skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He says he doesn't have to know who used Trac in order to use it. Well, I disagree, and I'm with Joel on this one. Whether or not a project has users is one of the things I look for when picking software. More users often (but not always) means more developers, and some sort of guarantee that the product won't be abandoned.

This isn't as critical with open-source software (I can install a bunch of bug-tracking tools, use them for a few days, and keep one I like), but if I have to pay to try these products, the popularity factor gets more important. Even if there's a no-risk trial (still have bad memories of trying to cancel that AOL subscription way back in the day).
I've never had that type of experience at Southwest. Ever. It's my choice airline for domestic but I can see how it's not for everyone. I like the early-bird-gets-the-worm approach to their seating, and I print my ticket before I leave because.......

And you checked "a" bag in? On a domestic flight? If I can't carry-on on a domestic flight, then I cut down my packing so I don't look like a woman taking my closet.

When the two are combined, you only need to show up ~:30 minutes before a domestic flight assuming security isn't a mess.
I'm guessing the main reason for having GPS in these devices is that, like other GSM base stations, they probably need access to a very accurate clock. Then, once the hardware's there...
I developed for Linux in C++ for about 8 months recently. We did all of our development from Windows with Visual Studio and Visual Assist X because Linux doesn't have anything even close to the same quality (Qt Creator is only about a year away from catching up, and is brilliant software, but isn't there yet).

Boost's unit test library has memory leak detection built in, and Intel's performance analysis tools integrated into Visual Studio utterly trounce Valgrind. ICC embarrassingly outperforms GCC.

Linux development is still way the hell behind, and if the article's to be believed, apparently blissfully unaware.
I'm sure lots of people will apply for GOOGLE. Have you guys seen the workplace of Google. If i am given the chance to work at them i will accept it wholeheartedly. Their company is one of the greatest, sports room, gym, canteen and you can even sleep in one of their room (forgot what it is called). Superb, right.
Just to confirm. I have a Blackberry 8900 with T-Mobile. Worked just like at home with a wifi connection in Indonesia. They call this service UMA and it's pretty awesome.
Idea: hook your MicroCell through your broadband connection, jailbreak your iPhone, and use it to tether another computer's internet connection through the 3G through the wired broadband connection.
Wow that's tragic. I'm on the startup budget but just donated $20. I hope others can open their hearts as well.
IMHO, the problem with consumption is that it compromises your independence - that is, buying and maintaining stuff you don't need requires a steady stream of income, which makes it harder to leave a job you don't like or pursue goals like starting your own company or working on something you enjoy but doesn't pay much.

The whole environmental angle is relatively minor to this, in my view. In fact, much of the "Green" stuff like Prius and Whole Foods are just this generation's status symbols, like the caviar and BMWs of the 80s.
Somehow, I imagine it would be a privacy nightmare if Apple were to enable Genius by default. People would say that Apple cared more about money than privacy. Genius works by explicitly telling Apple they can go through your purchases to recommend other, similar things to you.
Health News: Dealing with Chicken Pox
My apartment gets absolutely no signal of any kind, so why would I be able to get a solid GPS satellite lock? Ridiculous.

I don't understand this complaint. Lack of cell phone signal has nothing to do with GPS signal availability. You just need a reasonable amount of sky to point at.
It would probably violate the TOS, but it seems like it would be pretty simple to circumvent the location restriction.

Very few companies produce GPS chips. Most devices that include GPS capability do not bother to reinvent the wheel, but instead elect to integrate an existing GPS processing chip.

GPS chips usually output various location sentences over standard RS232 (or I2C) a rate of around 1 Hz. It is unlikely that AT&T went through the trouble to design their own GPS processor into the Femtocell ASIC--it's likely connected but separate.

So, if the GPS data line could be isolated, it would be well within the capability of a microcontroller to feed fake GPS NMEA sentences [1] to the Femtocell ASIC using that line. Maintaining an updated time field in the NMEA sentences might require a separate real-time clock chip, but the Femtocell may not even examine the time given by the GPS.

A PIC microcontroller could cost less than $5, not including the cost of a compiler and hardware programmer.

Program a microcontroller to output an artificial location, cut a trace, solder a few leads, and you could make a Femtocell think it is Topeka, even if it is connected to the Internet in Turin.

[1] http://aprs.gids.nl/nmea/
Yeah I know one is cell signal and one is sat.. I'm just trying to say that my building's construction inadvertently blocks everything. If I whip out my iPhone and press the locate button in the Maps app, that has no idea where I am. Same with my Dash Express if used inside my apartment. Getting the GPS lock required putting the MicroCell right on an open window, almost outside.. not even a few feet from it worked.
I am a counterexample to your claim; hence, it is false.

I'm very fluent in vi(m), but I still end up going back to Emacs (well, MicroEmacs) every time for anything beyond doing hacks to configuration files. Why? I like having a heavily extensible development environment.

I also write Scheme, but that's another thing altogether.
There are also SQL based non-relational, non-acid, non (strictly speaking) database systems too, particularly for OLAP uses. Hive (and in the most recent versions/through a plugin, Pig too) provides SQL support on top of Hadoop.

While that's somewhat of a misplaced fit (SQL is based on relational algebra, why use relational algebra on a non-relational store?), it does provide a convenient interface for ad-hoc querying, particularly for non-engineers (e.g. business analysts).

Edit: addendum - Honestly, my own personal preference would be with either a language specifically designed for the non-relational store in question (e.g. Pig Latin) or a DSL in a general purpose programming language (e.g. Cascading or especially Clojure-based macros the Flightcaster team has created on top of Cascading).
Well it's not like they don't already know what you purchased. Netflix and Amazon don't ask permission to give you recommendations.
This account right here makes me want to be a mainframe programmer for a living.

Writing software for microcomputers that sells is for chumps. Mainframes are where it's at, if for no other reason than the fact that "relabel[ing] one line of [a] procedure between one software version and the next will break somebody else's program."
T-Mobile customers can roam onto AT&T... does anyone know if this microcell works with t-mobile phones?
Could you clarify a bit? Is there any use for this when I have Wi-Fi? Unless you are talking about using your connection with someone else's MicroCell, in which they have to add your phone to the authorized list. In which case I see what you mean.. getting access to Internet on your computer when you only have a access to a MicroCell connection. (?)
Sure, in theory, but for right now Redis/Tokyo Tyrant/etc actually exist and are free.

Yes, there's a question of whether we are talking the right way to build systems, or which system you ought to use in production tomorrow. Building a whole "movement" around the simple lack of some software is a little short-sighted, IMHO.

BTW, Stonebraker's VoltDB (www.voltdb.com) is a high-performance OLTP engine, and apparently an alpha release will be open-sourced shortly (a few months, I believe).

the NoSQL movement is based around a recognition that many applications can sacrifice those in favor of performance and scalability.

You make it sound like the NoSQL people were the first to observe this. That is very far from the truth -- IMS, Codasyl, Berkeley DB, object-oriented DBs, etc. have all been around for a long time.
and this is why I love Hacker News
Authentication Gap in TLS Renegotiation
Beautiful code — The Manifesto
Which makes the requirement that it gets a GPS lock before it works that much more ridiculous. GPS gets terrible reception in any indoor situation. It can have trouble with just trees.
The credit bureaus in general act in a way that is borderline criminal. It's remarkably easy for a clerical mistake to knock 100 points off of somebody's score, and the consumer is virtually powerless to correct it (or correct it in a timely manner).
I wouldn't call it "feel-good hippy shit", exactly because of the trailer park example. Trailer parks have a bad reputation for low quality. His houses demonstrate a well designed, nice looking home in a small space. That's a novel idea to many, especially in the US.
Ok, I can't be the only one that wants to get one and hack it to work with any VoIP provider. I haven't been this excited about working on a device since the original iPhone came out.
As I said, I don't really know enough to say, but are there stats to show that "most of their income is money won at a poker table?" And how much of that is due to being invited to tournaments?
Scalzi is missing quite a few points here.

1) 1KTF is not about today. It's a future possibility. In a few years there will be a large ebook market with very low distribution cost. For True Fans, you'll be able to sell to them directly, with no middleman.

2) 1KTF is about independent artists. His calculations still involve publishers. The publication route will still exist and have large marketing budgets and small royalties--which is great for the right sort of creator. 1KTF is an alternate route.

3) 1KTF requires direct upkeep of your fans. Scalzi talks about exceptional circumstances where he had a connection to the artist--that's the whole point. The 1KTF artist will have to cater directly to the fans. When the artist becomes friends with her fans, suddenly the wallet opens up. This isn't faux "I appreciate you here's an autograph" friendship. It means you respond personally to every single e-mail, tweet, etc. You do work specifically for them. He mentions a drawing of his wife as exceptional circumstances. It's not. To get 1KTF, you may have to draw a lot of folks' wives.

As a side note, there are plenty of people out there willing to dole out at 1KTF levels. Every WOW player, for instance, is paying more than $100 a year. There are lots of concert and sports tickets that cost $100 for a single event.

There's one thing that Scalzi is right about. Getting to a 1KTF level is extremely hard. It may be one of the least efficient ways to get an income. But it might also make for a fulfilling life.
There's no use for it, I just thought it would be funny.

I guess if you didn't have WiFi, had this, and all your friends had jailbroken iPhones it would be useful.
If I hadn't noticed the OP was the author of the article, I would have shouted foul play - in the wake of the at&t-verizon battle with 3G. The article is well written enough for me to remark as a viral ploy by at&t to get back to customers. (I didn't know of the 3G micro cell until I read this article; I assumed that this is a new device released)
Well, at least Billy is helping the poor in third world countries. :-)
The problem: every company who uses offerpal/gambit knows they are inviting their users to get scammed. The response from management at offer brokers is usually "We know they are scams (and that some of them auto-install viruses and trojans using IE exploits), but you have to make money somehow."

When marketing people talk about this scam issue, the response is typically "Video Professor and $9.99-per-month-in-the-fine-print SMS horoscopes advertise on late night TV. We're just doing what they do, so it can't be wrong."

We're in a strange time where users aren't customers. They just want to do something online and are exceedingly transient. No matter how much you abuse them, you can still make money if you convince 3% of your traffic to sign up for CPA scams.

Mike did a good job of shining a light on the issue, but everybody using an offer broker for a revenue boost knows users will be scammed (and virus'd).

Disclaimer: I work at a company offering these scams and free viruses to their users through offer brokers. I'm just a cog in the machine so my moral outrage goes unacknowledged. After all, companies need to make money.
The US is employing all those methods. Strange confusion on the part of whoever wrote that.
perhaps, after a while to be google.com?
Ask HN: Variable values in stack trace?
None of the languages I use do this, but I'm not sure why. Any insight?
How We Got Started:  Michael Dell
I am sure he does fine not even looking for a new job
Google Dashboard
There's an enormous network effect with bug tracking software. If you learned a software as a junior worker at one company, you're likely to choose the same one when you're in a more senior position at the next one.

Developers move from company to company, and take their knowledge and preferences with them. When you're setting up a new company or department, you're going to pick the program that your team knows.

My employer bought an instance of a certain bug tracker because one of our vendors was using it and we needed to keep their data when we changed vendors. A year later, the whole division uses it.
I'm sure my dog down in the baggage area was a terrible trial for everyone exposed.
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haha, indeed.
imdb?
> Very truly yours (and hoping I don’t get fired for being completely incompetent)

Last line from his email, ironically.
The same author wrote a really great piece on gay marriage from a database engineering perspective: http://qntm.org/?gay
Would be interesting to automatically run something like this and find a way to assert that the tests should fail. Almost an automated test of your tests.
100,000 is not that many and I believe it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Installed != in use and is not a proxy for how frequent someone uses an app. It's like saying the majority of books go unread so that deflates the meaning of Amazon claiming to be Earth's biggest bookstore. It's also not a very good argument against having more books.

"But does the finding take a bit of steam out of the company's size-centric marketing push? You'd better believe it."

How? If you have 100,000 apps vs 10,000 apps the chances are greater that your users will be able to find an app that suites their needs.
Atom support back in Mac OS X 10.6.2 dev seed
"one of the best programming books ever written, and it barely has any code in it."

Sounds very fishy, but from Robert Martin, who thinks people who don't do TDD (not unit testing, TDD) are "unprofessional" and "stone age programmers", I wouldn't expect any less.

"He treats unit tests like mandatory rituals,"

cargo cult alert!

fwiw my conclusion based on my experience, unit tests are (by and large)a good idea. Test Driven Development is dubious, especially the "TDD is a design method" idea. Conflating the two notions isn't very useful but happens surprisingly often.
at some point he realized that he could garner a lot of free press by pretending to be lazy.

See, this is your opinion, not fact. If you have facts, please cite them. Otherwise you're just smearing, as I said.

being lazy

Working less is not laziness when there is less work to be done. If Frind (or anyone) feels like they're meeting their goals in a certain amount of working time, how are they being lazy? What is being slacked-off on? Should they invent some new work to do just to meet some arbitrary time devotion quota? Nonsense.

I think it continues to perpetuate a very false but popular view of what startup life is like.

Frind himself has written about how he worked his ass off in the beginning. But 2009 is not the beginning. PlentyOfFish has been around since 2003. Are we still calling that a startup? I think it would be insane to perpetuate the notion that "startup life" should be something you maintain over six years, even after your company becomes wildly successful.

People here at HN upvote this because they know that running a startup involves hard work and meager rewards.

I sincrely wish I could believe people here were that conscious of the rationale behind their voting.
Waveboard Puts Google Wave iPhone Application Up For Sale
Jester - the JUnit  test tester
Every business is at least some network effect, in case of bug tracking,

We convince every new client we sign up to use Unfuddle unless they have a very strong preference for any other. I am sure I must have sold >5 new clients to Unfuddle this way, and those people sold Unfuddle to a few more contractors who to few more clients who to ...
At a meeting with a major VC firm I asked: "Aren't we supposed to have a business plan?" (they had called us because they were interested in our product). One of the partners at the VC firm laughed and said: "If I need a business plan I'll write it myself! It will be much better than any business plan you could write. What we want from you is your capacity to create new products."
Sounds a lot like what the Ingres guys must have said. "It doesn't matter if Oracle has a bigger network, there'll always be a market for us."

Of course there's a network effect. Oracle gets market share, third parties build stuff that relies on Oracle, Oracle gets more market share. Your bug tracker gets market share, people build source control and build system integration around it, it gets more market share.

Swapping out bug trackers is both theoretically and practically as easy as swapping out databases.
Currently (12:20 AM EST) my google account (https://www.google.com/accounts/) has the link to Dashboard (https://www.google.com/dashboard), but the resulting page is a 404.
An Entrepreneurial Life
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Here's a thought:

What is the average number of published apps per developer?

If we assume 10 (very high), at $100/year, that's $1,000,000 for just one year.

More realistically, developers are producing one or maybe a couple apps. Many people have also released 0, simply paying the $100 for the right to play with it. Let's say the lowest is 1 app per developer. That's $10,000,000.

So Apple is making somewhere between $1M and $10M in subscriptions before considering renewals or royalties.
>Without the tests, I'd have been scratching my head for ages figuring out "what" wasn't working.

The real question though is how all that time you spent writing the tests compares to the time you'd have spent troubleshooting.
Agreed. Dustin just comes off as whiny and self-important, though I don't think the employee should have been fired considering the content of his email.

Also, booking flights is very straightforward on aa.com. Dustin could have provided some substantive comments on usability, but instead simply called it ugly and slapped together a minimalist southwest.com knock-off. The only thing that really annoys me about the site is how confusing it is to get a list of your current reservations.

A majority of the public only shops based on price and availability. Unless the website is so bad that they can't figure out where to put their credit card number, it doesn't matter.
But the tests themselves _are_ code. Do you have tests that check the tests? And then tests that check the tests that check the tests?

At one point or another you just have to learn to live with bugs.
No more accurate than the one in the phone...
If you are so out of the loop of American politics that you were not aware about the whole "death panels" uproar, you really aren't aren't in the loop enough to be discussing the rest of this subject matter on this thread either

"Palin: Obama's "Death Panel" Could Kill My Down Syndrome Baby

In a new posting on her Facebook account, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made a dire statement about health care reform -- that it could result in an Obama-created "death panel" killing her infant son with Down Syndrome:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil...."

http://tinyurl.com/lujt9h

pbhjpbhj, the UK most certainly DOES NOT have what Betsy McCaughey and Sarah Palin defined as a "death panel"
Now that I have seen the video and then reread the transcript: Yes, putting up with the slightly rambling nature of the talk was entirely worth it.
Sustainable change requires the right mental model
Really?

I would assume that's true for the best ones (survivorship bias), but on average, there are probably more musicians who just fizzle out and disappear after a few years...
"The Internet is not about technology; it's about... - Paul Buchheit
The article starts with a description/definition of 'key-value stores' vs 'document stores'... but doesn't clarify the difference, if any.

When people say 'NoSQL', that doesn't preclude another kind of query language...

I assume NoSQL to mean, roughly :
- no traditional ansi RDBMS SQL
- key-value store
- graph-like / treelike data as first class citizen
- map/reduce style operations
- bundled with a dynamic lisp/python/ruby/javascript style general programming language.

You'd have to agree that 'NoSQL' is a movement - ie. many people vocalizing their shared emotional frustration at the limits of SQL. Not theoretical limits, but practical ease of use and subjective syntactic inelegance.

I personally identify with the movement, after having built traditional sql systems, preached data normalization etc., then slowly realising that this RDB approach is just really unwieldy and brittle.

Moving from XML to JSON, from C++ to lisp languages.. this makes the ugly syntax of SQL really stand out : as blatantly as COBOL or FORTRAN do to someone who has read K&R.

Maybe we havent found the right replacement... but we still know there has to be a better way.

The term 'NoSQL' is subjective, undefined, fuzzy - but its a label for a real problem that needs solving, and groups together partial solutions.