android (msg me if you want to know the title) so I have a little experience on the subject.

What we're seeing, essentially, is new money vrs old money. In the old way, one's relationship with the carrier was valued above all things. They were the gatekeepers of their respective markets. What they said went, and that was final. But it wasn't always this way.

In the beginning of the BREW and j2me world, it was a free-for-all. Anyone could get rich with a ring tone or wallpaper app. Over the years, however, the big players crowded out the amatures and what's left is a pretty stable system where only the well connected can make any serious money. Deck placement and promotion matter above all else and it's through these two things that the carriers control their app stores.

Fastforward to today, and what you'll see is what was happening in the early days of the GetItNow/MediaMall. A few amatures are getting rich and the big guys have to slug it out with every nerd in his or her basement...The lesson, however, is that it won't always be this way. So make you're money, corner your market, and build your start up right now. The market is, in my humble opinion, stabilizing away from the basement programmer and back to the big guys.... The days of fart apps at #1 are passing, but that doesn't mean you can't make money on it in the mean time.
And I don't understand his complaining about EA not charging more for their game. Is he saying they are not making money? Or that they are not making enough money? It is odd to see someone argue that.
How Social Media Is Ruining Your Life, And How To Fix It
Alternatively, people looked at it and thought it was so absurd that everyone had to read it. :)
I would send a certified letter to your competitor notifying them that you will be filing a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) complaint, unless they transfer the domain to you by a certain day:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDRP

* http://www.internic.net/faqs/udrp.html

You may won't hear back from your competitor, but you will win the UDRP complaint after about two months. You'll be out like $1.5-2k and you can't recover costs, but you'll have the domain back.
I'm not sure I've seen the justice in using people as examples. The compliance of others isn't their problem. Awards being relative to income make sense for fines, and I guess thats what these punitive damages are.

This behavior of record companies makes it hard for geeks like me who don't support the abolishment of copyright. I think the worst that should happen in cases of copyright infringement of music is a several hundred dollar fine total, not per song.