skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: I am a PHP Newbie, Why do most developers hate it
Could you please explain me in the terms that would make sense to me. :) that Why do most people prefer Ruby/Rails or Python over PHP.

I like PHP because it's quite easy to learn, moreover, all of the major open source CMS (wordpress) are based on PHP, since most of the websites I deal with run on wordpress so it makes my job easier too. Moreover, I am believing, PHP is the most suitable language for 'web applications' because it does not rely on frameworks etc (rails) and can develop web applications at its own.

I want to know in layman terms, why Ruby/Rails or Python are better than PHP. Since I can not figure this out, perhaps due to the fact, I do not have major experience in programming languages. I appreciate if you could explain it to me.
You could make that strategy difficult by using a big, floppy bag and a scale with a small platform.

Or simply a scale incapable of measuring a weight much larger than the heaviest piece of candy.
Creating a large software project is hard and time consuming. Lets use an analogy to help visualize it: say, building Eiffel Towers.

If everyone collaborated on a few such projects, we'd have a few really great Eiffel towers scattered around.

If everyone started their own, we'd have a million piles of metal all over, and very few towers.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Facebook IDE incoming?
This isn't necessarily new news (they spoke of it last year, albeit once), but this is gaining some steam again.

I personally, would like to see some integration. But sometimes, Google just tries to G+-ify everything a bit too much. Ex: Latitude and YouYube comments.

Hopefully this will just be a nice seamless transition of the GV sms messaging into Hangouts. I could see that as useful.
Why did you pick the name "Hack"?
My biggest hope for Google IO '14 is the announcement of Kotlin as the Android language. Yes, you can already use Kotlin for Android actually but it's not well-supported and the community is small.

The benefit for Google and developers would be clear -- no more Java and Oracle shenanigans. Google already has a solid relationship with JetBrains due to the fact that Android Studio is just IntelliJ CE. They could hammer out details about who owns it, what the future looks like, etc. The transition would be easy since Kotlin already plays well with Java.

JetBrains would have a massive win as well since it would drive sales of IntelliJ like no other.
On a side note: Are there any websites that hold contests or aggregate user-submitted style changes for websites?

You could use an extension like this to always load that CSS / javascript for any web page, and people can use it to show off their web design skills while users would get a better UI for popular pages.
Pinger offers free texts, but it won't work with your Google Voice number: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pinger.tex...

IIRC Google Voice is due to remove API access for third-party apps.
Hey Google I don't want everything in Google+
Lumberjacks and pipeline workers are often required to live in encampments near the work site. Some jobs require living in isolation.

These jobs don't "preclude hiring people with families". If a person with a family worked there he'd probably do the same thing as the oil rig worker - live on site and skype his family at night.

The only difference I can see between this job and oil rig work is that the software guy probably has a few recruiters/week emailing him opportunities he likes more.
Well, if you wrote a Lisp macro that recursively called itself until the compiler crashed, you might call that 'abuse of the compiler', too...
I know -- that's why I threw automated at the beginning (inside joke). But adding "machine" at the end seems to happen a lot (and feels natural) when an acronym transitions to a stand-alone name. I wonder if there is a name for this phenomenon?
Something I didn't really learn in school, that I only picked up much later in my career, is that when applicable, applications should be built on top of mathematical models. A very contrived example would be.. would you build an ad rotator by keeping counts of all banners served and picking the next banner based on those counts and your weighting rules, or would you build the rotator on a foundation of statistics and probability with a little extra logic for handling caps and edge cases?
It seems like HN is mostly missing the point. Stallman's four essential freedoms are intended to fix proprietary software vendors abusing their users.

For example, let's say there's some "open source" software that allows you to read the code, but prevents you from distributing it. Well, what's stopping them from slipping in a nasty backdoor in their binaries if you're not allowed to compile your own clean version? I'm really shocked, and quite frankly disgusted, that you all can be so critical of free software after all that has come to light about the NSA.
Trying trivial approach of opening 2 tabs and "connecting" through that, but it doesn't seem to work.
The MtGox 500
this move would be a prelude to the cancellation of voice (after it flounders in its new forced home):

http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns

(note google voice is the highest cancellation risk predicted)
Looks like Facebook might have inadvertently turned PHP trendy again.

Expect "Why I migrated from Go to Hack" articles soon enough.

Either way, the name is very fitting. I have no use for this, but good for Facebook that they've managed to (at least to some extent) evade some of the many PHP pitfalls.
GPL: You can have my labor for free, and then profit off it all you want. Call it free money, you're welcome. But there are some strings attached and certain things you may not do.
Again, that implies a level of disinterest in the outcome that demonstrably fails to model the real actions of the real government.
He said he was normally very cautious, which is basically an admission that he wasn't being cautious this time. The fact that he chose to throw caution to the wind once doesn't mean he isn't normally cautious. Curiosity got the best of him.
The issues for a LONG TIME Voice user:

1) Voice Mailbox - What Now?

2) My mobile phone number IS my Google Voice Number (Sprint)

3) Ring at multiple locations (Isn't valuable to me anymore)

4) The google.com/voice web page is a lifesaver for searching through my text, and voice mail. (Most Needed Function)
More like 2048÷2
I've been warning everyone I can about this. Matter of fact my stylist has an second computer with XP in a bad upgrade loop so it doesn't boot. Wired ethernet, just used for browsing. I'll be putting LXLE on it, should handle everything she does on this box.
Ford tried to uproot the dealers years ago and it didnt work. I did a case study in school on this topic, I cant seem to find my source again...

Unions need to go...they hurt innovation and sometimes completely destroy it.
2048 Variants
I assume existing Voice numbers will at least continue working/forwarding? That's my main concern. I have a few different Google Voice numbers I use for different purposes, and my wife actually uses one as her primary number (against my recommendation). I've kind of expected something "bad" to happen to Voice for a while, but as long as the forwarding continues to work this isn't the end of the world for me.
It is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435569
File Sealing and memfd_create()
That's fascinating how people fear to take something new and better as opposed to old and traditional. The same has been with adoption computer. Yes, it has changed our lives and the world. But if this move hadn't been done, would we get better life? I don't think so. Getting info from Anywhere in the world in the split of the second is as good as breathing Clean air in big cities.
It seems I might have saturated my 50 connection limit or something... I'm using peerjs and it's stopped working.

EDIT: Fixed (as of 10:50 AM PST).
> would you build an ad rotator by keeping counts of all banners served and picking the next banner based on those counts and your weighting rules, or would you build the rotator on a foundation of statistics and probability with a little extra logic for handling caps and edge cases

Actually, building on a foundation of solid statistics and probability will often result in an algorithm that essentially counts views and applies weighting rules.

As another example, Pagerank has a nice theoretical basis, but power iteration reduces to perhaps 5-10 lines of C.
It generally works with anything that supports MSDTC; multiple SQL Server nodes being the most usual scenario. The one case where it starts to get hairy is when you bring MSMQ into the mix, not surprisingly. That has been my experience, anyway.
> We still have FreeBSD. Someone incorporates OpenSSH code into a non-free for-profit Windows program? Ok! We still have OpenSSH.

There is an argument that if a high enough proportion of the FLOSS ecosystem's software ends up being adopted into proprietary products, then the community could happily move to using those proprietary products instead and then there will no longer be enough momentum in development of free upstreams and we will lose the "still have FreeBSD" and "still have OpenSSH" cases.

This argument suggested that there needs to be a certain amount of GPL software in the ecosystem to prevent the balance from being tipped this way.

This is my recollection. I have not been able to find any kind of reference to this, but I hope you get the idea.
Pat McGovern, technology publishing pioneer and founder of IDG, dies at 76
Appears to be down, from peerjs.com I'm getting

{"type":"ERROR","payload":{"msg":"Server has reached its concurrent user limit"}}
If this goes through YC's total portfolio valuation has gone from $14b to over $27b in a couple months.
Read the article. They are not killing Google Voice. They are rolling it into Hangouts.
I find Voice to be incredibly useful when wanting to conduct business with someone once and then have no connection to them again. Such as Craigslist. Every time I list, it is a disposable number.
> The point, for me at least, is to increase the total volume of freedom in the world.

Yes, absolutely. This is something I rarely hear mentioned. Many people consider freedom only as a local optimisation problem. This is why some people argue that the BSD licence, or the public domain, is "freer" than the GPL. It's true that if you receive a program which is in the public domain that your personal freedom is maximised with respect to that current program. It's also true that if you receive a program licensed under the GPL that you have less personal freedom (you now lack the freedom to deprive others of the same freedom you received).

But we can do better than this. Freedom is a global optimisation problem. Locally optimised freedom is called divide and conquer. Copyleft is the best solution that I'm aware of for the global optimisation problem. It should also be noted that copyleft itself only needs to exist in order to "undo" the effects of copyright. Public domain would be a trivial solution to the global problem if copyright didn't exist, or at least didn't exists in its current form whereby it automatically attaches itself to anything and everything. Having a world where both copyright and trivial copying by each member of society exists makes this a non-trivial problem.
> I am baffled as to why you'd build your castle atop a crumbling foundation.

Because perfect is not the enemy of the good? Because "build atop a crumbling foundation" has demonstrated time and again to be, by far, the most successful way to accomplish anything in computing? Unless you have some example of perfect, now dominant, technologies that have been created ex nihilo that I'm missing? I mean we (facebook) are still using PHP and MySql, improving both. And when we need to break things out, we head into C++, the queen mother of castles on broken foundations.

> But at the same time, layering FP with a home rolled static type checking server (??) is bug prone and is certainly yak shaving (which they have time and money to do). Now they've written (1) a compiler to C++, (2) a compiler to VM byte code, (3) a corresponding runtime for each, (4) extensions to PHP, (5) a type checker, and (6) an inference engine. That's a lot of stuff.

All languages, runtimes, and standard libraries (and databases, and source control, and on and on) are "broken" at sufficient scale. You're going to be spending time rebuilding things other people take for granted no matter who you are and what language and technology you are working in. The underlying assumption that a "proper language" gives you these things for free is completely false.

> Writing correct type checkers and inference engines is kind of difficult.

Just so we are clear, you ask why Facebook didn't rewrite 10,000 human-years of code into a mythical unnamed "proper" language, but you consider writing a type checker to be "difficult". I think you might have vastly inaccurate pictures of what is and isn't "difficult".

> That way, the compiler is now almost an engine to prove your code is correct. I don't see how the same guarantee can be made with something that is just cobbled together.

Computing history is littered with dead projects from people who believed that anything less than perfect is unworkable or non-valuable.
> The question, rather literally is who has a right to tell you what license your works go under, and under what circumstances.

When ever I see this question put forth regarding GPL, I see it as extremely dishonest question. No one want to license software just for licensing sake. What some people want to do is to prohibit copying, modification and usage of work in order to create profits.

The question you actually asking is: Who has the right to tell if restrictions on copying, modification and usage is allowed on a work. It has nothing to do with freedom, and the answer is always going to be the author. Political philosophers has long since past agreed that permission to restrict other people freedom is not liberty.
Disappointed. Thought it was about solving hard technical problems first, not cultural. Figuring out how to crawl 100 million pages a day is certainly, etc. Rather than how to establish a good culture. Managing 20+ ppl is a GOOD problem to have b/c it means u most likely raised lots of funding, or got tons of revenue already.
I was thinking about it too, and so far I can't find it too. So I guess I would have to do this job tonight myself. Hang on! ;)
Can you try using Firebase? Seems like it might be a good tool for the job...
I would really have expected atleast a small number of people to have carefully looked to workout the distribution and whether there were a higher density of one type (e.g. small) at one position.

I imagine the use of a bag rather than a Jar as per the usual school fair game could make spotting these harder though (unless they're allowed to pick up the bag).
Oh, currency trading restrictions are quite possible to effectively restrict unless you're meeting in person and exchanging cash for Bitcoin. If a government explicitly bans Bitcoin (and enforces those laws), there won't be enough liquidity in Bitcoin conversions with that currency to execute trades. Many countries that restrict currency trades also restrict currency exports; so you're not likely to find much of that nation's currency abroad.

This isn't a new problem; FX traders call them restricted currencies. It's actually pretty hard to get large amounts of things like Russian Rubles and Indian Rupees; it's possible to get large amounts of currency if you're a big bank; but you often have to work a deal with the government/central bank that's not going to be in your favor.
s/app/lib/
> 3- Needed to wait for transaction to get validated in the blockchain

This process is slow and I don't see how it can possibly get faster.

The best I've come up with is you have a second money-apparatus that moves more quickly. It probably wouldn't have a lot of the currency-like properties of bitcoin. I guess the analogy is that sending bitcoin is like writing a cheque, and this faster thing would be like using a credit card.
People forget that Galton's original example was with a group of people with good domain knowledge. It would be interesting to try the experiment on a group of old-school sweet sellers.
I've heard from someone close to the project that it's an IR image of palm vein structure, which is a reliable biometric ID. a quick google search confirmed[0]: “We actually do palm vein scanning, which we think is far more secure, private and accurate than fingerprint. The palm vein scan is actually an infrared image of the customer’s palm vein patter—the second most unique form of biometric authentication. This biometric data is stored by our partner, Fujitsu,” [Jordan] Kelley said.

I agree, I know several btc enthusiasts in Austin that won't use the thing b/c biometrics.

may not be original source [0]-http://computer-medics.biz/robocoin-rolling-out-first-bitcoi...
I think PHP has some goodness that makes it the poor's man java.

Neither Ruby or Python provide that for instance.

Though Ruby is in my opinion well designed,and with duck typing,you might not need all that Java like OOP, I dont know,I feel like having interfaces makes me understand code faster and better,

Want to understand what an object does? just read the interface,no magics,no bullshit,it's self documenting and that's important,that's why you can have these huge codebases like Zend,Symfony or Doctrine and still understand how complex elements work together. And even figure out how to use them without a doc,just like Java.

I feel I cant go to Django's source code or Rails source code and understand everything easily just by reading function signatures.

And the write/refresh cycle makes iteration pretty fast during development. But yeah,PHP basic syntax sucks for sure.
Yeah, but you don't have to do it here.
I wonder if it's a good idea to read SICP for the first time in a... let's say a language that people have mixed feelings about rather than the original version of the book. I guess nothing wrong with learning Scheme but as a JavaScripter this looks too good.
Actually, Tesla is not the first auto company that is attempting to dispense of dealers. When Daewoo entered the UK in 1995, "their market research revealed that car buyers disliked dealers on commission, hard-sell, aggressive sales techniques, over exaggerated promotional campaigns and poor after-sales service" so "Daewoo set up its own dealerships with staff paid a salary rather than commission – trained, helpful sales advisors providing information rather than pressing for sales. Showrooms had crèches and children’s play areas and offered coffee. Cars were not serviced at the same location, but rather by the well-known retailer Halfords in their out-of-town service centres. The themes used by Daewoo to further differentiate itself included good value, reliable cars (3 year warranties, AA breakdown cover) with additional safety features (eg ABS brakes and side impact protection) and additional features and benefits that would otherwise be extra cost (eg power steering, no-fuss guarantees, courtesy cars or pick up and collection for services). The result was that in the first six months Daewoo sold a remarkable 14,000 cars in the UK."

http://www.palgrave.com/business/ebm/lecturers/session4/4-da...

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=33HpNgHUkb0C&pg=PA144&lpg...
Ask HN: Does anyone need a way to create stuff on maps.
... which will then require you to log in with a Google Plus-upgraded account. I have two Gmail accounts, and can't use the hangouts feature on one of them (in the browser or through their client) without enabling Plus.
The HN crowd seems to dislike (or despise perhaps?) PHP, but it's really not that bad. Yes it has a lot of warts, but it has a lot of things that make it nice for web development.

a) try your new code by saving in your editor, and hitting reload in your web browser.

b) it's very approachable. People who only know HTML and CSS can be expected to do a little bit of PHP work to integrate their changes. If you setup the right network mounts, they just need to edit files and reload (see a)

c) it's not super high overhead at runtime. If you're not using a framework, and you don't build up a crazy object hierarchy, it's not too hard to get your page out with about 10 ms of overhead beyond data fetching. For very simple webservices (fetch data, possibly from multiple sources, and do a little formatting for the consumer), I was able to get the overhead down to 2ms. You can certainly do better with other languages, but you can usually get better throughput improvement by working on getting data quickly. Btw, all the frameworks are terrible; many of them add 100 ms to the page just for the privilege of loading the includes; PHP is a framework for web programming thank you very much.

d) cleanup; you don't have to worry about it. If you don't do anything weird (c extensions, with non-preferred malloc), at the end of the request, everything is thrown away.

That said, there are plenty of things PHP isn't good at: I wouldn't run a long running process in PHP; and multithreaded PHP sounds like a bad idea.
> Some people (quite reasonably) initially thought of Hack errors as lint-like stuff that it was safe to ignore, when in fact they indicate real logical inconsistencies in code.

Interesting, thanks!

One followup: what has it been like from an ops perspective? Similar to PHP, or is there a better frame of reference?
Rails – The Missing Parts – Policies
Noted! Great work you people have done there.
System Admins Need Feedback Too
This assumes, though, that for every exploitable loophole in their page ranking there wouldn't be someone contributing efforts to fix it.

I must concede that some of their cleverness is probably exploitable. It is hard to have really accurate searches without some hacks.
Gmail is now HTTPS-only
What allows us to program in 20 years without asking a corporation for permission is people (and corps) who release their code under a free license and share it.

I have BSD-licensed code with copyright notices from the 80s on my system. Yes, I run a BSD.
This rubs me the wrong way.

> Thus, Hack was born. We believe that it offers the best of both dynamically typed and statically typed languages, and that it will be valuable to projects of all sizes.

In which way does it offer the benefits of dynamic typing? The entire point seems to be to abandon dynamic typing, which is fine, but not what that sentence says.

I'm guessing, for example, you can't really do meta-programming with Hack in the way you can with dynamic languages, is that correct?
Bring Data Governance To Your Cloud Backup Strategy
I have Google Voice. I don't use it for outbound calls, just inbound. I'm porting it out to Twilio. $1/month for keeping the number plus $0.01/minute to receive calls (http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing).

It'll be more complicated, but I'm not terribly shocked I have to replace yet another Google service with an outside solution.

Hurry up Mailpile.is! Before I have to move out of Gmail!