skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Semantic web? I think that was 2005, not 2009. The web of data is available through APIs, not semantic markup mixed into the view.
Second hand MP3 player contains US military secrets
Contra is Reborn – Wii Virtual Console Games Release for 9/07/09 | 8-Bit Vets
I don't trust a Windows server to provide reliable uptime. I have no other arguments that I wish to make.
I haven't really paid attention recently, but at a conference several years ago a former Microsoft sales rep said that nearly every "enterprise" product they sold required accompanying SQL Server licenses.
Twitter to Launch URL Tracking?
To be fair, no language lets you just "write code" and have it run anywhere near optimally. The programmer always has to be aware of what the compiler is going to do and work with it.

I've written a fair amount of Haskell, and done a lot of this type of optimization, looking at the core (intermediate representation) and fiddling with pragmas, unboxing, strictness, etc. I've put Haskell on the back burner and gone back to C++ because I spent SO MUCH time doing this. Maybe I'm not being fair, and in another 5 years I'd be able to predict what GHC is going to do as well as I can predict what a C++ compiler will do. But for now, I can't justify the expenditure in time it takes to get a large piece of Haskell code (more than a microbenchmark) to perform at the C/C++ level. If you write idiomatic Haskell you're tracking down stack overflows (the Haskell kind, not the C kind) and misfired optimizations, and if you're writing C-in-Haskell you're better off just writing C. In the end, I think Haskell just isn't (yet) the best language for what I was doing (image processing, graphics, 3d modeling, etc.)

(The short reply to your comment is: yes, you the application writer have to be very aware of what GHC is doing if you want C-level performance.)
They are, though in a pretty limited fashion, and chang eis at giant company speed.

It's also not their core competency, which has always been fulfillment, despite what they may wish.
This article was all over the map in terms of numbers. Here at Expat, we develop on the Microsoft stack whenever we have a choice in the matter, including for our own products such as Twiddla, Blogabond, Rootdown, S3stat, etc. and here's the breakdown of what we pay for what:

Tools:
$399 total. For Everything MS makes, for every developer in the shop, once every 2 years. That's what it costs for an MSDN license through the EmpowerISV program.

Servers:
~$2000 per production box. That's Small Business Server, which comes with production licenses for SQL Server, Exchange Server, and pretty much all the backend stuff you could want.

And that's it.

Assuming we buy a new server every 2 years, that means we pay about $100/month for the privilege of developing on the MS stack. Put another way, that means that the MS stack need only gain us 20 minutes worth of productivity every month to pay for itself.

Like I said up top, we build on the MS stack whenever we have a choice in the matter. It's just a no-brainer.
The idea of mentor/mentee and master/apprentice relationships is way overdue in the software industry. It's good to see an author try to get out what's involved in a good relationship.

I didn't find a lot of new material here and it seemed rambling, but since I'm in the business I'm not much of an impartial judge!

In the future, I'd rather see the top 3 key traits of a mentor instead of the dozen or more items we got. Also why these traits were chosen. It seems one of the qualifications for being a mentor is being able to give lots of options and bullet points. I think the harder part is filtering it out and making it easy for noobs. Just my opinion, though. Thanks for the article!
If the engine cuts off the helicopter doesn't necessarily plummet to the ground. See autorotation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation_%28helicopter%29
Ask HN: HN on the iPhone?
I apologize if this topic has already been discussed, but I am curious to know how you iPhone users read HN from your phone.

I read HN many times a day using my iPhone, I follow links and I read comments. However, the design of the HN front page and comment threads is not really optimized for reading on a small device. I've experimented with browsing the RSS feed from HN, but it isn't really that much better. I get a bit better readability on the front page, but I can't find anything else than the top 30 posts. The comments are not included in the RSS, there is just a pointer to, well, this page.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has done any thought experiments on, or maybe even implemented, an iPhone-friendly wrapper for HN?

I'm thinking a site styled for the iPhone which takes HN data and presents it in a more readable format. Perhaps users could customize the CSS to make it fit their needs and their mobile devices (not just the iPhone). Sort of like a GreaseMonkey-on-a-server.

Has this been discussed or done? What would you guys want to improve when reading HN on your mobile devices?
We should most certainly expect a newspaper to deliver well-researched, unbiased reporting.

Unbiased to me seems both unreasonable and unnecessary. Most newspapers have some sort of political or philosophical leaning, and I'm quite with that. Nobody is ever truly unbiased and trying to force them to write in such a way will generally produce dull article. What we should expect though is that all biases be clearly declared up front and that the distinction between "this is what has happened" and "this is what I think about it" is always made clear.
1) Easy input, minimum number of mandatory fields (2 is quite optimal: "subject", "steps to produce")

2) Fast as hell. It's one of the most used dev tools. (Trac fails in this)

3) Hassle-free way to add screenshots, log files, etc. And it should show screenshots inline. (E.g. Trac fails in this)
I believe most of them use Amadeus

http://www.amadeus.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_CRS
Or will Javascript just be the machine language of the internet, with software written in more expressive languages such as Java via GWT?
That's actually a very concise yet accurate summary of the rule which is widely, almost universally, misquoted and misapplied.

As in this article, for example. Short term memory lasts for seconds. The mnemonic tricks discussed in the video are not for short term memory.

Mnemonics are interesting stuff though. Memorizing the order of a pack of cards (once you know the techniques) is not hard and worth doing just to surprise yourself. Of course doing it really fast or doing 10 packs is another matter.

I don't really see the connection to story telling except in the most tenuous of ways, though I think that is also a powerful technique for delivering presentations.
Microsoft's development products are not that good. I've used Visual Studio, and I found the interface so incredibly clunky that it was easier for me to mount a network drive to my Linux box, and use a real text editor, "vim", to modify the project XML directly to make changes. (And that is not a joke.)

And the set of downloads is irrelevant, because it shouldn't even be necessary. On Linux and Mac, most of what I need is already there; while I do download other packages from time to time, they're for good reasons (like getting a new version). The base Mac and Linux installations already have python and perl and a real shell and a real terminal and an SSH client and a good web browser, and the list goes on. The number of things Windows completely lacks out of the box is mind-boggling, given the size of Microsoft's budget. And remember, you have the privilege of downloading and installing it all again every 6 months when Windows' holes make your PC useless.

But it isn't even about the cost or quality for me. It doesn't take much of a history lesson to realize that the vast majority of Microsoft's wealth has come from questionable business practices; practices that resulted in "de facto standards" through which they gain even more undeserved business. At this point, they could have the best products imaginable (they sure don't), and they would still deserve no business.

The entire computing industry has been set back at least a decade due entirely to Microsoft (and a number of other IT-dependent industries have been harmed). Microsoft has destroyed entire companies through unfair means; Microsoft should receive no recognition whatsoever as a credible business, and should receive no new contracts. I know it's just wishful thinking now, but it's the absolute truth.
As a coder, I want a bug tracking system to work as a task list for me, and a repository for others. This is a hard dichotomy, but the ideal system would support it.

It's needs a command line interface or at least an open API, integration with Git, easy tagging & querying on tags, batch action tools that are easy (a-la GMail), and in-line editing / status-updates.

It also needs to deal well with a build process, and understand environments.

Good luck.
If your chosen stack slows you down by being more painful/cumbersome to develop on, set up and maintain, then it's costing you money. The fact that it's lost income rather than extra outflow doesn't change the fact that it's a cost.

Compared to PHP or Django (which we also do consulting in), ASP.NET is just plain faster to develop in. I can get my own stuff out the door quicker, which means that I can bill more of my time to consulting clients, which means that I'm net ahead at the end of the month.

So I guess you need to stick opportunity cost into that equation to see where you actually stand.
reminds me of the hobie cat trifoiler, which has a bit of a different design

http://www.hobiecat.com/sailing/models_trifoiler.html

that speed is also pretty amazing considering they're running with the main reefed (it hasn't been fully deployed up the mast). that's usually done to make the boat more manageable in high winds
Breast Self Examination With Partners
Eww. Among his arguments:

1. It's OK that the MS developer tools cost money, because there exists an IDE for Ruby, PHP, etc., that costs money. (No matter than Eclipse, NetBeans, etc., are free.)

2. It's OK that IIS/ASP.NET costs money whereas Apache/PHP doesn't, because ASP.NET is more sophisticated than PHP. (No matter that, e.g., Rails is also more sophisticated than PHP but is also free.)

3. You probably won't have to pay for Visual Studio, because typically your employer pays for it. (Apparently in Mr Davis's world costs don't count when they are paid by employers.)
I think I'm a reasonably private person, bit of twitter no photo's + no facebook but I suspect I'd buy one of these and wear one once in a while.

If use of these was as widespread as say twitter, then there's countless things I'd be interested in, imagine you could sit in at houses of parliament when "Xyz" law was passed 4 years later.
Ask HN: How does your site income break down?
Percentage wise, I'm looking for something like this:

premium subscriptions - 15%
adsense - 20%
adbrite - 10%
t-shirts - 11%
direct sales advertising - 5%
eBay affiliate program - 3%
Amazon affiliate program - 1%
CJ affiliate programs - 1%
Google appeases EU over books deal
Note that you can bring your mac's gamma up to 2.2 right now without upgrading: Open System Preferences, Go to "Displays", then the "Color" tab, then click "Calibrate". This will give you the option of setting your gamma to 2.2.

I'm trying it out myself right now. Seems very different, not sure which gamma I like more.
what took them so long? should've done this long ago
"For fractions, we say three fifths. The Chinese is literally, 'out of five parts, take three.'"

You could also say that three-fifths is literally "out of five parts take three" too, just more tersely. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that in Chinese languages the meaning has not atrophied to the same degree or is more verbosely specified (which kind of counters the brevity argument they use for integer digits).
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)
visual beauty
The NYTimes example is by Khoi Vinh (http://www.subtraction.com/). He's certainly no design slouch, particularly when it comes to grid based layouts.

NYTimes is an enormously complex site. Given the ridiculous number of priorities they have to juggle, and number of people they have to please, I think they do an admirable job. The site has to balance looking like a historic newspaper with the constraints of the web.

I particularly like Vinh and Boulton's presentation "Grids are Good" http://www.lifeclever.com/khoi-vinh-mark-boulton-grids-are-g... which applies a grid layout to a Yahoo type homepage.
How? What could we be doing different if we have them?

Not rethorical, please share your opinion.
Which ones do you think is one a par with it, and why?
"vastly" may be an overstatement, but it's very good.

The only issue is that for simple designs a smaller, free product (e.g. postgreSQL) may have all that you need.

A lot of the new stuff in SQL server seems to be Business Intelligence tools, which I don't pay much attention too. the SQL stuff where you "select * from ...." seems to be much the same for several versions now, and gets only minor updates since it's already done right.
> Compared to PHP or Django (which we also do consulting in), ASP.NET is just plain faster to develop in.

I'd love to see any info backing this up.
I thint this thing would be very useful even if not connected to web. If it could write everything to disk, not to web. Of course - volume of its memory will have to be enormous.

Also - it has to encrypt data with private key, and public key will be safe in home, so nobody can see your whole life when you will lost this thing, or sbd will steal it.

About crime prevention etc - there should be button that starts sending all data to police without encrypting it in real time.

I would buy one.
Most "enterprise" products are complex enough to need some complex backing store. A SQL server database is a natural choice for this in the MS world. Even TFS (source control and associated work item tracking, kitchen sink, etc.) is backed by one. This is not a bad thing, (e.g. you get atomic transactions from the DB), but it's interesting that most other source control systems are not backed by any relational database.
Not to mention the subtle insinuation that the open source "freeware" is just a toy and everyone knows you have to pay for the real stuff.

I cannot imagine how Microsoft developers begin a project. "Today, I'm going to write this new web app to change the world! Right after I spend the day setting up Microsoft Team Studio and purchasing software licenses for every computer I plan to use!" How inspiring.
A small startup would sign up to the BizSpark programme, tho'.
"different mode of revenue for web software"

Ads was and is obvious now, but there's a limit to how much ads budget the world have.

A number of startups are now experimenting with various freemium or one time fee or granular pay-as-you-use.

I'm expecting this trend to go up. And maybe there will be companies that make some of these payment plans automated.
Necessary? They aren't to get through college, there have been cases (albiet rare) of people entirely graduating before ever turning 18. There are certainly ways of dealing with it.

It does however create a great many inconveniences that simply vanish the day you turn 18. For instance, if your finances are such that you need a job (as mine were), there are many employers that will not even consider someone below 18. In most places you cannot own a car. Few landlords will let you take out a lease in your name. Most places will not extend you credit without a cosigner.

All of this can be overcome, and if you are planning on staying at home with your parents at least initially then dealing with it is quite easy. But if you are planning to move out, it is still a series of challenges/inconveniences that simply vanish the day you turn 18.
Doesn't look faster than the regular surfer. Actually he looks slower. Is it because he's stuggling to balance the board?
90% subscriptions (monthly renewals, $19.95)

10% advertising (adsense)

The sample you provide leaves a rather large hole to be explained.
An API would be good. Callbacks to external services would be useful too for notifying custom 3rd party apps of changes.
"Imagine a small device that you wear on a necklace that takes photos every few seconds of whatever is around you, and records sound all day long"

Your own personal NSA.
We recently deployed a system (linux based on a windows server with vmware) on a huge infrastructure provider. Every week the box was going down, and we asked why - it's because they reboot ALL microsoft servers once per week, across the entire infrastructure. He claimed they were so unreliable it's good practice. WTF?

Uptime on my first linux production server box was over 4 years.
All the research I've seen shows Microsoft consistently in the top three as far as sales, and in the top two as far as sales on the windows platform. This has held true over many, many years.

Got some points you'd like to make that amount to something?
http://www.icombinator.net/

Disclaimer - I don't have an iPhone so I've never actually used it though.
Monopoly is going online thanks to Google and Hasbro
I think that may have been tongue in cheek.
Have you spent significant time looking at plug-in schemes, such as those of Trac? I think you'd be better off writing simple extensions to well-established systems, than making an entire replacement system. This has two benefits:

- People using the established system are more likely to try your add-ons for your unique features. (Whereas, replacing a system outright is unrealistic in a short timeframe.)

- You will have less work to do, as you can focus on the things you've "not seen in other systems", instead of having to do everything.
Windows can also execute all the Java and Ruby stuff that you see in nix platforms.*

Really? Hit any Ruby mailing list and every second post is a Windows user complaining that something doesn't work. Not just obscure things either - DataMapper doesn't work on Windows, or didn't a few months ago. Capistrano, the "official" Rails deployment tool, is not supported on Windows. And good luck with any gem that requires compilation.

Not to mention you lose out on all the command line tools. You'll need to install cygwin, of course. At that point you may as well just stop trying to run unix on a Windows box and just, you know, run Unix.
Germany’s Facebook cloner made €10m – but isn’t happy
Well, while SQL Server has its merits, I wouldn't consider it vastly superior (or superior at all) to Oracle or IBM DB2, although SQL Server 2008 is indeed getting very close.

Of course it depends on your requirements; for most purposes MSSQL is perhaps a better choice but if I needed an enterprisey-schwenterprisey zero downtime database server no matter what it costs, then of course I would go for Oracle or DB2.
Mike Butcher: There is no better time to start up a startup
I know as a student, it's waaaay too expensive. I could eithter get 4 months of rent, or a legal copy of some microsoft software. Guess which one I chose?
So does pricing the DVDs at about the same price help?
Do people buy the legit copies or still prefer the pirated DVDs?
> the real entrepreneurs who have been waiting in the wings for the perfect conditions for a startup: a downturn
The rules state you can't store energy (excepting rotational energy in the 'rotating aerodynamic components'.
The NYT is completely happy with political reporters who are related to folks who they cover yet a product reviewer who makes money on the side is an ethical issue?
- Ability to forward an e-mail to an e-mail address and create a ticket (bonus points if it can extract attachments and add them as attachments to the ticket)

- System tray app which I can quickly log tickets with - in-built screenshot util a must, even better if it could do screen capture video and convert it to a flash file or something.

- Well documented API / underlying database schema - so I can query whichever way I want for whatever reports. (Bonus points - have a page on your website which allows people to submit their custom api calls / SQL queries which other people can access - as you see common ones you like, you can quickly create a "top 25" reports package you can ship with your app)

- I don't want hosted only. I want to run it on my hardware. We're a windows shop, does it run on Windows / SQL Server - that's always good.

- Painless install & backup.

I agree with FreeRadical - most importantly, visual beauty.
Google.com susceptible to script injection?
What's going on here? Why is some other domain asking for a password? Click on the link or search for
lyris.spc.int/read/attachment/36456/1/htmlversion.html
oh those aren't real numbers, I just gave examples of some options, since I want it a little bit more detailed than "advertising"
VC :)
Because ad networks are vectors for viruses. They slow down the web by polluting it with images, flash, javascript, cookies, tracker urls, and the ridiculous content they fund. They promote consumerism that is ruining the planet through the exacerbation of consumption when we need conservation.

I expect ads will get more and more intrusive. They'll cause more conflicts of interest like the Times/Pogue issue. They will continue to increase the price of products lacking in quality like the Snuggie issue. They'll continue to distract us from the content we are interested in. They'll continue to entice us to spend more of our money on things we don't need than we would spend if we funded the content we want directly.

I would want it to go away and all content be paid for by subscribers. I would want products to fill needs that people have rather than artificial wants they create. The pharmaceutical advertising market is just one case study in the deleterious result of advertising on society.
MapReduce with Scala and GridGain
Why programming language design is hard (and a few ways it can be made easier)
The gamma in OS X has not been changed to "Microsoft's Standard" but rather to the standard used for the majority of the world's images and video. A gamma correction of 2.2 is necessary for NTSC video and is more or less equivalent to the gamma of the sRGB color space.

The Mac 1.8 gamma was a better match for print output but it's increasing irrelevance makes it only natural to increase the gamma for better video/image viewing.

Gamma explained: http://www.thehelpful.com/gammaexplained.html
As what some already said,

1 "the new ticket form" should render fast and easy to figure out. It would be great If there's bookmarklet or simple browser plugin or mobile app that's just render this form.

2 Live twitter-like feed on top level features/stories would be handy for me.
As long as you don't always record yourself analysing the recordings of what you've been doing - otherwise you're going to have some interested video feedback :)

Also, think of all the time you will waste analysing that you have indeed wasted time. It will mean you just end up wasting even more time ;)
It will lead to a whole new level of celebrity culture. If you're interested in someone's life, then you can watch it live! Either that or it will kill all interest as people realise how mundane other people's lives are.

Also, has anyone read Halting State by Charles Stross? In that book life recorders are commonly used by, for example, the local police force in their day-to-day investigations.
A css-able widget to put on our site so there can be easy direct customer input I can keep track of as tickets along with the other stuff we track internally.
And wrestling alligators can be learned in five minutes if you already know how to wrestle crocodiles.

> if you understand the programming model

Right, learning the syntax of a programming is easy and quick, if you already understand the programming model.

I argue that it is difficult to learn new programming models in general.