skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Should programmers learn machine code?
I saw my first computer in 1978. It was a Tandy TRS-80, and it was running what today we'd call a slide show. It was, however, entirely in text and very, very simple graphics.

It had 16KB of RAM, and permanent storage was sound on a fairly standard external cassette tape drive. I can still draw the waveform of a bit, and the start/stop patterns. You could program it in a simple BASIC that had limited variables, and no subroutine parameters.

No parameters in subroutines!

But I was hooked. I wrote two BASIC programs, then ran out of patience. It had to run faster! A 1.77 MHz Z80 running interpreted BASIC wasn't fast enough.

So I smashed the stack. I won't go into the details, but I bootstrapped into assembler (the BASIC did have PEEK and POKE) and wrote a compiler. The BASIC version, two copies of the machine code version, and the variables, all fitted into the 16KB memory. Two copies because it wasn't relocatable, so I compiled to copy 1, used that to compile to copy 2, then machine-code saved copy 2 to cassette.

It was cool writing different variants of sort, then sorting the data that was in the memory mapped screen. You could see the heavier items fall to the bottom in quicksort, or migrate one at a time to the top in a bubble sort. It was pretty raw, and enormous fun.

Why do I tell you this?

Today at work I took a subroutine that was taking 171ms per call and making the GUI run as slow as a snail on valium, and re-wrote it to take less than 10ms per call. The methods I used were straight out of the techniques I learned in that first 3 months of machine code programming (not assembler -machine code), and my colleagues couldn't really understand it.

There followed an impromtu "training session" in which I explained how CPU cores work, how machine code can be mapped to them, how assembly code matches machine code, and the way the instructions actually match the hardware, in some sense.

A lot of what I talked about is now outdated, it is, after all, 30 years old. But the techniques are still applicable on occasion. They were amazed that they didn't know this stuff, and intrigued as to how I do.

It's just what I grew up with.

Should programmers in C++, Haskell, Lisp, Python, etc, know these things? Or are they really mostly irrelevant, becoming more so, and soon to be known only by true specialists and dinosaurs like me?
Except that by being unpaid, they're saying that what you did for them wasn't worth enough to pay them for it.
Yes sir. Internet advertising is a booming business. Every pageview is sold weeks in advance, right ?
Not quite.
The issue is the value of a referred pageview. Today, its not worth much, if anything. The conversion value is approaching zero.

Compare the conversion value of that pageview to the value of diminishing the position of aggregators and its an easy choice.

The net has a business problem of unlimited news site inventory. So traffic from aggregators isnt worth squat. So why put up with them leveraging your intellectual capital ?

not worth it
This is a very interesting essay because for the first time pg explicitly states that even if you find something you love to do, it doesn't completely do away with the need for determination. You have to make up for the diff between your love and your users' needs.

You have to try and minimise the need for determination by finding something you love to do.

But to find what you love in the first place, you need determination, mainly in the form of discipline else there's the danger of wasting away from lack of willingness or being too willful for one's own good.

There's some recursion going on here. Need to think this through to get my head around it.
Ask HN: Anyone in New York City?
Howdy all,
Just moved back home to NYC and have been going to some of the tech and entrepreneur meet-ups, but would be eager to meet more people in the area! Anyone else in NYC?
Josh
I'm wrong about security all the time. I like it when people argue with me. But I'm not wrong this time.
You're right. I tried to cut corners and keep it short.

Thomas Malory got the legend of King Arthur from Geoffrey of Monmouth - a Welsh monk who lived in the early 12th century. Good 200+ years before Malory.

But Geoffrey of Monmouth's work was largely unknown until Thomas Malory revived it.

Thomas Malory's book Le Morte D'Arthur became a bestseller because of the right timing - Guttenberg invented his printing press at just about that time.

In either case - the Arthurian legend is entirely made up. Geoffrey of Monmouth weaved the story out of his imagination - which was later picked and spruced up by Thomas Malory.

About the King - I may have to check up on it - may have made a mistake.

Update: did some checking. Thomas Malory: 1405 - 1471.
King Henry VII: 1457 to 1509.

King Henry VII was so influenced by Thomas Malory's work that he also named his first son Arthur (but who didn't live long enough to become the next King...)

Heroes creating history vs history creating heroes is debatable. But this is awesome reading:
http://www.invisibleheroes.com/hero.asp?issue=116
I have a feeling that "discipline", that is, getting yourself to do things by sheer force of will, only works in short bursts. For long periods, you need create a system for yourself that takes your own weakness into account. For example, for a long time I tended to exercise in intermittent bursts. I would do it for a few weeks, then catch a cold or something and fail to pick it up again afterword. The solution to this problem was to create a schedule for myself. I wake up, eat breakfast, check the internet, work for two hours, exercise, eat lunch, etc.

Another important thing is strong principles. That is, you have to have clear, logical reasons for making the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goals. Every time you're tempted to do something other than pursue your goal you're going to have to argue with yourself. If you aren't completely convinced that what you're doing is truly worthwhile, temptation is eventually going to win.
PG's essay is an excellent exploration (and adaptation) of these ideas about determination in the Boston Globe last month:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/...

The basic research referenced in the Globe article was done at Penn:
http://www.gritstudy.com/

I wonder what the original researcher, Angela Duckworth, would have to say about PG's ideas.
I left reddit as soon as they fractured it into subreddits. The cool thing about HN is that it simultaneously has a diversity of subjects and a community.
You're right. This site isn't really designed to be read as a chronological feed. That defeats the purpose of the front page, which puts more popular articles in higher positions an d keeps them visible for longer.
Can you give some more information please, for example: names of the companies ?
I really liked your option to hide already already viewed stories, although I would want to explicitly hide them, because there are interesting posts that I want to come back to.

With a hide button I could go down the page and quickly hide all the "social" stories about get a date, pick a grad school, the latest twitter app, Arrington bashing, and go straight to the good stuff like Erlang. ;-)
Open source web app which pulls, parses, stores and emails App Store reports
About point 3, I think you have cause and effect backwards, most likely your 5 best friends are either friends from college or work, or maybe neighbors.

So it's not like having wealthier friends will make you earn more money, but rather earning more money will probably lead you to have wealthier friends.
Furthermore, if willfulness is purely inborn (or genetic) wouldn't siblings be more likely to exhibit similar strengths of will, since they have such similar DNA?

In a family, nature and nurture are mixed together. The only way to separate the two components are with twin studies where the twins are raised separately.
hey. send me a note. james at imaj.es.
Still, I advise people who are not time-constrained to watch the video. There are a lot of interesting remarks slides don't capture.
There's a big difference between the two sites you listed and the type that Cuban listed and is referring to.

Hacker News and Reddit both link directly to the actual source material and only show a title and a short description of the post.

The Drudge Report doesn't do it as badly, but Newser actually rips off most/entire article on their site leaving no reason to go to the actual material.

The only one benefiting from that relationship is Newser.
You should put an email in your profile :-)
Which means people who want to use their favorite aggregator sites would just have to set their browser to not send referers. And the old media sites lose a little bit of analytics.
In this case, yes.

This isn't a broken leg, its a cut. You keep it clean (ie, don't refresh the front page every five minutes), and you don't poke it. If it was a broken leg (ie, the front page gave you only the chronological order), then there would need a fix.
From the masthead, "never before have I with so little to say said so much to so few"

Could be the motto of the Internet.

The stiff fingers are only a problem with Java. With Python you can keep up with only a line a day. With APL a single symbol.
Thanks for the suggestion. I added it to my about section of the profile!
I am no big fan of Java the language, but I can see these boxes being put to very interesting use with other languages running on JVM.

Anyone feeling a sudden urge to port *Lisp code to Clojure? ;-)
Ask HN: Seeking thoughts on a crazy/futuristic idea
I saw a video the other day on the New York Tech Meetup's site. The speaker (couldnt find the name/video easily) was suggesting that in the future, we'll be using gestures to use computers instead of keyboard/mice.

This makes sense given recent developments (microsoft natal, and even to a degree, the iphone). And it is really exciting to think about, because there are so many applications.

Of course, there will be learning curve, and it might take 10-20 years for this to become mainstream. But it might make sense to start thinking of specific applications that early-adopters would use. (That's us right?). That got me thinking.

Would it be possible to code via gestures? There would probably be a huge amount of AI required, but it's interesting nonetheless to think about.

Would this be more efficient? Is it possible to do as a YC company? If so, I would love to see someone attack this.
I am fasting at the moment from around 4am to 8pm. I was very apprehensive before I started this year as the days were longer this time round - I thought I would really struggle. However I have to say food has been the least of my worries.

It is all in the mind not in the stomach. Once you know you can't do something you don't consider it as an option. I didn't have to mentally or physically prepare I just got on with it. In the two weeks of fasting I have lost weight, I end up gorging in the evenings and find that I can pretty much eat what I want and not worry about it. For the non-religious it would be a good way to lose weight and discipline yourself (just don't call it a diet).

I do know though that if I break one of my fasts because I got hungry it will be very easy for me to break the next.
AFAIK in its recent versions PHP doesn't have any unique design flaws that make them more vulnerable to attacks. In fact, being the most widely deployed web language means it probably had more security patches than most. Bugs and vulnerabilities in applications are certainly not unique to PHP..

I wouldn't take a PHP gig either. I would also prefer Ruby work to Python, since I enjoy it more. But that's my selfish interest as developer, it doesn't mean that for the project itself PHP isn't, sometimes, the best option for the project.

For people who want to create a web app and don't have much programming experience, PHP can still be the best choice - it's easy to deploy, it has great official and unofficial docs, it's easiest to find developers for and it's pretty reliable.

Now, this may sound crazy to many, but not only PHP has some good sides, a lot of them come from intelligent choices its designers made: for example, PHP script only runs in context of the request - no application server here - which helps reliability since memory leaking etc scripts can't cause too much harm. PHP's basically saw itself merely as an Apache module - in a rare, pre-hyposhpere display of egoless coding - making it extremely easy to deploy (compare and contrast with Rails before Passenger). The fact it comes with so many libraries welded into the common namespace is ugly for me, but a boon for beginners, and the fact you can mix PHP and HTML allowed many web designers to tinker with it, gradually moving from design to HTML to PHP - one of whom ended up writing Wordpress, I think :)
New Energy Invention - Magnetic Motor  
Fascinating demonstration of a new energy invention with the potential to vastly transform our world. Using only magnets, two plastic strips, and securing components, this video clip shows how a freestanding device can be built to generate power using nothing but natural magnetic forces. This is only a proof of concept video. There are many variables to be worked out, but the potential is clearly demonstrated. If you take the small model in the video and extend it for 20 feet upwards or so, the magnet should easily jump up 12 feet or more. A simple device could then pull the magnet off the track dropping it down and thus generating energy through gravity by passing through one or more rotors. Double the length and get twice the energy. After dropping, a curved track at the bottom could then slip the magnet right back into the bottom of the device where magnetism would again pull it up, thereby creating perpetual motion while generating power. A circular track might also create a similar effect. Any tinkerers want to play this one and potentially transform our world? For more on the origin, specifications, and future development ideas of this project, see http://www.PerpetualMotors.com. We ask you to spread the word and help to make this exciting project a reality. License is hereby granted for this invention. You are free to copy it, alter it, develop it, and include it in any non-commercial applications free of charge. Invite your friends and colleagues to work on it with you. If you do find a way to make a commercially viable product using this concept and profit financially from it -- and we hope you will -- then as an acknowledgment for our help in creating something useful, send us a royalty fee of ten percent of sales for units actually sold at the above website. We offer this powerful concept and demonstration into the creative commons. For more on this, please consult the website http://creativecommons.org and look under their licensing section. Let's join our forces and work together to transform our world for the good of all of us!
Still the people who never do that are, in honesty, feeling bad not good.

I hypothesize the reason humans perform worse after failing a hard question versus passing an easy question is that by keeping yourself down, you avoid getting into trouble claiming a higher status in the tribe than you can pull off if it comes to a confrontation. But you feel bad so that you keep looking for an opportunity to claim the higher status/more resources position. Perhaps explaining this (if it is true) and that this doesn't confer any benefit in our current environment would be just as effective.
Should be easy enough. Just setup something like Facebook or have the Chinese version of MySpace ask for the user's real name.
Why iteration?

http://www.google.com/search?q=1.3**60
I'm guessing this essay (at least partially) explains why Sama was included in Pg's "Five Founders" - http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html.

On a separate note, I think there's a typo in the 14th paragraph, second sentence: "There seem to be plenty of examples <of> confirm that."
The article is about PHP & Python. Erlang, C++ and Java don't really compete in the same space - I doubt writing any of these sites in Python would mean they wouldn't need Erlang or C++.
Just moved to Boston, but check out the NY Tech Meetup:

http://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/
It's just that there are many who want to have as many readers as they can get, because they earn their money in other ways (like Joel On Software selling his bug tracker). So they would be thankful about any incoming link.

Maybe some "old media" articles are a tiny bit better, maybe not. Maybe many of the "old media" articles are actually also just advertisements in disguise (because they subtly hype some company's product). Overall I think they are not that much better that I would actively seek them out. Nobody links to them, I don't read them.
> My question: what are the exceptions to the "two consenting adults can do as they wish in privacy" rule?

(active) voluntary euthanasia is one, though I think it's legal in a pair of US states (Oregon since '94 and Washington since 2008).
Hey Ivan! Ming from mrtweet here - we are building on our current app to do some (hopefully) super cool things with the real time data sets. If that is an area that you are interested in, let me know. mingyeow@mrtweet.com

thanks!

Ps: we are a ruby shop, and we have tonnes of server side code to write. ;)
It's sad, that they don't advertise this project more at the university... I'm at Bath Uni and heard about RepRap before, but didn't know we've got one right there! I really wouldn't mind working on it as a part of some project.

(actually two, not one... unless they were in a good mood one day and made some more ;) )
You do not follow Moore's law, so no.
That's why I like Adobe Flex/Air , you can write a desktop app
and with minor modification it can be web app.
And hopefully in the near future I would be able to run it on Android/iPhone as well.
In highschool there was this guy who used to study a lot. Everybody said he was studying too much, and that he needed to study that much because he wasn't that smart. Finally he graduated with one of the best averages in our class. Then he got into the best engineering school in Chile, and I remember thinking that maybe he wouldn't be able to make it, or that he wouldn't have such good grades. Well, I was wrong. He graduated from engineering with a great average.

Now I don't know where this guy is working or what he's doing, but I have no doubt he will achieve whatever he sets himself to accomplish. For me, he is an incredible example of how will and discipline got him to achieve the things he wanted.

2 other stories about this guy:

1. Until he was around 12 he was fat. Then one day, after summer vacation he came back to school thin. He stayed like that at least until he finished engineering.

2. Junior year in highschool he had the best average in the advanced math class. There was a math competition and he was not chosen to go. When he asked the teacher about this, the teacher said: "for this competition we need talent, not effort"
How do you build self-discipline?

Offtopic: my surgeon dad always says medicine is over 50% determination. And in fact if you are too smart, you will probably quit and opt for a supposedly more rewarding, less painful profession.
Like this? http://www.thelocal.se/images/gallery/155/8721.443.629.jpg :)
I would, as I explained in my parent post.

Talking about buying music files online so far I bought several releases at http://web.archive.org/web/*/fakescience.com and one directly from an (totally overhyped) artist. fakescience is dead now (not profitable enough), the other artist annoyed me to unsubscription with egomaniac HTML mails. fakescience had a good price (5$), the artist was overpriced (and in the end I really only liked 2 tracks from the album).

I really like Magnatune's model, but then I do get my "new music" fix from free stuff nowadays and other music usually is the normal music industry model. So Magnatune sadly is not interesting for me as customer.

Magnatune is a perfect example how to do it (apart from the payment system, I believe they only support Paypal. But that is not their problem to fix, anonymous micropayment is not existing yet from what I know.).
Well obviously he wants to do it, and he obviously knows it doesn't hurt him when he doesn't, so by saying "don't do that" you're being patronizing. It's pretty insulting.
That should just be growing pains, though. Once HN has processed all people with something worthwhile to say, there will be no more previous articles to post - they'll all have been posted before. Things should then normalize...
The part about the shareware funnel reminded me of a scene from Tina Fey's 30 Rock.

Dennis: One word: coffee. One problem: where do you get it?

Liz: Anywhere! You get it anywhere!

Dennis: Wrong! You get it at my coffee vending machine. 38th & 6th in the basement of the K-Mart. You just go downstairs, you get the key from David and BOOM! You plug in the machine and...

Liz: You're done.
I am using:
- Firebug for FireFox
- Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 for IE (6+7+8)
- Dragonfly for Opera
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803964
They're more popular when connected to a network, not the Web specifically. I know many more people use Skype for voice and video instead of Google Talk. Many people still download an MSN IM client and used web-based clients only when necessary (like at a school computer or if the desktop client is messed up).

software development only qualifies if you don't think there's going to be a sea-change in collaborative development and application deployment which will make people give up their favorite editors.

A few IDEs are already integrated with collaborative tools, and I'm sure someone could hack up some Emacs Lisp or VIM-script to add collaborative features to them.

The network, the Internet itself, is more important than any particular subset of it such as the Web/HTTP or SMTP.
I don’t feel safe with Wordpress, hackers broke in and took things
They have been used to a limited extent at least as far back as the apple Newton. In a sense drag and drop is gesture based. Sign language is gesture based. I dont think gestures will find much use in programming because of the lack of precision and limited vocabulary. I thought for a long time that voice would be used for programming, but I havent seen a single example beyond simple commands. Even that didnt catch on. I wouldnt bet my YC on it.
Good point.
I guess iteration comes more intuitively (to me at least).
This is quickly becoming one of my fav blogs!
I just tried to add "http://news.ycombinator.com/classic in Google Reader, hoping it would find an RSS feed on the page. There is no RSS feed on this page actually. Yet Reader added the following feed:

http://friendfeed.com/ketan?format=atom

I thought maybe this feed is referenced in the classic page somewhere, but it is not. Google Reader bug?
will be rejected by Apple.
Well, what if you created tools to make yourself more productive? And then used those tools to make better tools, and so on?
>>> There's a third factor in achievement: how much you like the work.

There is a lot of weight in this statement. My mantra has been "love what you do and do what you love". It has definitely served me very well and has been a catalyst for my determination. The other important aspect is your company to which PG alluded via "ambitious peers". Positive and intellectual energy around you is a great fuel for determination.
His situation is more of "When I bend my wrist backwards, it hurts". He's using it in a way that is not necessarily good. Yes, it is included. And yes, it may be helpful/beneficial. But if you're having problems with doing things that way, stop.
Understanding how all the components in a computer system work is important to being a good programmer, especially if you're doing work that is performance sensitive. Memorizing a particular instruction set probably isn't important, but a good programmer should understand the basics of processor architecture and performance. If you know that, you can always learn whatever ISA details you need on the fly, in the relatively rare case that you need them.