skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is an entrepreneur-focused website, and so I doubt you would read it without being interested in personal superiority. (Maybe that word has a bad connotation.) Everybody but the mentally-damaged wants to be better as opposed to worse, above as opposed to under. Everyone in college is trying to avoid waiting tables rather than sitting at them.
When pentium was introduced? Yeah, it looked like RISC had lost. But that was not because it wasn't a better design, but because Intel had a lot invested in the x86 and that's the processor that was used in the PC.

Now that mobile devices are becoming as important or more important than PCs, the field has changed. Also, it's possible that RISC's parallel processing advantages will matter given the current trend toward multiple processors and multiple cores.
The hacker news title is extremely misleading. I almost typed some off hand comment about Lessig's Code book and how I couldn't finish it because of such ideas. This article was good though.
I've never met Zed, but I feel like I'd enjoy working with him.
Care to explain about "Lessig's Code book and how I couldn't finish it because of such ideas"?
Eric: Don't worry Steve, I'll take care of the app-store review process for you. We'll make sure it's a clean, safe place for every kind of customer. (muahahahahah)
Really Useful Websites (Winter 2000)
"Recently I surveyed my circle of friends and asked them to suggest a couple of Web sites that they used often and gladly. The ones I didn't know I tried out a while; the ones I kept returning to I present in this annotated list. Not included are content and news sites, or good destinations with specific niche appeal. With a few exceptions I list here primarily sites that act as general purpose tools." Kevin Kelly
Excellent article. I literally laughed out loud when I read the 59% of projects had negative scores.

Another plus for this article (that you probably didn't have in mind when writing it) is that it gives readers an idea of what open source projects are good choices for practicing reading code. So many people recommend reading code, but no one ever recommends what to read. Kudos for giving me a starting place.
Good clean code is the best documentation.
While it may be true that writing good documentation is not easy, writing bad documentation IS easy, so why do so many coders not even do that?
So what's it going to take to draw UI and documentation people to open source?
What makes these poor naive souls think that the law wants to be transformed into code?

Millions of bureaucrats, both large and petty, derive their power from the complexity, ambiguity, and room for arbitrary, capricious enforcement of the existing legal code. Dislodging them would probably require mass bloodshed on the scale of the French Revolution.

And treating the presently existing legal system as a logical program can lead to disaster. See "What Color are your Bits?" (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php)
I took a parallel programming class in 1993 and programmed HP Fortran on a connection machine, but not much more than one assignment to do iterative matrix averaging in parallel. It was fun, but it was just like programming fortran on any other platform since I didn't have physical access to the machine, just remote access.
Neat. Some years back I played with self-referential del.icio.us posts. http://rubyforge.org/projects/delinquent
Would you rather have a good library with no documentation or a bad library with great documentation? I don't say that because I disagree with the OA in any way, but just to point out why people "reward" projects with crappy documentation, and why it might be a hard problem to resolve by peer pressure.
7 iPhone Apps to Manage Energy Consumption
Personally, as someone without a ton of experience, I'd love the opportunity to work with Zed. With some of the position responsibilities he's looking for, I think the chance to be mentored by him would definitely be a plus.
Didn't JamLegend come out of LaunchBox? Edit: yes they did. So they have at least one monster hit.
Pro/Cons about Django, Werkzeug and WebOb
Ryanair Is Thrifty, and Chief Makes No Apologies
Money?

Seriously, I don't know too many people whose idea of "scratching an itch" is writing documentation. There aren't a lot of documentation-hobbyists out there, as far as I know...
This decision doesn't make any sense to me. There's nothing about On2 that's worth more than ~$10m.

On2 is notorious for having fallen behind technology-wise, with VP7 falling by the wayside and VP8 seemingly being just a small upgrade of VP7--and still being vastly inferior to the best free software encoders out there. They've pretty much had to cheat in every single comparison they've posted in order to make it look as if they were still in the game.

They've spent the past seven years saying that they were "about to" come out with something better than H.264, and yet still haven't; they're almost Duke Nukem Forever-level in terms of vaporware.

A developer I know joked that their entire development team is probably worth less than Skal (former Xvid developer who currently works for Google).

Furthermore, nobody is going to buy into a new video format--even on the phenomenally unlikely chance that it's marginally better--if no hardware supports it.

The only thing I can imagine is that they bought them for their software patents, which says something about the sad state of the intellectual property world.
It really isn't. Just like a well-designed city is not the best map or the best directions. If you asked someone for directions and they started explaining the entire layout of the city instead of just telling you where to go, would you say, "Thanks man, those were the best directions I've ever been given"? No, you'd probably ask someone else.
Any submarine patent threat that does exist wouldn't be from On2, so this wouldn't resolve it if it existed.
I don't really think anything bad will happen in this example. I'm just saying in general it's one of those things that makes me uncomfortable.
A plugin such as this has a very limited and specific set of use cases. The most obvious one being a search box that says search inside, but once it receives focus it goes away.
No need to "open it up"; VP6 has already been reverse-engineered. There were planned projects to write encoders, but the adding of H.264 support to Adobe Flash ended any attempt in that realm, since VP6 is now useless.
The problem is tying the money to a good faith effort, not just signup. That's probably hard and costly to enforce.
RISC won. Intel continues to ship with CISC style artifacts, but that is only because Intel has almost never removed a feature from its microprocessors. However, the actual processor implementation is designed with CPU microcode, which is a RISC architecture. Even when you think you are doing something "CISCy" in an Intel proc, it's translated to RISC behind the scene.
Thanks for posting this!

FWIW, there's a good overview of the garbage collector and the rationale behind several design decisions in _Developing Applications with Objective Caml_ (free English translation: http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/). The book is a few versions old, but it's one of the better overall guides to OCaml I've seen.
use xmonad or wmii.
that force you to use keyboard, I use mouse just for browsing.
Remember, On2 already disclaimed all patent rights to VP3, so buying them shouldn't have any effect in that regard.
An open letter to Sam Sethi
How To Identify 'Jerk' VCs
Observations on Functional Refactoring
I think a paycheck is the only way for most projects.

Open source developers are scratching an itch. What itch would a UI or documentation person be scratching? The project would only be relevant if it's a user-facing app that they themselves use.
I get it. I agree, and called it silly. I didn't say pointless.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...
agh, get out of my head!
The web pretty much runs on JavaScript these days, so anybody disabling it should be used to dreadful looking sites. I don't think GoogleBot minds too much either.
Thing is though that h264 royalties are capped at $5m/year (for next year) http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf and even that is only in hardware - internet broadcast is license free for another 18 months, and licenses are not allow to grow in cost by more than 10% per 5 year renewal term.

So given that this acquisition is equivalent to ~18 years of h.264 royalties I doubt the motivation is purely financial.
Security vs. Usability
Funny how the company's employees need to fill in a pile of paperwork and wait for a month before they can buy/sell anything but the same rule doesn't apply to the company itself.
Such ideas like coding the law. I admit it's been a while and I never finished reading it. After having read his Free Culture book, I mean, I was so for his ideas in Free Culture, and then it was the complete opposite with Code v2. I couldn't stomach it, so I passed.

I remember ideas that would essentially be turning the internet into a fascist regime where you would have to show your credentials at every stop or be refused access to the web.

anyway, care to take a shot? http://codev2.cc/download+remix/

I got as far as chapter 10, but could never finish the intellectual property chapter, or so my bookmark tells me.
According to Mark Cuban, I am very wrong:

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/08/05/the-ultimate-movie-parado...
Is the author the same Stuart Sierra from the Clojure lists? (Just curious.)
Yahoo can escape Microsoft deal if it doesn't measure up to Google
Maybe GS is using IE6, then they can feel the wrath of the HN community.
Yeah, I think the word superiority is not the best term for what you're describing. The trouble I have with the way you present this I do not view "winning" as being a situation where others "lose". I believe I can be "better" without taking away from others. "Give more than you take" is the method I try to use.
This is an entrepreneur-focused website

Yes, so I think many participants here would consider it beneath their dignity to use the political system to gain benefits that they can gain by trading in the free market. Some people do indeed use the political system as a spoils system, but I wouldn't title someone an entrepreneur who does that.
to too much recursion too!
Metaprogramming: I think he/she is associating schema-less DBs with dynamically typed languages and metaprogramming, and static typing with languages such as C that tend to lack sophisticated metaprogramming facilities.

I'm not sure it's a valid comparison, though: OCaml has a statically typed Lisp-style macro engine (camlp4), for example. (In all honesty, though, I've never used it. Lazy evaluation, the packaging system, and other language features cover many of the same use cases.) I think it's a case of assuming the C family's type system is the cutting edge of static typing, when it's actually pretty archaic.

The point about K/V databases having a rigid schema of (key_type -> untyped_value) is a good one, by the way. Of course, association tables (AKA "dictionaries") are pretty versatile as a basic collection type - looking at Lua, Python, Awk, or Javascript. They're not ideal for all cases, but they're a good start for most.
Google Chose Jetty for App Engine
I must be missing something, why are so many people seemingly willing to ship anywhere in the U.S.?

You're giving away a DVD and on top of that you're going to pay for the shipping?
You can even cut that out by using Vimperator.
Yes. In the bio at the bottom of the article it says that he works on AltLaw, which is an open source clojure app.

http://github.com/stuartsierra/altlaw-backend/tree/master
reality and evidence

What reality and evidence are you talking about? Have you lived in more than one country?
It seems to me that Blizzard must be doing something right considering every one of their (somewhat) recent games has been a critical and commercial success.

That said, their business model of "perfecting" a product before release probably isn't something a start-up should emulate.
The time-tested market solution to this problem seems to be that a bunch of 1337 hackers create a solid open-source package that you can download for free, then an author comes along, writes a thorough set of documentation for it, and publishes it through O'Reilly for $30 per copy.

Why do people put up with this model? Maybe because nobody expects any better, maybe because $30 is short money for well-written documentation. As a rhetorical question, have you ever worked on a project (open-source or closed, internal or external) where documentation writing was anything other than an after-thought?
There's nothing about On2 that's worth more than ~$10m.

It has quite a large customer base. Brightcove, Skype, Youtube to name a few.

Obviously not in the league of H.264 though.

EDIT: but still lossmaking...http://www.on2.com/file.php?228
From my dictionary:

Startup: any business during the first year.

Not during planning, web design, hiring, marketing or any other phase.

Once you hang that "We're open" sign on your door you're a startup for the next year.

From a lemonade stand to intergalactic travel, size doesn't matter.
Right, this becomes problematic with OO code. It also is problematic with large libraries when you're trying to figure out where to start. I.e. what are the three functions I need to call to run this search engine library.
Glubble | Where families play
Youtube doesn't, and as far as I know, never did use VP6.

Additionally, I'm not so sure a large customer-base is even a good thing; everyone I've talked to who has used their VP6 encoder engine on a server farm comments on how much of a crashy, buggy piece of crap it is. This reputation is not going to help grow the business in the future even if they do produce a good product.
Your point "need a lot more back-up from elected officials and everyday members of the general public in insisting that we are all mostly Americans here" seems the right answer but I don't see how we get there from here.

While in my home town in south Georgia, I listen some to the talk radio which I assume much of the locals listen to. Most of it is various forms of veiled posturing for 2010 elections. I hear undertones of racism and classism in most of the chatter. We seem to have evolved from being openly racist (20++ years ago) to being racist without having to talk about it directly.
MySQL Cluster http://www.mysql.com/products/database/cluster/
Great essay, Paul. Interesting read. Of course there are a lot similarities between Vcs and women behaviour patterns. Angel investors are like asking a good male friend for some borrowed money...simple, direct, no hiding terms.... Good comparison. More
I will think more on your points.
More financial words definition dictionary at http://investonym.com/dictionary
It does. .msi installers act as atomic packages like other systems. Windows doesn't have a centralized system, nor does it enforce the use of msis. But they exist and provide a very nice way of managing resources.

The issue with a centralized system, of course, is licensing. Microsoft can't really have such a system because every developer wants to do their own thing.
cute. spamming a pretty crummy product here, whose recent financing spells out a huge implosion and ridiculous burn rate. with that said... GTFO.
SECWatch: SEC Filings and Insider Trading Simplified
>> Does it get no love because it's commercial and (probably) expensive?

Yes.
Fashion Runway: ERb vs. Haml
Thank you!! Finally someone who shares my sentiment!
I recently put together some trestle leg table/desk supports from them. The included, sort-of-S-shaped allen wrench worked just fine. Actually, I was impressed at how well it worked combined with its minimalist design.

I'd be cautious using a drill/power driven allen bit. The wood in my trestles is not the hardest, and I can see where too much power too quickly could damage it before one's reaction time caught up with events. If you are cautious, things should be fine. If you just set a torque limit and fire away, you could end up unhappy.
Yeah, you're right, youtube uses SVQ.
When people say "we need to all stop doing X and do Y", I am tempted to reorder the statement into a question:

Q: WHY do we reward projects with crappy documentation?

Heinlein had a statement: "any time people ask a question that starts with 'why', the answer is usually 'money'".

For values of "money" == "value", this is the answer to why we use projects with crappy docs.

If using a good codebase with crappy docs delivers more bang for the buck than using a crappier codebase, then it is in everyone's best interest to use that great codebase.

Instead of issuing blanket cries for unified action, a better approach is to figure out

(a) what the actual issue is, and then

(b) [ if I may allow my inner capitalist to vent ] come up with a way to increase value for everyone by fixing the issue in return for some mutually beneficial trade.

Part of the Free Software idea is that free software generates follow on work. Perhaps some of that follow on work should be "the un fun task of generating docs".
When are people going to stop citing the wildly inaccurate Credit Suisse report? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573281
> If you can write good code, you're probably capable of writing good documentation

Indeed, but is that the best use of time for someone who can write good code?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo%27s_law
Sounds a lot like the founder of a startup to me. IMO there's room in a company for one person of this description.

One, not two.
No, they used Sorenson H.263, aka "FLV1" (I assume that's what you meant though). SVQ1 was a vector-quantizer codec used by Quicktime in the 90s, and SVQ3 is another Quicktime format which is a ripoff of H.264.
How to build custom Linux from source code
Well, you can also encourage contributors to document their work. With Django, for example, our policy is that a submitted patch will not be committed unless it includes both unit tests and documentation in addition to the code.

This means it can take longer for a patch to be accepted, but it also means that the documentation stays up-to-date.
For basic web browsing I find that the mouse model is pretty hard to beat (I use vimperator).
Do Too Many Friend Connections Harm Unique Thinking?
And despite being publicly available on their site, slides 94 and 97 are tagged "Confidential" at the bottom.
I'll bet the YC "Make Something People Want" T-shirts would sell for lots of credits (with pickup at YC HQ)!
GS responds to critics and defends its methods, though zero hedge doesn't sound very persuaded: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/goldman-defends-its-trading...

This is outside my expertise, and its true that the market is doing very well compared to a few months ago, so big profits are not inconceivable. however, one has to wonder why Goldman needed in on the bank bailout last year (although they have since paid the taxpayer back) - did they just have a momentary lapse of genius?

On a broader level, the average person is just not going to find such consistent success credible. The best thing that could happen to GS right now is a top to bottom SEC audit, because otherwise more and more people are going to start screaming for its breakup.
What's better? Rock, paper or scissors? (I can't resist)
"Reporter". Good one.
opendns shortcuts would do the job for you (even in multiple computers) http://blog.opendns.com/2007/04/22/shortcut-the-web/
The benefit of the In-Field Label plugin is that there is never a "temporary" value in the field itself. Since the label is overlaid, the field remains empty. There is less to check for server side if a form gets submitted prematurely.
Also, has he been abrasive to people who were being nice to him?
Running Unit tests at every save in IDEs with Infinitest
Sounds like they spent a lot of time on the small features and polish. Hotel near the airport, but only after 10PM? Brilliant!

Sometimes these small things make all the difference.
I question how fair some of this is, it's natural to me at least to not want to reach across an empty page to start my drawing, it would be better if we knew also which character was drawn first, the good or the evil I think.

Being left handed, does that make me sinister? hah.
And not to nitpick as well, but I never said that entrepreneurs necessarily were. :)
Why Van Halen's contract calls for the removal of all brown M&Ms
Labels don't cause harm, but if you are trying to put together a tiny login box on a page, or a condensed form, etc. If it’s a longer in page form, you shouldn't use this plugin.

As far as Javascript is concerned, I am going to add that into the plugin. Basically, add a class that moves the label over the field when the script is run. Good point though.
Zed Shaw's code is insignificant in the face of the contribution of many, many far more talented open source developers who are far less accomplished at leveraging controversy to drive traffic and attention.

The mileage that Zed Shaw has received on a simple well-designed Python SMTP library is absolutely astounding and totally disproportionate to the complexity, novelty, and general market need for the library. His only other notable contribution is a simple, feature-constrained single-purpose micro web server that uses a scaling-limited thread-per-request architecture.
Better than win+r for run is just hitting windows which brings up the start menu. With the new start menu, this is similar to Quicksilver and Katapult and all those other things.

If you use zsh (and you really should. It is better than bash in almost every way), you can just ctrl-C to get out of searches.
Go cloud, young man
Yeah, it's not like he wrote something that lots of people used like... mongrel, for example.

[Edit: This comment doesn't really make much sense now, since the parent updated his comment to note that Zed ALSO wrote mongrel. I'd delete this comment except for reply attached to it.]
The link has great info. Thanks!
"your peers are talented twenty-something kids who cheerfully work 60-hour weeks"

Personally I've found, and read research to the effect, that the difference between skilled/knowledgeable coders can be up to 10x in efficiency. If you're a talented older guy with a family and such, then you should've put in the 60-hour work weeks when you were twenty-something, such that your knowledge and talent at your current age means you don't need to work 60 hours to accomplish the same goals.

If you weren't a talented twenty-something, and didn't work your butt off, then you're most likely not a talented forty-something, and thus won't fit in the Netflix firm anyway.
Haptics Unleashes Virtual Reality and Telepresence Revolution - Awesome Vids
I wish I could upvote this more than once. I have been ruminating on these ideas for several years; even given the ambiguities uncomputabilities inherent in a natural-language legal system, every time I go look at a piece of legislation the first thought that runs through my mind is 'why is this code so hideously untidy?'

While we will never be able (and probably shouldn't attempt) to reduce the law to something resembling C, I'm strongly of the opinion that the law badly needs wikification if only for the sake of its own long-term acceptability. The more abtruse and inaccessible a rule system, the greater the liklihood of its displacement, as every tinpot dictator is aware.
The biggest problem people have with BDB, to my understanding, is its licensing. IIRC, it's free for non-commercial use, but otherwise you need to negotiate a commercial license. It's also owned by Oracle now, and I haven't ever seen any example prices. Having to suddenly negotiate with Oracle once you get profitability makes some people uneasy.

(I don't really use Ruby, so I don't have any Ruby-specific alternatives to suggest.)
http://www.zib.de/zuse/Inhalt/Programme/eniac/index.html

Best bet is to run the jar file.