skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> you have to be conscious of the fact that the conditional probability of everything working just right at the same time is orders of magnitude smaller than something like gittip being executed with better understood tools and structures.

Sure, that's why I'm encouraged that Gittip has grown as well as it has! We paid out $41,000 our first year. We paid out $300,000 our second year. The best justification I can offer will be a strong year three. ;-)
Talentbin's market size?
But I enjoy driving. Anyway Google have got 10 years to map 4 million miles of us roads. Current status : 2 thousand miles.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2014/05/all-the-...
Yes I looked at several companies looking to see who I could use as a back-end, LuaDNS jumped out because I've an interest in Lua, but it seemed more like they'd be a competitor than a back-end provider.

That said I think I pretty much shelved the idea when I considered how hard it would be to get paying customers.
Yes good point, allow me to clarify. n is the number of keys in the dictionary (log n for the binary search). I suppose yes it is probably the more complex O(n log n) to sort the letters before the search.
It's interesting to see that Contiki is taking the lead in this space, since it was once going toe-to-toe with another open source OS for wireless embedded networked devices, TinyOS. TinyOS had a large following in the research community and I believe it was used in several commercial sensor network deployments by Dust Networks and Arch Rock and at least one other Korean startup company -- that i believe is still using it in their deployments.

Adam Dunkel has done a nice job of pulling Contiki from the obscure research community and into the commercial space and is riding the "internet of things" wave right now. We'll see if it lasts. I'm not familiar with what developments have taken place on their OS since maybe 2010 or so.
It's often the case that if something along the way is null, breaking the reference chain, it's acceptable to treat it as if that last value were null. E.g., looking up a preference that enables some optional behavior on a module, but the module itself is also optional and might not be loaded.

I really can't even count the number of times that I've done a series of null checks on a reference chain just to do one thing if I reached the final value and another thing if I never got there or got null - It's pretty rare that I'll care about an intermediate null, and if I do I've usually checked it earlier.
Using Bash for better CI runs
Why Dart and not Go? And isn't Dart's performance more in line with Javascript than Java? Android needs something that has better performance than Java, not worse, but also easier to learn and use to appeal to a broader range of developers, especially new developers, that will be growing up with Android in many countries.
Or perhaps Google should bring ChromeOS to cell phones and deprecate Android.
Thanks, this makes perfect sense. It probably also accounts for the blank tile in scrabble. Still seems like a hybrid approach could be done to avoid that huge data structure. I'll do some more reading :)
I'm sure you'll still be able to do it on a closed road, perhaps as part of a bachelor party...
If you need to know which one returns null, then do it the standard way.
Yeah - that emulator looks amazing. But dealing with large scale enterprise application in my day job I was struck with the desire to have a wee physical device (or devices) to play with - and the small scale of Contiki really appealed.
You're totally correct and I certainly don't disagree that Swift is an improvement to Obj-C. I just wish some one [who counts, i.e. not Microsoft, apparently] would just attempt to pick up the 'write once' torch.
I wouldn't say "more reliable" -- I would say "easier to reason about". Errors are just another returned variable, nothing more, nothing less. Go doesn't encourage tracking two independent flow control sets -- one for exception flow, and one for normal program flow. I have seen all sorts of complex nastiness created via the multiple flow control sets in Java.

I write server code the runs for long periods of time, the amount of times I want to blow up and get a stack trace is exceptional low, only when continuing to run is more harmful than having the service completely down.

As for just wanting it to blow up -- just ignore the error handling, it will blow up. Instead of putting the error in a variable, just throw it away using _ ... and the next dependent thing will blow up. Not very elegant, but it will remove all the boilerplate you don't like, and it will crash hard like you do like... alternatively write a crashOnError(err error) function and call that passing in error -- and all it has to do is if (err != nil) { panic(err) }
Little-known ?
Most of the time, the only things done with an error are fatal exit or panic - the same code, over and over and over again.

It looks much worse than exceptions. (Except C++ and Java exceptions, as both are exception anti-patterns in different ways.)
Recommended Summer Reading for Entrepreneurs [Slideshow]
I think it makes very much sense for Google to start pushing Kotlin. It runs on JVMs. It is compiled. It's a simple language to migrate to for Java developers, but provides more convenience than Java 8. It does not have the impedance mismatch with Java that some of the other new JVM languages have. Moreover, it's well-supported by IntelliJ and consequently by Android studio.
I suppose that would be the 'Huxley argument' (http://cdn.visualnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/orwell-...).

I try to be hopeful and positive about the fact that we have unprecedented access to information. But both the behavior of those around me and, sadly, that of myself, indicates that more information does not make us more informed.

I try to counter my tendency to consume news from sources that I already agree with, for example, but it's a constant battle, because most of my news sources either use technology to filter for me (Zite, etc.), or rely on group processes where the group is very similar to myself (Hacker News, to a degree).
What do you use as your IDE? Monodevelop or something else?
I find that a mustBeNil function is useful:

func mustBeNil(err error) {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
// or log.Fatal(err)
}
}

or

func mustBeNil(err error, msg string) {
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("%s: %s", err, msg)
}
}

;Edit: brackets
You are 100% right on unparalleled flexibility. Why limit your self to one set of flow control operators when you can have two! Also, lets make one break out of another one at any point of exception! The flexibility is endless!

You are 100% right, it is terrifyingly flexible. There is a reason exceptions as flow control is considered an anti-pattern.
Dart is more performant than Java says this benchmark: http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/05/Dart-Java-DeltaBlue However its of course reasonable to ask for Golang on Android.
It's a higher level than C and C++ and generates native code. With .NET Microsoft tried to make "a better Java than Java," and the next VB was for that target.

The advent of mobile platforms resurrected the awareness that the most effective code is the native code. Google has Go which has GC but is otherwise native. Apple obviously developed Swift since 2010 which is a high-level native-targeted language. Microsoft on their part, it seems, still has a different vision, the one still dependent on the .NET VM.

Is the .NET technology so good that the benefits of the native code should be ignored? I honestly don't know and I'd like to hear informed opinions.
Does anyone know the total number of lines of Go on Github? Without knowing that this number is meaningless.
I just updated the code, now the magic import hook is disabled by default, and can be install/remove by func.
Russian hacker engineered worldwide crime spree
Umm.. congratulations?
I don't seem to understand what about returning error values stops any flexibility. I have built several things in Golang, and you absolutely have the ability to continue to return error values ("bubbling up") until a function has the ability to handle or silence it.

I get the personal preference one way or another, but can you go into more detail about what specific features one loses with Go's approach?
If, like me, you found the idea interesting but the article a bit confused there's another good discussion on it here: http://use-the-index-luke.com/blog/2014-01/unreasonable-defa...
Yes, screenshots are important. If you include one, make it count.
I suspected that there was already a PR where what I'm suggesting was discussed. :-)

Now you've learned more about the people who are interested and the words/terms they use, you are more in a position to make that decision now. So, in some sense it was good to wait.

However, I think that if your growth has been relatively flat and you have evidence of other platforms clicking with consumers in a big way, then it may actually be time to think bigger than incremental improvements on what you're doing now.

One thing you could do is run a set of ads with 10-20 different names along with a catchphrase like:

Gittip
An economy of gratitude, generosity, and love

- or -

NameIdea
An economy of gratitude, generosity, and love

And then see how well you perform. It would be a fairly affordable way to determine if you have a problem or not.
Except that Dart compiles to JavaScript so you can still 'write once' and have it run anywhere. Also I don't really see how Dart is "proprietary" since it is being standardized in Ecma TC52 and is licensed under the BSD license.
Crafty! I might be mad, but I'm avoiding interactions, professional or personal, with Facebook. Would be nice if http://fanharvest.com (clickable!) offered integration with other networks.
Just to explain the collaborative editing a bit…

For every commit on a versioned document (or branch more precisely), CoreObject will compute an object graph diff, and save it as a new revision in the store.

For the collaborative editing, we have a distinct and optional synchronization layer, that can observe in-memory changes to versioned documents, and push the latest object graph diffs over XMPP, between a server (the person sharing the document) and some clients (the invited persons).

For some more explanations, you can check: http://coreobject.org/technotes/#collaborative-editing

Also CoreObject is not strictly limited to GUI or traditional desktop applications, we plan to port it to iOS, and nothing prevents you to use it in a command-line application.
@whit537 - marketing guy's opinion

I would have the front page tell a story. Something like. OpenSSL Heartbleed bug affected millions of users because millions of software developers use this free software. The team behind it only received $2,000 a year in donations prior to the bug being found. There are 10,000s of software projects that you use every day building your tech stack. You should be investing in the development of those tools by helping to sponsor those projects and "tipping" the developers directly for their work.

I might then put a table that lists server projects, language based projects, database projects - that dives people into the next layer. For instance Lua -> Lua page with some of the big Lua projects listed.

Tell a story. You don't have to pay "enterprise licenses" for free software, but the tools you use need constant development. Anything you give helps those tools get better.
I think Swift to Obj-C is more like Scala to Java. Google should probably bring Scala to the Android ecosystem.
First time I've heard the pointy haired boss was essentially all about hustle.
I'd say "Bring Scala to Android" would be more comparable? Bring Clojure and I'd say you're stealing a lot of developers away who think Swift is a half measure.
You know, I spent all night pondering your statement, and I came to the conclusion that you're either incredibly sheltered and immature, or a complete ass.

First off, it's not the same. There is no, or very low incentive for gun owners to commit crimes; especially when compared to the possible consequences.

If there are no protections for workers, though, there is every incentive for businesses to abuse their employees. History proves this statement true. That is, of course, unless I'm just not aware of a number of businesses who willingly limited their abuse before the labor movement.

And yes, the average startup and google and other tech sector businesses offer good perks. . . . That is not normal for a majority of careers, you know that, right?

And this, "Low skilled jobs? Who cares about them." Is either one of the most terrible statements I've read on HN, or one of the best trolls I've seen; boy, oh boy, did it get me worked up.

That is a terrible way to live. Do you understand how much of your life relies on low skilled jobs? Do you buy your food from a grocery store? Do you shop for clothes? Do you purchase anything that you don't personally create? At some point, low-skilled workers interacted with the goods you purchase.

The attitude that the only reason people work low-skill jobs is because they aren't smart or capable enough for anything else is very, very immature and incredibly ignorant. Specifically, your attitude that they apparently deserve to be treated worse and (in the context of our conversation) deserve to be abused by their employer because of their low-skilled jobs is awful, just simply awful. You should be ashamed.
The long method names really have nothing to do with Objective-C, and all with Apple's naming conventions...which are the same with Swift.
I love this. It makes perfect sense to me that intelligence need not be rooted in one physical object, the brain. Rather it is a property of certain kinds of system, regardless of any particular instantiation.

Why are people so conservative in their thoughts, so dismissive of new ideas? I adore new ideas, revel in them. What is wrong with these people, that they are so readily dismissive. How can they be so crudely obtuse? To argue that the same behavior in an animal as a plant should have different terminology is a non-sense. It is so obviously a non-sense that one must doubt their motivation.
Privacy By Design
Related, I loved watching pg writing an essay live : https://code.stypi.com/hacks/13sentences
"We need a pony. And the moon on a stick. By next Thursday."
The thing is that it's not huge. A packed in-memory representation should still be easily traversable and take up less than the space of a plain list of words. See also http://sun.aei.polsl.pl/~mciura/publikacje/lexicon.pdf for more ideas about in-memory lexicon representation.
Does that mean this comment is incorrect? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7844350
Though I understand their reasoning to a degree, it does seem perverse that they adopted the most pedestrian bit of java -- the language -- while jettisoning the crown jewel -- the JVM.

It hasn't been trivial to get other JVM languages working on Android, and ironically that list now includes Java 8.

Oracle are largely to blame, I suppose.
Obvious lie. What in the history of the human kind was worse than Cambodia, Cultural Revolution in China or North Korea today? Nazi Germany? Still had 'socialists' in their party name...
That would be a game changer.
It would be complete insanity from a branding perspective to take an absolute blockbuster brand like Android and to deprecate it in favour of ChromeOS which hardly anybody has even heard of outside the tech scene. Android has a name recognition on par with some of the biggest brands out there.
A lot of Android developers don't like Java because of its syntax. Dart seems very similar in syntax to Java (which I assume was intentional, but the wrong thing to do)...so not much improvement there. No wonder Dart hasn't been getting anywhere near the excitement Go has received.

What Android needs isn't just a slightly better Java that isn't owned by Oracle, but something more like Python that has the performance of C++, for the next generation of developers. If they're going to deprecate Java in Android and cause everyone a lot of grief over it anyway, they might as well do it right, and for something truly exciting to make people rally around it.
this, plus slides are intended to accompany a presentation - I don't bother to watch videos of presentations though. I'd really prefer a transcript.
Snowden: UK government now leaking documents about itself
This is the End… of Norton Zone
Chad, the passion and effort you've put into your project are clear. I hope it will eventually become beneficial to you, if not directly, then down the road through the doors it must have opened to you. That being said, I think I'm not the only one who would have advised you to let go of something that is half dead (edit: meaning "vegetative" by comparable standards). Also, wouldn't the mission be better served as a project at github rather than a profit seeking enterprise? Wouldn't Reddit gifts arrangement be the right model? After all once you put a link at the place where people go magic is possible. Just something to think about. Sunk cost is tricky but it is never too late to make the right decision. Ok. Almost never....
Kudos to them for doing it even though it goes directly against their business model (mining your information). I guess they're betting that the vast majority of people won't use this.
This is an interesting variation of a semiotic commutation test, although while not honoring emergent grammar (Paul hopper) as much as I do.
Device allegedly jams Google Glass wifi access
5 and 7?
Show HN: Behind The Overlay, a chrome extension that hides overlays on any site
Yes, that can definitely be the case. It's just a hard problem in general. So far the explicitness of Go's error handling reminds me a little bit of checked exceptions in Java: I appreciate the idea but I'm not sure it's the best thing we could do.
BigBang blunder bursts multiverse bubble : Nature News and Comment
Thanks! Want to join our marketing team? :-)

One way or another, I've added your comments with a +1 to https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074.
I used Orkut for a few months and then switched to Facebook. I don't even remember what Orkut was like ;)
So what you're saying is that the fundamental core of Java, Scala, Clojure are anti-patterns ? That's a strong statement for a platform that almost every enterprise application uses.

Go's error handling approach is also flow control. You receive an error and have to go and do something different based on that error. With Go it is explicit. With say Java you have the choice of being explicit or implicit. Flexibility is vital when you are working on large applications where the business logic varies wildly throughout the system.
> emacs 'org' mode for a while but the learning curve was just too steep for me.

What's to learn? Pretty sure the core of org mode including tables, todos, times etc can be picked up in 15 mins
How GitHub rival GitLab is building a business with just 0.1% paying customers
I know it uses a B+ tree. I wanted to mention that the article doesn't mention them at all.

I'm familiar with the High Performance MySQL book -- I work with one of the authors :).
Please, pull that `panic(err)` line. It is widely accepted that is bad practice, and something you should not do.

You panic when a program is expected to crash because of irrecoverable corruption. Only.
Please remove the facebook tracking snippet from the url before posting on HN.
more likely both icons were inspired by the bird's distinctive silhouette
If I am not wrong, Twitter is coming pretty soon. They also have something called Folwd http://folwd.com/ that allows you to keep your social profiles updated.
"a large fraction of minimum wage workers are teens" -- how large? source? in the end, it does not matter - if they don't need to work, where is the problem? why should we even encourage them to work, to bring down the price of labor of those who already earn the least?

the data on minimum wage you quote is incorrect. i happen to know that Austria does have minimum wage, just not a single global one. i was offered work there, and then found out that they have minimum wages defined per occupation (country-wide collective bargain), and there exists a minimum wage for programmers in Austria. i actually found that unnecessary :D i believe in Sweden there is a similar situation, the unions are very politically strong there. as for Germany, when exactly did it have high unemployment, and how high? this is very sketchy. also, a factor for Germany is that a lot of people work part-time, which has reduced reported unemployment here.

but i must admit, even if unemployment is slightly greater, i don't care. because i believe that removing minimum wages in those countries that have it, even if it would hire some people, would cause a big drop in the pay and quality of life of many, many more people who would have been employed anyway. this is something that ultimately needs empiric check (Germany is also soon about to introduce minimum wage so there's another opportunity), but you already waved that off - what was it you said, we should not be fooled by lack of evidence to support your claim? :D

lastly, yes, i do not have economic background so i cannot phrase things in expert terms, but i would appreciate hearing some reason why it does not make sense. the point is, since demand is always equally present, and the supply is limited and independent of the demand (that is what i found incredible in the comment above - a company that offers great pay will easily find employees, but it will not choose to hire more simply because a lot of people applied, which is specific for labor markets), then the price of low-educated labor simply goes down until it hits some bottom, i.e. it becomes too low to earn a living, or it becomes comparable to social security payments. is it really so hard to grasp? or are you simply trying to discredit me and avoid the whole argument?
Scala works perfectly fine.
Oh, you are not the only one who is avoiding Facebook now. But this tool got so much more useful once Facebook announced pay-to-play for advertising.
Good idea on testing names with ads. If/when we decide to rebrand I'll keep that in mind.

Our growth has only slowed in the past few months. We doubled three times in the 16 months before that.
How far your paycheck goes in 356 US cities
Basis boo boo: a cautionary tale of evil and infinite loops
Verbose and explicit is what made java checked exceptions the sign of the demon for some programmers. The err pattern in GO might end up the same.

In the end I think the problem is that there are two separate classes of programs. The first is where crash on exception is tolerable and even a desired property (or blindly and optimistically continuing). The second is always deal with exceptions and any error no matter how rare and unlikely they are, and attempt to recover and deal with them properly. No one language and standard library can really please both sides.
Clojure already runs on Android, it's just dog slow.
Golang would be sweet on Android. It'll still need to run on top of the Java runtime but that's not too bad given that ART will be the default rather than Dalvik.

That's not to say Java is as bad as ObjC however ;) But something less verbose and more modern like Golang will be a great option to have.
> Because I know I'm supposed to "handle errors" but
> all I really want is the program to blow up and hand me
> a stack trace . . . Has anyone come up with a sane
> approach to that problem?

Yeah, stop doing that :) Code your error path first, add your program logic afterwards. It's a shift in the way you think when writing programs, but it's a good shift and it makes your code more robust.
It would be nice if that got added to PwdHash[1] extension[2]. PwdHash chrome extension currently seems to just try to capture all keyboard events while the master password is entered in a site's password box. Also, it seems to me that it runs in the site's context.

[1] https://www.pwdhash.com/
[2] https://code.google.com/p/chrome-pwdhash/