skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The majority of the web isn't powered by Ruby now. We have a hodgepodge of PHP, C#, Java, Perl, static, Node, Rails and other Ruby frameworks, Python, any I missed?

People have been proclaiming the death of Java for how long now? And it's still going strong. I'd argue that Ruby will last even longer than Java because it's a nicer language and has more room to grow. Ruby you can port to other runtimes, Java, why bother? It won't outlive the JVM.

The only thing I think that could replace Ruby is Lisp. Maybe in 10 more years Racket will where Ruby is today. I doubt it. By that time, Ruby will be where Java is.
Is there a such thing as a monoglot Perl dev? I've never heard of it.
The final temperature of water right after the ice melts will be ~0°C.
While I understand the reasoning behind the Elusive Firefighter, I think the example is rubbish. Set the license limit to MAX_INT. Surely two billion licences should be enough, and the problem is solved (with a high degree of confidence) within minutes. I don't know the codebase, but disabling checks may also suffice.

Depending on the company, refactoring legacy code is like walking through a minefield to get to a territory that isn't really desired by the higher ups. High cost, low reward.

As for the rule "If you see something wrong fix it properly!" I disagree in some cases. If you are a legacy maintainer, usually something is broken and management/clients want it up ASAP. The proper fix is rarely the fastest. Beyond that, you have to be careful when advising refactoring. If you advise it too much, in cases that don't really need it, management may not take your advice as seriously when there really is a problem.
You can certainly ask these questions. In fact, as a startup co-founder myself, I would find a prospective employee asking these questions to be a very good sign as it demonstrates that:

1) You understand what a startup is and how it works. Most people don't. It's easy to forget it when you've been in the startup world for a while but tech startups are a very strange type of business that most people simply don't understand. Angel / VC funding, valuation, runway and exits are completely foreign concepts to most people. If you demonstrate that you understand what a startup is and yet still want to work for one, then you're more likely to be the type of person who will stick around even when times are rough.

2) You're actually interested.

And if I was to apply for a job at a startup, I would expect the founders to be completely transparent about these things. Something's fishy if they try to change the subject.
This Youtube video was recorded and published on July 17th, 2013. It does NOT pertain to recent events.
Sadly true. In this age of Responsive design, figuring out an optimal line limit for code samples is a tricky task indeed.
I have ended up with MySQL and PostgreSQL on nearly every linux I've installed. It is baffling to me that someone would decline these tools in favor of text file drivers or SQLite, with the exception of using SQLite as an embedded config database or something.
Well, you specifically said that if someone had gone beyond the 80 character limit, its probably because they needed to rewrite / reword / subfunctionize something. If you've never had a problem with it, dare I ask, how are you qualified to make that call, given you've never had to face that challenge?

Anyway, that example is straight from the sqlalchemy examples, which is arguably (other than the extremely wordy Zope) most commonly used python orm around.

Wordy database interaction is really common point this sort of thing, and it's hard to refactor/rewrite your way out of it; that's the only real point I'm making.

I personally think strict adherence to line length limits reduces code quality; you've got to use common sense for it.
Luckily not a single student ever left traditional education with a single misconception about anything, or else this would seem like a ridiculously slanted article.

edit: on re-reading, he's still clearly using Khan and MOOCs as eye-catching buzzwords, symbolic of "bad education", but a) he mention (in passing) offline education having similar issues, and b) he intends to talk about how online education could fulfil his pet theory of learning in another article, so it's not quite the usual reactionary post, although it does lean that way.
Or perhaps people are treating it like a big deal because it turns out that the Stasi actually isn't here.
Not super related to the content, but I love the "Show Code" button at the bottom of the article. So often sites either show code inline and break up my reading, or just dump the whole thing into a github repo, which loses context. That button is awesome, because I can read the whole thing to understand the problem, then review the code the next time through with better context.

Awesome!
Programming jobs are designed to make programmers miserable.
Maybe 12-14 years ago? Perl's heyday was the turn of the century, I think.
If I were hiring (I'm not), I would be delighted if you asked those questions. Other questions you should ask:

- What are your sales goals? How do you intend to hit them?

- Do you keep and maintain a cash flow statement? (Not having one, and not updating it regularly is a red flag - its job is to tell you when the money runs out)

- Who is responsible for sales? Do they have the experience required? If not, what's the plan to make up for the shortfall?

- Do you share your business goals with the entire company? How do you ensure that the entire team is aligned with those goals?

- What are the biggest challenges you're struggling to overcome?
Absolutely, although it's worth noting that loss of floating polar ice will change the albedo of the earth, so there's a positive feedback loop there that may result in further warming & consequent melting of land-based ice elsewhere.

So melting of the floating polar ice will not directly result in raised sea levels, but 2nd round effects of the melt might do so.
I wondered how long it would take for Microsoft to basically make their own Android phone with MS only services on it. This is the beauty of open source. This is actually I think a good thing and it sort of reminds me of Apple having the X86 OS X build in the background and finally releasing it. It's not quite the same deal as Android is not replacing Windows Phone anytime soon, but it's an interesting way for Nokia to keep pace in key markets they need to be in.
> differentiated experience

I still can't believe that decision makers actually believe that customers want that. Sure, it makes for great bullet points on the packaging, but most consumer in the lower segment just want something that is familiar to all the other stuff they have. Things you will never hear an Android user say: "That Samsung Whatever Cloud App is really useful.", "That second App Store of my carrier is full with great Apps.", and "I wish those buttons were even more different from my old Android phone".
"You said legalizing marijuana, not all drugs."

Well, it wasn't me who said it in the first place, but that aside...

"legalizing all drugs is much, much different issue."

I'm not sure I agree - this is arguably the first step on that path (if we wish to continue down that path). I agree that there will be different outcomes.

That said...

"I don't think the profits would be reduced at all, simply replaced by other products."

I'm not sure you understand how business works. For that to happen, someone needs to start purchasing substantially more cocaine and methamphetamine. If the cartels are capable of making that happen, why aren't they making it happen now?
It would be nice to have Show Code at the top, along with a note that some of the code has been hidden. I like seeing code examples as I'm reading through.
WTF people!? Why is everybody discussing what the water is going to do when the article is about online education?

To stay on topic: I agree with the article, watching videos often leaves you with feeling of understanding but being unable to answer questions which require actual comprehension
Not all of Netflix's infrastructure is on EC2. They have in house built stuff to deliver content at the speeds they need.
Yes! I found exactly the same with my ZTE Firefox OS phone. The touch handling was extremely poor. I had hoped it would be resolved in an OS update.

That said, I believe that even a slow Firefox OS phone that at least handles touch interaction elegantly and responsively has a good chance of succeeding in displacing feature phones in developing markets.
Interesting and challenging article about most current online education offerings. It would be interesting to see if the problems of maintaining engagement in a MOOC were at least partly due to students realizing that some or all of the requirements for authentic understanding were not being met.

As I understand it, there is a different MOOC philosophy that has not gained much support (probably because it's much harder to scale) - the connectionist approach. Perhaps that would support some of the requirements.

(PS: interesting that many of the comments here try to rise to the ice-cube challenge...)
thanks but what does "expected conversion rate" mean exactly? it isn't defined and I couldn't find that term anywhere else on the site.
EDIT:
ah, ok, got it. but why is their default expected conversion rate set so high? sheeesh

most people have conversion rates between 1-3%
The way to understand this, for me at least, is to think of the hole left by the ice cube and to fill it with water from the melted ice cube.

That makes it much more concrete.
In what way would you write regexes verbosely? I'm actually quite interested in the idea because regexes can be confusing to write at times, and it's difficult to remember which form to use where, if you use them in many languages/interfaces.

There are tools like Regexper[1] that let you visualize the regex as an automata graph, and there are tools like text2re[2] which will allow you to put in text and visually generate a regex to match it.

I feel like better regex tools should exist on the command line, and it's potentially a great place for such tools to be rapidly developed and adopted. There are GUI tools for this like poirot[3], but the command line still exists because of its accessibility, uniformity, and extensibility.

links:

[1] http://www.regexper.com/

[2] http://txt2re.com/index.php3?s=24%3AFeb%3A2014+%22This+is+an...

[3] http://www.espgraphics.com/poirot/
Unless the Internet companies (Netflix, Google, Amazon, Apple...) suddenly realize they, also, have their entire business models at stake and start lobbying just as hard as the telecom companies.

Netflix is there. The rest don't seem to realize how screwed they are, yet.
Normally I'm happy to jump into a "bash US healthcare" conversation, but as someone who recently experienced exactly this issue off-insurance, I can tell you that office visit + procedure runs anywhere from $200-$400 out of pocket. Since it's a 5 minute in-office thing, most of that cost would be hidden behind a copay to those with decent insurance.

Nothing like 500Rs, to be sure. But not quite four figures yet.
We had a very funny example of this at my school paper. Our football team was one game away from a winless season, and many people were demanding that the head coach be fired for this terrible performance[0].

As a joke, someone referred to Coach Wilson on a pull quote as "head coach of the Columbia football team until Monday morning". This was supposed to be removed before print, but nobody caught it.

To make matters worse, the coach actually was fired that weekend (not even 24 hours after the team had its only win of the season)! That led to an incredibly awkward retraction: ("This was a joke, and we're sorry... but apparently we were right, even though we didn't know it"[1])

This sort of stuff goes on in newsrooms all the time. I'm actually surprised that these mistakes don't happen more often, given how common these are, and given that most copy-editing happens in the wee hours of the morning, fueled by caffeine and sleep deprivation.

[0] Don't have time to scan through the PDFs of the printed versions (IIRC it was only in the printed version), but it was one of these articles: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/tags/norries-wilson

[1] I was on the board of the paper at the time, so I can confirm that we actually didn't have prior knowledge of this - it really was just a very amusingly-timed joke.
String[] names = { "UNUSED", "Monday", "Tuesday", ... }
try {
return names[i];
} catch(ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException uhoh) {
return "???";
}

It's so easy...

Look, at least it's not a pile of @Inject DayOfWeekLookupAdapter dayOfWeekLookupAdapter with attendant 100kB Spring XML config, of which the unit tests will have their very own special cut and pasted copy. No, I'm not bitter at all.
Imagine there are 10 people in a room, and 9 of them decide that murder is wrong and should be punished. Does that mean the remaining one has to accept that murder is wrong, because they have "collectively decided" that murder is wrong, or does he have the right to commit murder?

Of course, the 9 people in the room have a sound and reasonable argument that murder is wrong (perhaps their argument is "it infringes the rights of others"), just as, we may presume, the nine chili-eaters have a sound and reasonable argument they must all eat the five hottest chilis. But in each instance, the tenth individual began from different premises and did not arrive at their conclusion (maybe he is an Incan time traveler and human sacrifice is part of his religious beliefs, and he does not see that there is any objective basis for human rights.)

Enforced collective agreement and societal norms are necessary for society to exists whether you like and agree to it or not. If that makes you a slave, then all of mankind has been enslaved from the dawn of time save the loners in the wilderness.

One of the libertarian's "collective agreements" is that every individual has certain rights.
I failed at finding advertising. That's okay – that means I learned something
Don't join (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_%28Unix%29), sed, and grep get you most of the way there?
Absolutely. I'd hate to see Rust go through a Python 3 debacle, or deal with the .NET approach where half the framework libs are completely superseded by new libs in every major release.
Ask HN: How can I get 100 paid users?
Hi guys,

We run a really simple site called getinspired365.com - it dishes out daily doses of inspiration. These are in the form of pictures and quotes, or really cool videos.

We've got 2500 registered users who received a 'daily dose of inspiration' from us and we get around 1000 users coming to the site each day. We had a few people comment saying that they really liked the design of the site and that they'd like the same style template for their site.

We thought that was a cool idea and a neat way for us to try and monitise. We built this page - getinspired365.com/getyourown that lists why you may want a template from us, our different price plans and the ability to order a template.

So far we've had 7 customers without us doing an awful lot of pushing. This has come from our existing user base.

We want to really push it and try and get 100 paid users. In your opinion what are the best ways of trying to sell our template to people. Some thoughts we had was:
- Contact existing user base to see who fancies a template.
- Offer referrals (if you get a mate to get a template we'll give you the first months money)
- Advertising

We just wondered if people had any advice on how they got users to pay for their service. We are constantly trying to improve our product so it may be a case that we really try and push it once it is in better shape. We're just after some advice!

Oh, and feel free to order a template!

thanks!
I found Lorem Ipsum on the side of a Chipotle bag not too long ago. I thought it had to have been satire, but now I realize that it's just incompetence.
Yeah, with Java DateTime API being royally fubarred [1].

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/1969442/60188
Does it need to be a "majority"? There are applications being written now, in Ruby, that are intended to still be maintained 20 years from now. Will the "new hot language" be something other than Ruby in 20 years? Well, yeah, by definition.
Yes, it does. As long as it's not resting on the bottom, the bouyancy of the ice underneath the top ice will push a little more of the top ice out of the water. The amount of ice matters for how far out it sticks, but the number of pieces it's divided into doesn't matter.
In my neighborhood I can choose between them. I believe Brighthouse owns the lines, but I can get Comcast service over them.
A little off topic but my advice is to have any agreements be explicit and in writing. Probably obvious to some, but it's easy to get a good conversation going, just go with the flow, and not follow up afterwards with an explicit agreement around terms/expectations. In a startup this can be even more important because you may find out they don't have the resources to give you what you want.
I think it's more a relative point. If you want to major in Philosophy/Art History/Religion and get a good job, only a small handful of schools matter, and UVa isn't one of them. UVa also isn't on the list of schools that NYC Upper East Side parents fight over. (I'm still happy to see it when a resume crosses my desk though)
No it wouldn't. The outcome will be the same regardless of the temperature, given the context of this problem. And the context is that the ice cubes are FLOATING, and that the temperature is hot enough for the ice to melt.
A New Approach to Cyber Incident Response
If you sign as Foo and people address you as Foo I wouldn't say that you fooled them.
Not a great day to be a Libertarian.

When their domain goes up for sale, I'm going to buy it and start an online exchange for Magic cards.
Lumia 520 isn't low-end hardware, it's just being sold at a low-end hardware price (and only in some countries). Big difference.
Learning Android Development: an iOS Developer’s Perspective
Good point. Small data set, but.... The #1 and #2 ranked students in my high school class both were single kids (no siblings) with helicopter parents who would intervene when they got poor grades. Both underperformed later in life.

The outperformers did get a few Bs along the way (or many) but to your point had intellectual parents. In some cases they enforced studying. In others it was providing early access to computers.
I disagree with the article's assertion that, because I'd forgotten Archimedes' principle, I never truly understood it. I'd successfully worked the problem far enough to realize that my missing piece of information was how much of the ice cube stayed below water, then I watched the video and reacquired that information. No problems here, and the KA video was plenty sufficient for my needs.
Top 5 Tallest Building In World
This is a reminder to all the junior developers (and some of the forgetful senior developers) as to why you never put anything in testing text that you don't want the world to see. Having users see "Fucking FuckBalls" as placeholder instead of "John Doe" is alarming and will lead to quite the awkward discussion with your boss.
It isn't a trick question. The article gives all three possibilities.
No matter which method you adopt, you cannot eliminate false positives entirely. You merely decrease / control the proportion of them.
I think the point is that Android has become quite resource-intensive an performs very poorly on low-end devices. Firefox-OS is intended to be extremely light and to perform well on even the most anemic hardware.
You should study Haskell types. Debugging anything in Haskell without a basic understanding of the type system is daunting.

Additionally, Yesod relies heavily on quasiquoting and template haskell which can lead to some very cryptic code and errors. I generally prefer Snap for this reason and many others.
Yea, and we're supposed to believe that no QA person did any testing on this either.
The question also completely ignores evaporation, which, since we're waiting for ice to melt, could be significant to the problem.
spindritf, not necessarily, we don't know the initial temperature of the water and on a hot day (as per the problem statement) the ice-water system will be absorbing some of the external energy.

In practical world, more likely that water will start at around 20-25°C mark and will be considerably cooler once the ice has melted but still above 4°C. So the water volume is likely to shrink a tiny bit due to the rising density and then some more due to ice and water evaporation.

But the effect might be barely noticeable and for some time water will stay level with the edges after ice melted.
All that makes them good platforms, but how about desirable ones…
Commandos 2 is one of my favorite games! I wish there were more games with the same mix of stealth and strategy being made.
It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day

I'm hesitant about that comparison - server software and desktop software have little in common. Oracle could demand what OS it ran on because the server was likely doing little else - a desktop machine needs to run a wide variety of programs.
Sadly, we live in a world where it's quite possible that phones like these are nothing more than a ploy to lure NSA targets in. They need to get people, who have something to hide, to feel safe again.
Carl Icahn Accuses Marc Andreessen Of Conflicts Of Interest As EBay Board Member
Gmail adds unsubscribe button to rid your inbox of promotions
Quick overview of Hiburo [video]
And the JS promise library in turn collided with the name of Q, the array-processing language, which itself collided with the name of another programming language named Q (http://q-lang.sourceforge.net). If you're naming a tech-related thing after about 1980, the single-letter names are all taken...
I will not complain if WhatsApp makes an attempt at killing all the shitty chat apps such as Skype that are riding on their initial success but suck as a product. It boggles my mind why skype randomly pops notifications on my iPhone for messages sent to me months ago.
"Oh come on.. :p It's my laptop, my property."

Yes, that's my point. But it's your laptop by social convention. There are very good reasons for that social convention, and I would oppose most changes to it, but there's nothing intrinsic to the state of the world other than what's collectively in our heads and extensions thereof that makes that laptop yours or it "right" that you continue to possess it.

'"We" can't collectively agree on anything, because we're all individuals, and we all have the exact same rights as everyone else (which don't include making binding decisions on behalf of complete strangers).'

I disagree. Yes, we are all individuals. Yes, we all have the same rights. But when my rights and your rights (or my interests and your interests) collide, we need a mechanism for collective decision making.
Couple ideas:
time sharing marketplace/factory/warehouse. 3d printer, other maker tools, cnc, robots to move stuff around but virtual.
delivering take'n'bake pizza.(costs are pretty low for a large delivery area).
doorhangermarketplace.com - taskrabbit but focused on doorhangers.
I don't know how get Ruby 2.1.1 in Windows. RubyInstaller/RailsInstaller seems to be less updated
Mining Experiment: Running 600 Servers for a Year Yields 0.4 Bitcoin
The Cloudant CTO also commented on the CouchDB developer's list:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/201402....
You're missing the point: the last mile network is shared across all of those companies. Ergo, the company that actually owns the last mile network has no competition on that last mile network and no incentive to upgrade that network.