skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wish I could upvote this 10x. I have no idea what .NET means today other than the little insight I get when listening to the Stack Overflow podcast (which isn't much).

Not only do I not know what .NET means, I wouldn't know where to start learning or what the requirements are ...

Where is the .NET equivalent of these types of resources?
(I really want to know):

http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-ruby-...

http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-mo...

http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts

http://railscasts.com/

http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/

Furthermore:

- Can I spin up a $20/month .NET-compatible VPS?

- Can I easily tie my .NET apps into cloud services like S3 (I can tie S3 file attachment into my Rails models in minutes)?

I don't ask these questions to be flippant–I honestly don't know the answer because I never bothered to search it out.
Which is very weird. App engine apps shouldn't be slow because of overload. It either should work or not, because of quotas.
It's being actively developed right now: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute
>> "Let's talk of real problems. Over 1,000 million people live in extreme poverty."

Lets not. This is hacker news.
Mercury News Reaches Out For Help
Ops, sorry.
Perhaps some of it is the fact that in the US you have to file your own taxes, so there's much greater emphasis on accounting.

Maybe that's why it's valued more there :/ (In the UK I'm not sure most people would see the value in it).

Facebook+youtube aren't just about wasting time. They're about communication and sharing information, which as social beings, is pretty important to most of us.
Please! You are the one who called lack of Facebook a "real problem". I merely pointed out that there are actual real problems. Sure, I agree that this is HN and that this is NOT the place to discuss actual real problems (the truly real problems cannot be solved by software), but your reply was rather unintelligent and unimaginative. You used to do better than that...
Wouldn't it be better to implement a git/subversion... plugin for Textmate/Emacs that does this instead of doing a vcs from scratch? or won't a traditional vcs work as a back-end for this?
When the boss says to make the website in php, they mean the whole website. You usually don't get to just do the presentation in php and use $your_language_choice for everything else.
The DNS is depressing to me.

The fact that I find a service like this as cool as I do really speaks to how messed up the domain name service is.

Why is domain resale even allowed? "Ownership" of a domain seems silly to me. You should be licensing it from ICANN, and you should not be able to sell it. Part of the licensing agreement should be "if you are a domain squatting piece of scum, your contract will be terminated and you will not get your $6 (or whatever it is) registration fee back".
Nice idea. But what if we succeed to separate the GUI (which will be platform dependent) from the other code which will be total cross-platform?
And if you like that one, just check the related videos tab for more, like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt8upKaWzy0 and so forth.
"I'd love to find the book again... I bet it's out of print, though. It had lots of detail on modelling damage to tanks, and creating terrain, and working out things like line-of-sight in complex worlds, and I think some basic AI, but had nothing to say about snazzy graphics whatsoever; I think it made some reference to vector displays or something like that ;-)"

This is an interesting search problem. The fact that a description like this still doesn't help in locating a book (when you think about it the set of all books published is a small one compared to say the domain of web pages on the internet), shows how much work still remians to be done in search.
I initially thought of doing it as a plugin, but then I figured I'd have to write plugins for too many different text editors.

Also, I was thinking that when you hit checkin, a git/subversion repository could be created/updated.
Precisely my point. What is a "real problem" varies from person to person. Me, I'm not even on Mint. But I couldn't go without facebook.

Note I never said facebook was the "biggest" real problem or even one of the biggest. That is the poster's gross distortion of my post to strengthen his argument.
It's honest for TechCrunch to broadcast their own sincere celebration in Mint's success. It would be suspect if TechCrunch did not emphasize its own participation in Mint's headline success in a TechCrunch headline. TechCrunch doesn't deserve to be called slimy for this.
>> it should only take you a day or two to learn Objective-C

It's the libraries! Takes a long time to learn them all...
The Haskell Implementors Workshop 2009: Complete Videos
This is a great start. I'm glad Google has the wisdom to devote a team to just this goal. I look forward to end-user tools they may develop to further accelerate this progress.
You are confusing a "real problem" from an entrepreneur's point of view, and a "real problem" from a global social perspective.

I have been to Africa. I have fed the hungry, healed the sick, and vaccinated children myself with my own two hands. Interestingly enough, I wouldn't be in contact with the friends I made over there without -Facebook-. So don't tell me that Facebook "is basically a rolodex", because for me it isn't.
It's tough to make this sort of thing cross-platform (at least where cross-platform includes Windows) because the Windows process model is a good bit different than *nix.

So focusing on Unix (incl Linux and OS X) is probably the way to go here. Besides, nobody uses Windows for heavy lifting, do they? ;-)
I've been doing Objective-C for a long time, and I can barely stand the language. I use it because it's the most pragmatic choice for Mac (and now iPhone) development, but if I could I'd have dropped it in a heartbeat. It's incredibly verbose and almost the antithesis of "don't repeat yourself" -- as an arbitrary example, declaring an Objective-C 2.0 properties requires three different declarations:

1) Declare the instance variable in your header file: NSString * var;

2) Declare the property that matches the ivar in your header file: @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString * var;

3) Add the synthesize line to your implementation file: @synthesize var;

I mean, seriously Apple? Seriously? You couldn't compress that down to a single @property declaration?

That said, Apple has now added closures, which provides a highly effective tool for cutting through the usually highly repetitive, verbose code of Obj-C (except, perhaps, for property declarations :) and writing something a quite bit more palatable.

My only remaining complaint is the lack of GC. It's not that I mind reference counting (it's not very hard to get it right), but that cyclic references cause leaks, and there's lots of places where it's easy and beneficial to create cyclic references -- especially with closures.

If MonoTouch means I can write well-performing native applications for the iPhone in F#, god damn! I'm there.
Facebook's Thirst for Data Center Space
Applied Functional Programming: Part 1
On John von Neumann and His Role in the Development of the Computer
Esquire and Popular Mechanics are published by Hearst, but that's the only commonality, and enough IMO to be a coincidence.
They could see your OS from your browser and send a different image...
You are completely distorting my point. It's like if I said I love chocolate, you'll say "OMG the things you should really love is your family blabla."

Indeed. You can love chocolate and your family. Just like you can view facebook, mint AND curing cancer as "real problems".
TLD checkboxes are necessary for this to be useful so I can tell it only to look up .com (in my case) or other TLD's if desired.

I don't like how 99% of it's finds so far are .org
NH: Review my startup http://weegoh.com
http://weegoh.com is an innovative social utility, with strong focus on mobile platforms. It let people interact, and enhances your environment by letting you know more about what's going on nearby.
Some questions weegoh answers are: What are the best things to do in the area?. I'm shopping here, are there discounts here i could redeem?. Are people with similar interests nearby?

It empowers your social life providing users an augmented reality experience, i.e: Imagine going to an event or a meeting and you can instantly know who's there, who may want to talk to you, who might be interested to meet. etc. Weegoh also has a very strong notification core to be connected in real-time wherever you are.

The revenue model is based on value added services for enlisted brands and venues on the site, hyper-local benefits and offers (web and mobile) based on discounts and direct marketing actions from brands.

Main competitors for us in this space are Brightkite and recently founded NY based Foursquare.

Site is in open beta. We've got some coverage:

http://www.killerstartups.com/Social-Networking/weegoh-com-discover-the-world-that-surrounds-you
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/weegoh-an-argentine-startup-launches-open-beta-to-bring-a-social-context-to-your-surroundings-109395.php

We have mobiles sites at http://m.weegoh.com and http://i.weegoh.com (for iphone/android).

You can use the site by email, IM, SMS, web, mobile web and iphone and android apps to launch soon.

Thanks in advance.
i disagree that vmware on anything is "standard". when i install ubuntu on a macmini sound, graphics, disk, wifi, everything just works. i never tried on a macbook.

also note that i didn't judge ChromeOS, i just said "maybe".
They could, but they don't. Why would they go through all that effort to snare an extra 5% of computers
Ultimately, without over-the-air syncing Yojimbo would not be the world’s best info-management mobile app. The biggest need for me wouldn’t be having my notes with me all the time, but having them with me at an unanticipated moment.

Shovebox, an app developed by a Hacker News user, does everything Yojimbo does and already has an iPhone app out that syncs over your wi-fi network, so your information goes wherever you do.
For what it's worth, seven or eight years ago, it was a huge exercise in wizardry for me to get every piece of hardware working on my laptops under Slackware or Gentoo or Debian. If it wasn't the wireless, it was the sound, the graphics card, or the ACPI. Then I enjoyed the careful prospect of fiddling with X and window manager configuration files endlessly if I wanted any kind of pleasant GUI.

I just installed Ubuntu on my new Dell laptop the other week, for the sake of running a particular thing that isn't available on Windows, and the difference is eye-popping. Zero configuration for any hardware. (For some reason, it didn't load the ATI drivers by default, having them in a "restricted" category, but it was easy to add them.) Wireless worked out of the box. No package management problems. Totally capable GUI configuration. 90% as usable as Windows 7.

Additionally, I didn't even have to repartition my drive to install it, which blew my mind. It installed into a disk image with a Windows installer, and modified the Windows bootloader to boot from the image. That's sure a big improvement from (to a newbie, extremely scary) disk partitioning and LILO/GRUB adventures.
Awesome, awesome, awesome feedback. I share your frustration and am working like made to get that religion into our core business.

What some fun: type the following query into bing.com: "Getting Started with .NET" - check where the links take you. Try the same thing with PHP, Erlang, Ruby on Rails, etc.
I think the parent, and OP were talking about "real problems" within the realms of software. Which is what most of us do.

Online communication is an invaluable net win for everyone. Social media is just one type of communication but a valuable force for good.

Well done for saying we should cure cancer though.
And then the squatters will throw up a fake personal blog filling all available whitespace with ads, and since they are actually "legitimately" using it, nobody else can get the domain.
Yeah you're screwed. Come up with another strategy. My clients are the top N% of security professionals (they're managing source code audits), and I'll bet you $5 they think Mozy security is comparable to yours.

There's a reason you designed tarsnap the way you did. It's not a little bit different from Mozy. It's a totally different model. Explain how in simple terms. And remember even if your beachhead market is sysadmins, most sysadmins don't code. Don't talk down to them, but don't make your value proposition be about code.
There are benefits and drawbacks to maintaining an API vs updating it. Switching every few months will alienate your developers, but making sure everything is 20 years backwards compatible will lead to strange errors (particularly because programmers will expect their idiosyncratic workarounds to continue to work)

I think the more important question is how the groups responsible will handle the transition. A well planned and executed transition will give many developers a chance to switch gradually and by the time the old API isn't supported the older versions of the program will likely only be run on the older versions of the API anyway.
Out of people who use Mint and who use YouTube

What if you ask 1000 random people between YouTube and Mint?
Yes, we have IronPython (and IronRuby), and no it's not supported in VS. Don't get me started... =)
They probably look for people who can do the job well.
Ah, thanks, this is very useful.
That could be the cause but if he couldn't use OpenMP under windows then it's still a legitimate complaint.
I can't help but think there's something ironic or cynical about the site's branding...

EDIT: from the FAQ (http://www.dataliberation.org/home/faq)

Quote: "What's with the logo?

It grew out of the fact that we see ourselves fighting for the freedom of the users. So basically, it's another joke. Har har har. :-)"
I think there's a honeymoon period with just about any new technology. It generally starts once you've switched to solve a problem and the new technology solves it well. At this point any faults or frustrations are generally just because you don't know the technology well enough to do it right. It isn't until you become more familiar and try to expand what you're doing that you start to find and explore the limits of the new technology.

All technology has limitations and frustrations. The question is which works best for each person. I think this might work well for him, as it sounds like he is doing some things that do port very easily.
Pro tip: practise on babies first.
But those ads would be unlikely to cover the yearly registration fee. Without the possibility of making hundreds or thousands of dollars from a single domain sale, domain squatting becomes a lot less financially viable.
Free Software Foundation files objection to Google Book Search settlement
Good point. But I stand by what I wrote before. The comment I replied to stated that:

"Most people would go insane if they couldn't access youtube or facebook. Social media, music, video are real problems that people have, and need solutions to."

Hence, it's about people's problems, not entrepreneurs' problems. Of course, it all depends what we mean by "people" and "problems". Fortunately, most Americans do not suffer from Malaria, Dengue, Cholera... most Americans are able to feed their children and have access to potable water. Same for Western Europeans. So, if by "people" we mean the richest 5% of the world's population, then social media may be a problem indeed. But what about the other 95%? Are they untermenschen of some sort?

"This is HN. Let's not discuss that", I hear you reply. Well, yes and no. We talk so much about software, but (personally) I would like to see some more diversity here on HN. I would like to hear more stories of some inventor who comes up with a cheap desalination technology, or some grad student who find out a really cheap way of diagnosing certain diseases. These may not make a huge change on the top 5% of the world's population, but it could have a huge impact elsewhere. There are markets for cheap, efficient technologies and solutions, but there aren't that many incentives. Facebook and Twitter are luxuries. Let's try to keep that in mind for the sake of keeping our feet firmly on the ground...
Exactly. Vimeo & Hulu replace all the value of YouTube. It is commodity free video hosting, there is no community at YouTube.

Facebook is useful for me, but I wouldn't pay for it if I had to.

I'd gladly pay for Mint.

Mint has nothing to do with taxes like axod says. It is about budgeting and tracking expenditures.

I used to get a statement in the mail each month from 4 different institutions related to bank accounts, credit cards, and investments. (Or check online at 4 different places). Then I would reconcile them with my checkbook / some pile of receipts to double check.

Now I go to one place 1-2 times a week and check against my receipts right away. It never builds up and takes significantly less time.

It also helps budget and gives you data to figure out where you are spending your money.

If you are not one of those people who has money to keep track of or you don't balance your checkbook, then sure the value is hard to see. But if you actually take care of your money it is immensely helpful and saves me time and money.
He stated that one of the biggest reasons he did the switch was because Linux allowed him more freedom in terms of platform, libraries, and tools, while his windows options were limited by his company to Visual Studio 2005 on Windows XP x64.

He wanted to just start working on the newer operating systems, but was not allowed to due to corporate budgets or the like.
The daily mail is a sensationalist tabloid rag. Most of the article is probably BS.
I also find that a debugger encourages a technique of just tracing through the code until "a-hah, that's where fooBing get reset to dingy. I should add a clause to reset it to dingy only if barBong is set."

Without a debugger, I would have to write tests, clean up the code until it made sense, or design it in such a way that that particular kind of bug could not occur.
She made the riskier decision? What qualifications do you have to claim that?

According to the Harvard neurosurgeon she made the less risky decision. Given the choice between believing a random poster to hacker news and someone with those qualifications, I'm going with the known expert every time. It is just icing on the cake that the expert's opinion fits with what I've been told about the risks of back surgery by multiple doctors, physical therapists, and even a panel appointed by the US government. (Admittedly the last is somewhat out of date.)
I always been a windows developer. 3 mo ago my co-worker suggested I give linux a shot. Fuck it why not.

I realized the following:

1) Linux is more stable. (NEVER have to reboot it, unless I chose to conserve energy at night).

2) Linux boots faster. By the time linux boots, auto launches firefox and eclipse, windows is only reaching the desktop at which point its still 1-2 minutes before it becomes usable.

3) I still use the same tools in linux and windows (I still need a VM to run Toad). (Eclipse, grep, firefox, a linux command prompt (god cygwin is not as good as the real thing). Which is great since toad makes windows 95 appear stable. Putting toad in a vm is the best way to make it work well :). Also I get to test IE6,7,8 without any problems because I already have vms set up.

4) Multiple desktops = easier at times.

5) Windows made me need tools for mounting like sftp -> drive. Linux comes with sftpfs (ok fine u need to apt-get it). Its all free too so cost savings.

Switching to linux only raised one question: Why didn't I do it earlier.

The only problem is KDE fonts suck! Gnome ones are good out-of-the-box. Also KDE apps (like plasma) crashes like a wasted, doped-up, narcoleptic. Sooooo ubuntu, not kubuntu wins for me.
To summarise: "confirmation bias". He's got a point.
Looking at Redis
I think that was sort of the point of the article...

There is no "year of the linux desktop" because Linux and Windows should be looked to to fulfill different roles.

To me, windows isn't a "real" operating system. I don't use windows for anything other than running putty or chrome. It isn't really doing anything.

Linux, on the other hand, is at the absolute core of the business that employs me. ALL of our servers (except one domain controller) run either Linux of OpenBSD.

If I had my way, all of the workstations would be running it as well. This is an okay solution for me, because all of my workstations have identical (or very similar) hardware. An install would be as simple as imaging a disk, running a few scripts to configure things like networking, and powering it on.

Naturally, I can't speak for everyone, but I do have a considerably larger amount of experience with linux as a desktop than most. I also have a lot of experience with support. Supporting linux on a hodge-podge of hardware is definitely not something I would want to undertake.

Guiding my mom through Ubuntu would also not be something I would want to do.

I think a lot of Linux nerds (members of the church mentioned in the article), have a bit of a cognitive bias when it comes to how easy linux is to use. They WANT it to be easy. They overlook the bits of tinkering they have to do to actually get it working correctly.

Like I said, this is all my own experience. YMMV. However, if you are having as easy a time installing and running linux as a desktop OS as you do with windows...please tell me what hardware you're using!
agreed. anything except .com is nearly completely useless.
It's not just the books, it's the web resources as well (possibly more importantly).

One thing to think about is that if MS is serious about reaching devs like this. Then they need to start understanding the appeal of frameworks that we're using.

The fact that I can start a rails project, edit all the code I want, and run all my tests. Without really investing in any extraneous technology (for instance an IDE or a WebServer or a large testing framework). Are all enormous bonuses. And the fact that I can do that with every modern framework I can think of speaks volumes about the weight that we as a community put on that feature.

You could try to bend all the devs into the MS way of doing things with complex tools and large solutions. Or you could attempt to make tools that fit a modern developer.
...or like being a "private eye" who lives in a trailer home a short distance from his aging father's bungalow.
Uncommon Interview: Balsamiq Studios
5% of a million, perhaps. They run a lot of ads!
Although Clojure is an excellent tool, keep in mind it is still in early development.

It can be used to publish simple websites pretty elegantly, but for now it is relatively "low level"- I would say it still has a ways to go before being "Rails like."
Well, for one reason, that 5% is strongly correlated with people who could afford a more expensive computer...
>What percentage of users do you suppose are doing these things? Less than 1%? Less than .5%?

With 80+% marketshare, 0.5% of users is still a lot.

>As far as setting desktop backgrounds...the process is the same in KDE as it is in Windows or Gnome.

Sorry, I thought you meant during installation.

>As far as themes...I'm not even entirely sure that windows has themes. What do you mean by that?

Really? Right-click on XP desktop->Properties. The first tab is Themes. Microsoft used to sell them, you can download a bunch from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/desktop/default... and there are lots of 3rd-party themes too.
They just raised $14m at 140; unless they're being done over on liquidation prefs - and who knows, but on a succession of up rounds, doesn't seem that likely - they should be doing pretty well!