skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As CEO, he is a company shirt.

So if he, and his HR department, are OK with employees wearing company shirts at Burning Man (while also - ahem - half-naked), he's OK.

Otherwise, not so much.

I think he should keep his pictures up, but think about the company shirt at BM thing.
Social media jumbles all our social circles together, where we used to keep them separate by physical location. Every application seems to assume I have one list of friends. In reality, I have friends among gaming contacts, friends among political junkies, friends from work, friends from the internet, friends from college, friends from church, friends from my old apartment building. They may have nothing in common with each other, and indeed may indeed be offended by mutually exclusive behaviors on my part. Interacting with all of them at once is awkward at best.

Perhaps an ability to organize and tag friends (and posts) by circle would help.
What is the difference between a job server and a message queue that requires a return queue?
One can certainly hack out some very maintainable Perl code. I agree 100%. I just started doing some work on an old 10kloc Perl app I wrote 3 years ago and because I planned it out in a sensible manner, have been able to jump in without too much trouble.

But I've also choked when trying to work on trivial scripts I tossed together in a rush.

I've always found Python to naturally follow more maintainable code patterns -- and it seems really designed with a philosophy towards that goal. But I've always liked Perl better since the code flows more like how I think (at least in a write once kind of way).
Guys like Knuth and Torvalds are not primarily concerned with gaining employment, because their resumes are already pretty much at peak impressiveness. There are not many people in their class. The alternative to spending all your time on the project that you're famous for (if, for example, you are not famous...) is to spend time doing some of these things.
Well 'should be in rapheal.js' comes across a bit strong...

I meant : it seems a good kit, you've probably heard of it.
Secret Knock Detecting Door Lock
How many times have you seen a secret hideout with a secret knock? It's a staple of cheesy dramas, Saturday afternoon movies, and tree houses throughout the world. Now it's real.
I'm going to assume you mean closures as in Scheme, not closures in a pure functional language.

For that, what I would try is an operational approach:

"Joe, you know how local variables are allocated on a stack?" If he says "no" I'm not sure what the next move is but if he says yes, get him to briefly explain it back to you. E.g., get him to say, at least in vague terms, that on entry to some function the local variables get "pushed on the stack".

"Ok, good. So, what happens when the function returns?" Hopefully he can come up with "the variables are popped off the stack".

"Right. Now, how does the program find the variables on the stack?" Hopefully, Joe can come up with the idea of a stack pointer.

"Cool. [Draw a little picture] So, the stack pointer is kind of like a pointer to a structure. The variables are the fields of the structure. See?" Hopefully Joe says "yes".

"Here's an alternative: instead of using a stack, we could allocate that structure just like any other structure. Instead of popping things off the stack at the end, we could just free/delete/whatever the structure. Make sense?" Hopefully he's still with you.

"Only, we don't actually have to free/delete the structure right away. Suppose I write a function inside this other function, like this [write pseudo-code for an anonymous function with some free variables bound to locals. Have the containing function return this anonymous function.]"

"You might think that when we return a 'function pointer' that we're just returning a pointer to the code. But in this case, our 'function pointer' is really two pointers: a pointer to the code and another pointer to the structure containing the local variables it refers to. So now, we DON'T free/delete that structure of local variables when returning. It sticks around. It's used by this 'function pointer' where returning. When we call that function pointer, it gets passed a sekrit hidden magic parameter which is a pointer to that structure. So the function can still keep using those variables." Hopefully Joe is still with you but ask some questions to find out.

"It's a little bit like that structure of local variables is an object, but an object with only one 'method' and that one method is the nested function we wrote. Get it?"

I think that should get a typical Joe (at least one who has some clue about stacks and stack pointers) to a first-level, rough and ready, operational understanding of closures. If it does, you can mention that actual optimized implementations tend to be a lot hairier, that GC is important, that there are deep connections to lambda calculus, etc.

Again, if on the other hand Joe doesn't even have the slightest awareness of an operational model of how a stack-based language works - I'm not sure what you can do for him.
Hot damn! I'd never have expected him to find his way there, but it seems like it would be a good fit. A smart ambitious guy who hates bullshit, and one of the few companies that it's impossible to accuse of bullshitting. I wish them both luck.
Also "There was a little problem called the speed of light"
In principle, you could demonstrate superposition states of cats the same way you'd demonstrate them for atoms or photons: return the live and dead cats to the same state, and look for interference fringes. There are two difficult parts. First, you have to kill the cat, rescusitate it, and restore every molecule of its body to the original orbital, without leaving even one photon of evidence. Once you've done that, it's a simple matter of getting the cat to sit still while you measure its position within a tiny fraction of the diameter of an atomic nucleus.

I found a fascinating history of the atomic theory at http://www.aare.edu.au/02pap/har02049.htm, in the section titled "The History of the Particle Theory". Atoms were once as fantastic as superposition states are today, then they gradually became real.

The same page points out that the plausibility of atoms is largely a fluke. People imagine that solid gold has the color of a gold atom, and gas pressure comes from squeezing the atoms together. Quantum theory doesn't lend itself to such simple but wrong explanations.
Lessons from Ebay's flawed acquisition of Skype
I don't think Bill Gates has problems as being accepted as real. He might not be the everyman, but the 'nerd/dork' persona is certainly more accesible/real than the usual bland, anonymous, conservative CEO suit.
The Cavallo Gallery
Ask HN: Do we still need static html templating?
I'm playing around with a few new frameworks for an idea I'm working on, and some of them build HTML directly in the language (Compojure, Seaside). The old-school developer in me says that this is a bad idea, since designers can't mess around with the HTML.

However, I know that CSS is the primary way of doing design these days, so maybe it's not a big deal.

So, my question is: if you're building a web app and you plan on getting a designer involved at some point, do you think static HTML templates are necessary?

As an aside, if anyone is building / has built web applications in any framework like this, (I think Nevow handles things similarly) I'd love to hear your experiences.
Ah, yes. Magnesium. Also means NeXT cubes are great for starting a thermite bomb.
Why your site might need a redesign
I just tell them it's for close friends. Not many people can qualify that they're close friends right off the bat. If you want to get close, by all means, let's go out for a ramen. Send me an email. Call me up.
If this thing is for real, I'm going to buy one. I can see using it as a chording keyboard (or at least trying to ;-}).
Because this is more of a private conversation -- and because you've negatively referenced our previous interaction without context -- I've sent you an email.
You'd think that, but the whole Novell/SCO affair proved that companies can pay $150m for something with neither side fully understanding what was sold.
No, it's not a cultural difference, I can be a bit abrasive. It's not anything directed at you, just frustration that researchers don't have a more direct pipeline for getting things done. I definitely wasn't going for arrogant though, so sorry about that.

Sweden rocks as far as a lot of privacy issues go. Sweden (along with a couple other countries) were early adopters for DNSSEC. I wish we could be more like Sweden; the US is not so quick. Verisign (a for profit company) wont deploy DNSSEC on .com and .net until 2011. By contrast domains administered by the US government and a non profit (.gov and .org) are supposed to have it done by the end of this year. I think these differences illustrate nicely the point I was trying to make. Security can sometimes take a back seat on the priorities list, and even the US government and a non profit are far behind countries that choose that make it a priority.
I once borrowed a cool trackball from a friend, and I discovered that playing Doom with it was a cinch. I was whizzing around and blasting anything moving. It was incredible!
I'm using LNMP (pronounced "lamp")

Linux nginx mongodb php
lol... did you figure it out yet? .05cents is 5/100ths of a cent.
Indian engineers becoming backbone of Japan's IT industry
An online alarm clock
Funny, I didn't expect to hear reasonably priced after he mentioned that a concern with social media and his employees is that they don't take pics of M. Fox and other celebrities that stay there.

Not that if it wasn't reasonably priced I wouldn't have given it a shot, but he definitely sent a clear message about his clientele with that line, lol.
Don't tell Steve Jobs that ;)

But yes, I agree.
Do advanced education and a challenging career make you smarter?
I'm not a VC but....
Full disclosure: We applied but didnt get selected.

Nonetheless, I have had a start-up (failure) before. And I know a bunch of really smart people and VC's. ;-)

If you want to practice on us or if you are coming in from out of town and need a place to stay (I have a killer house), contact me on Twitter. @BHeard.

If I get an overwhelming response, preference will be given to start-ups who's products are synergistic with ours.
Then find ways to use it.

At work, my project is purely C++. But if I have to write a tool for data analysis or to test a subsystem, I'll use C# so I improve my .NET skills. Before,I used Python for that, but C# became more appealing.

Same thing at home. Web projects (of which there are few!) use PHP, everything else is C/Assembly (I do a lot of microcontroller stuff) or C# front ends using Visual Studio Express.
During lightning storms previously observed by spacecraft, energetic electrons moving toward the craft slowed down and produced gamma rays.

That actually sounds like bremsstrahlung x-rays, not gamma rays. They have very different energy spectra due to their origin. Although you can also slow down the electrons by first producing an electron-positron pair, and then the positron will decay into two gammas.
I should have said that this was for YC applicants. Sorry.
The site seems to be slashdotted, here's a better link: http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/06/openofficemouse-isnt-free...
Wouldn't this mean that you're part of the problem? Just kidding :p
Not much, but the Gearman default is to require a response. You can almost treat gearman like blocking unix pipes over tcp, mixed with a FIFO queue. In fact, it comes with commandline tools to do just that. You get the option of submitting a job without waiting for a response back too, though.

I suppose Gearman is more of an RPC broker with sync and async modes than an MQ, but the differences are mostly semantic.
Yes, and games are also far more linear. "Crap. I loved levels 1-10...but I can pay $10 for levels 10-20." or "This gun is great, but if I pay, I can get ones that are way more powerful."

If you make an enjoyable product, typically you can convert interested casual users into paying customers fairly easily.
Why do SMS web service prices vary so much? How does this service do a better job than Penny SMS who charge $0.01/message and provide return messages via email? https://www.pennysms.com/
Hopefully they can hook me up soon. I know my eyes and hands are a serious bottleneck on my sniping abilities. I would pay serious cash for a real way to play FPS games without using my keyboard and mouse. Even just replacing my mouse would be good enough.
Jamming to randomly generated music doesn't sound like everyone's cup of tea.
So, this is GuitarWar, right?
I think people like Knuth, Torvalds, Carmack, etc. are the models for career development. Why would you assume that a strategy that didn't work for any of the biggest guys around would be better for you than theirs?
Finally an opponent whose Quake skills are on a par with my own. All your cheese belong to us, my little rat-tailed friend!!
Perhaps I'm getting hung up on the semantics. We use it more to farm out function calls, rather than passing content or delivering large messages. The one time I tried to use it for large amounts of data I did have issues with memory and latency.

For simple RPC-style use (millions per day) though, our server has been stable (no change in memory or latency) for months without a restart.
The important thing is to learn the concepts and structures that programming languages indirectly talk about.

If you understand the differences between the OO concepts in Java, Ruby and Python, then you'll find it easy enough to pick up the surface layer (the syntax) of the languages.
I don't think you read the article. The mouse's brain was not controlling it's virtual navigation; that was controlled by how it moved on the ball. The brain comes into the discussion because they were able to see what parts were lighting up as a result of the navigation.
An Inside Look at the Physics GRE
i could see this being good for gaming, but if you're enough of a power office user to remember these buttons, won't you just be using the keyboard shortcuts anyway, thus never needing the mouse?
Lessons From the World's Best Project Managers
AnyApp
The knee-jerkiness of the community, and the groupthink. If you think Slashdot has the herd mentality, I'm not sure what you'd think of Reddit. Never before have I seen a group of self-proclaimed progressives be this bigoted and ignorant, yet fast on the trigger when it comes to condemning just about anyone or anything - e.g., Sears, the constant posts about tazers, the giant hate-on for all law enforcement, etc.

Recently there have been some pretty clear racist undertones running throughout the site (anti-Muslim, in particular). Reddit prides itself in being a community of self-ascribed liberals and progressives - but I don't see it at all in the behaviour of its userbase.

Nowadays I mostly only go to the photography subreddits, that are still generally populated by reasonable people willing to discuss as opposed to fight. Niche subreddits may be the only places left on the site that doesn't make me mentally throw up every time I try to read it.
Wonder how they'd feel about my family: three and a half people, two 80lb dogs, about six cats at last count, four horses, bunch of chickens, two ducks, two SUVs, a sports car, a big-ass diesel pickup truck, and miscellaneous small off-road vehicles.

But my wife is thinking of becoming a vegetarian, so it's all good ;-)
I have wanted to do this for erlang but it is not an easy problem, im guessing most of these repl's use a 'safe' subset of the language? which is exactly what I dont want to do.

Good work though, looks good
Tricks That Make You More Attractive to Clients
The fact that people in this discussion aren't sure if it's a joke tells you something about the OpenOffice experience.

Now all we need is some brash young designer to skin the default screen for each program, tell OO to fire its whole experience staff because they obviously can't tell their heads from their tails, and write a blog about it.
Oddly the site doesn't seem to mention if the mouse is compatible with Solaris or OpenSolaris.
But I don't think they do (apply equally well), sure you could do some of these things in a SQL database but they would be less than optimal. Mongo is built to do these things and seems to do them well.

It's about using the right tool for the right job.
Actually, no, Mobivity give you an API to send and receive SMS messages, and they do it in pretty much the same way this site does. I know this because I've used them to do exactly that. I know it does the the marketing as well but it has a fully fledged SMS api too.
Brad Fitzpatrick (of LiveJournal, now at Google) Talks About Programming
I'm pretty sure Steve doesn't think of himself as superhuman; that's just how everyone else views him. His commencement address at Stanford seemed quite human to me.

Text: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-06150...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
Because in all likelihood, most people don't have what they have. Those guys are outliers, not the norm.
Taking care of existing customers increases the likelihood they will refer you to their friends, thereby generating new customers. Most businesses would do well to love and leverage their existing customer base.
dup. but under a different source URL.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924237
No matter what kind of shop you're in, you own your own machine. Use those languages for local stuff, your stuff, shell scripts and such that aren't part of the company product. Any good developer uses the command line a lot, it's the most efficient way to do lots of shit.
Property rights need to be protected or an economic system falls into anarchy. On a small scale, it is possible for the community to enforce these rights (in which case, the community has formed a local government) but on the larger, societal scale, a transcommunity government is needed (or a warlord/city boss/etc appears which is, by its nature, a form of government).

If all free trade actions could be resolved by rational, respectful, interaction of two individuals of integrity (ie they keep their word), then no government is needed. As far as I can tell, if such a world existed, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

As long as individuals need to collaborate in order to resolve disagreements, as long as certain individuals need to take responsibilities for overseeing these collaborations, government is necessary.
My hands hurt just looking at that damnable thing. I wouldn't be able to use it for more than 10 minutes at a stretch because I'd end up losing all feeling in my right hand.

... if I were a right-hand mouser to begin with, that is, all joking aside.
http://runplaybook.com/ is just rsync, right?

:-)
I am unable to understand this viewpoint that you can only have "pure" free-markets without government.

There can be no free market without government unless you define government as "official" government. If you define government more loosely as a "governing body", then it is clear that government must always exist in a free market system because conflicts and disagreements will always exist.

The governing body is a necessary factor in economic system.

I would argue the free markets never exist in a 100% free state. To talk as if they do is really to ignore the realities and complexities of modern economic systems.
If you had to ask, they've probably proven their point that there's something wrong with a lot of Open Source software :)
"In practice, nothing works." Nice quote, but it would have worked better preceded by "In theory, everything works." :-)
SMS prices vary so much depending on the quality of service you want. At Poll Everywhere we pay a premium to SMS aggregators to have a short code (99503) and higher priority connections to cell networks. You could tap into the SMS network entirely via email, but the latency is too high for our needs.

The situation is awful, and paints a nasty picture of what the web would look like if it were not for net neutrality.
You made the same factor of 100 mistake that Verizon seems to make a lot. As it turns out, most people care about a factor of 100 when it comes to the amount of money that they owe.

http://failblog.org/2009/02/04/verizon-math-fail/
Crap, I fly into Portland on the 11th, but don't arrive until just after 9pm.
It was the approach we took at my previous job.
Good point. Replace Bill Gates with Michael Dell or some other suit-type.
The Martian landscape like you have never seen.
I'm sure I must be missing obvious here but why are they not just pushing those mails out directly?

All that gearman buys them here is... a longer delay until the mail is actually sent.
Not even. It's mostly straight SSH. With a little Ragel thrown in.
I thought CEO's went to Bohemian Grove ??!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Gamma_rays_and_the_ru...
Google: a New Movement in Good Business and Transparency
if you mean move the app's directory location, then no. i ran the app, but there doesn't seem to be a way to close the registration window after i've exited the game. i can't even force quit.
So it's a "long tail" mouse.
I purchased your app for the iPodTouch today after getting the app with the bundle. I have not been able to get them to sync through the campus wifi but I would be shocked if you told us you were not getting a big increase in app purchases.
I love these for playing with syntax.

Here's one for python: http://try-python.mired.org/

and one for ruby: http://tryruby.sophrinix.com/
very much so I think, I am on the second iteration of a web framework thing, in the first one the templating was done through a reasonably complicated server side interface.

The second iteration I have pushed the templating into html itself (using data attributes and reserved classes) and find it incredibly easier to comprehend the round trip
That makes me sad. It's a significant piece of computing history that should be preserved.

If, for nothing else, to prevent future computer makers from using cast magnesium in their cases.
You're right, it does increase the delay. It's more of an example of how Gearman can be used.

Also, I _hate_ the idea of running an MTA on 30 machines that shouldn't be sending mail.
You have a lot of faith in QA ;)
Do you mean a digitizer, or a mouse?

The digitizers were impressive, but we later switched to a multibutton mouse for AutoCAD (circa R12 for DOS). I think it had 8 auxiliary buttons in a 4x2 grid, along with the primary left and right button. They were great for AutoCAD, as you could put a different osnap on each aux button, but the company disappeared before writing a windows driver.

I still have one around here, somewhere...
Mine does.
Well, it is probably a joke, but anyone familiar with Engelbart's mother of all demos would certanly see a vague similarity ...
Oddly enough, I never had any problems with OOo. It just works.

On the other hand, when my office's computers got bumped from MS Office 2003 to 2007, I saw a lot of people bitching about how difficult it was to find stuff and making lots of Ray Charles with moving furniture jokes.
> Should a CEO be held to a different standard? Let me know what you think is right.

I don't know, dude. Aren't you also the owner and proprietor? I think that you can do whatever you feel like. But you should figure how much different things should cost you.
Well the challenge wasn't to "jam" to it, it was to be able to play it. I did it, and I'll say it was way too hard for most guitarists.

This was on purpose to act as a sort of implicit "invite only" mechanism. It kind of worked a bit too well.

The next round will be more "jamming" oriented and open ended so more people can play.
One year ago today, AT&T's president promised iPhone tethering "soon."