skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, friendly with django users, which is nice if that's all you are. The problem, however, is what he mentions in the post: "I’ve noticed the tone of the arguments in the Django community getting nastier — especially when it comes to Rails." Hopefully the ideas in this post catch on and I'm glad a prominent Django developer is calling it out.

I mentioned Ian Bicking's great talk at this year's PyCon elsewhere in these comments, but another thing he touched on was framework fanboyism, and how it's mainly the result of people being new to the framework and trying to convince themselves that it's the answer to everything. Whether it's Django or Rails or any other technology, excitement is good, but not when it becomes tribal and adversarial toward perceived competitors.
I would take the route of first order functions -> anonymous functions -> closures

But those are three completely different concepts. A closure need not be anonymous or even first-order.
The reason speculators can make tons of money on Wall Street, is because they can get people to play along.

You don't make money because an asset you own rises. You make money because someone buys it at that price. (That's the same, I know, but it's an important point to understand - it's NOT just numbers going up and down in a computer, at the end of the chain there's actual liquid money changing hands).

Now we've lived through two financial bubbles right after each other, and one can hope that people will learn that sharp rises in the value of an asset are often inflated, and stop putting their money into the game. After all, those who bet and then hedged their bets on real estate (this time) and .coms (last time) were also (generally!) the ones who lost the most.
Steampunk exhibition in Oxford (Youtube video)
Windows 7 in Pictures: The Coolest New Hardware
Ditto, every time I get stuck and hit the django IRC channel I'm amazed how friendly and helpful the devs are. I don't think I've ever left there without learning something.
It's just a metonymy, like "Wall Street", "Silicon Valley", etc. A bit stretched, maybe, but it's not misleading so who cares?
http://www.iode.co.uk/blog/pdrummond/i_finally_understand_cl...
Wow, those 2 Swedish chaps know how to bluff their way into a 14% stake...
It's a very perverted market, where banks that would have been bankrupt if not for billions in taxpayer funds, even gets to pay their employees salary.

On the other hand, bankers in the banks that actually lived through the crisis because they didn't jump on all the fancy derivatives, actually deserves a bit fat bonus.
Articles such as this are what fuck up the computing industry.

If you want software engineers to be recognized as actual engineers they have to conform to a code of ethics and other standards. When the employer says "let's just cut this corner", the engineer says "NO we cannot!" instead of trying to justify and rationalise it.

I dislike the term software engineer and I think computing science would be better and more applicable. A scientist doesn't shy away from his responsibilities and he sometimes tells the truths that hurt.

We already always ship buggy code. That part is done for you. What this article advocates is going further and questioning almost everything that can lead to a proper design.
what does orthogonal mean in this context
I want to clarify that half my point is that this crap is easy to write.
Believing that your proof of concept or prototype won't end up in production is another junior's mistake.
Very interesting to note that as the popularity of these types of apps rise, so will brick-and-mortar retailers awareness and deterrent of them.

How?

Many retailers do not allow pictures to be taken in their stores, something that is very loosely enforced, but is enforced nonetheless.

One time I needed to take a pic of the description of a product in Home Depot so I wouldn't forget. Told the associate that and he said we don't allow pictures in our store, regardless of the reason. -- I took it anyway ;)

Now, with everything else facing retailers, especially the cost of payroll, I doubt they will fight too hard, but don't be surprised if it comes up in their training of employees more often and encourage those employees to enforce it more often.
see also the homepage: http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/steampunk/
I think even if you get the organic results, they are not organic enough.

I searched for "django video tutorial" earlier today. The first organic result? A link to the official django docs and that page does not even include the word "video".
Amazon RDS, MySQL, Hmm?
Google uses (and hosts free for everyone) jQuery. You can even use their new compiler to get a smaller version of jQuery. The widget library has some overlap with jQuery, but does so much more and has been in progress since well before jQuery UI (Google bought Writely in March 2006 and jQuery UI didn't come out until September 2007).
There's a fundamental flaw in the logic that concludes that "government must intervene to stop the shameless looting of taxpayer money." Taxation itself is government intervention.

Abuse of money received from a government that shamelessly loots its people for the "common good" and through manipulation of a highly regulated system is no more an indictment of Capitalism than failure to run is an indictment of a man tied to a chair.
Recession Tales - The Workplace Is Changing Forever
Ask HN: How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours?
I've read about a lot of people developing services for a crowded market (or what some would call a saturated market) and still able to reach a 'ramen profitable' stage.

I do not want to point out specific startups, but recently read about Thymer, a project management app and Stunf's blog post on the launch here: http://stunf.com/blog/launch-the-week-after/

So to all those who have done it and are doing it, how did you guys do it?

P.S: Any links to articles dealing with topic?
Let's see if you agree with this restatement of your post:

Fast, mediocre coders may be able to iterate really fast in order to get something out in front of users. This means that when you don't know what the problem or the solution is (as discussed in the article), they can be effective at identifying the problem that requires the solution.

But if their crummy code gets used as the nucleus of the solution (once the problem has been identified), the startup can often ensure its own doom.

This means that in successful startups, speed-of-writing-good-code and speed-of-problem-identification are strongly correlated, and therefore cannot be called orthogonal.

I agree with this & think it's a useful refinement to my thinking. Thanks.
You're blatantly taking that out of context. GP's idea was to "develop a profitable arbitrage trade" using one's intelligence, not to go work for a bank.
Sorry, I've been in the land of cellular milk and honey for a while: is barcode scanning new and exciting still in the US? I remember having it on a free (subsidized) bar phone 7 years ago here.
I would suggest that it was an elimination of a lot of laws regarding financial transactions and regulation that enabled the recent decline. The removal of these laws enacted to prevent a recurrence of an historical collapse, did in fact bring another collapse, so pragmatically, I would say laws help.
All iPhones have good enough optics to detect 2D barcodes like QR Code. Linear barcodes like UPC were trickier until the iPhone 3GS, which has variable focus camera hardware that also admits direct access to camera frames. On the 3GS, barcode scanning is a cake walk.

There are many surprising things about RedLaser's success, but technology isn't one of them. I agree with OP that apparent violations of licensing (access to Amazon.com via mobile is not allowed) are surprising. Most surprising to me is how well RedLaser has sold given that barcode scanning was antiquated over a year ago by products like SnapTell. Why scan a UPC code when you can just take a picture of the cover of a book and have the product found just as fast, with as good or better accuracy? No matter if your photo is blurry, or badly lit, or out of focus, or only grabs a part of the book's cover...
I'm inclined to agree. I'm happy I heard about this bundle, but I don't think it falls under the purview of HN. HN has started seeming more promotional in general in recent times, with far more linkbait articles than I remember there being a year ago.
Good developers are computing scientists or software engineers who think before they write code because if you don't understand the process or the concepts or the abstractions involved, your code is going to be shit.

Remember that TDD advocate who tried to write a Sudoku solver using TDD methods. He went up against Peter Norvig but that is irrelevant. Norvig knew how to think about the problem but the advocate did not. So the problem isn't how many lines of some random programming language that you can bang out and how quickly you can fix bugs in it, the problem is do you understand the problem and the solution you are creating?
I hate to bring this to a general discussion of capitalism/Rand etc., but I have a question:

How is Rand's "liberty" supposed to be provided?

It seems to me we already live in a universe where people have as much free will as we ever will. Some people use this free will to restrict the free will of others. Sometimes this is a government, sometimes it's a corporation, or sometimes it's a kidnapper.

But what hypothetical external agent could ever ensure that no one's free will will be restricted? To have such a system would necessitate restricting people's free will so that they couldn't restrict each other's free will; it would be a self-defeating situation.

This is analogous to the set of all sets in mathematics, or other paradoxes that arise by having "all powerful" objects. Humans are so free, that we are free to kill ourselves (for instance), and remove our freedom. Likewise, we are free to disable our own free will.

How could Rand change things so that this is not the case?

In my view, governments are the result of the utter freedom we have as humans. It is simply absurd to think of getting rid of the systems that restrict freedom; if we did, the freedoms granted would simply create new systems, like corporations, or another government, that would replace all the functions of the system we got rid of.

Let me put it another way: It seems we already have maximal liberty. How are things ever going to be better in that respect?
It might take a while before Google get negative wide spread reaction or loose of revenue just due their reputation build over the years and innovative drive. However, in competitive market and emerge of hungry start ups looking for new business it might come as an opportunity for others
The informavore in its cage
Interesting article, but "forever" is silly as we all know that the economy and issues related are cyclical and never go in one direction forever.

Look at this piece:
"When the 15 million unemployed Americans do find jobs again, they'll return to a workplace that is likely to have grown accustomed to less pay for more work, or at least working less hours in a week. The raises that were once part of an annual employee review, if not entirely gone, will take years to get back to where they were before the recession."

Does the author really think so? When the economy rebounds and is bustling again and employers are back to competing to hire talent, is this really going to be a problem? Nope. In fact, in our current "crappy" economy, that is still happening. Microsoft is trying to recruit people from Apple Stores, for their own stores, and luring them with higher wages.

Just a thought. I will admit though that through these cycles, some things do change in a direction that seems to go on much longer than cycle itself.
The government in Germany some years ago messed around with the data and the data set until all appeared well and some parts of the unemployed population - apparantly mostly the long-time unemployed, who have no motivation left to ever leave the welfare benefits system to work again - were just dropped from the data set. Recognize that unemployment data is a government tool. It's one of many interesting data points for one's analysis of the economic situation, but by itself it's pretty meaningless as it's not consistently measured over time.
As they state on http://www.redlaser.com/SDK.aspx :

"WARNING: 10/14/2009 The RedLaser SDK currently uses an unpublished function to access video frames. Very recently, others have indicated that this will likely lead to rejection of any application using this function, including any application with the RedLaser SDK. We are working hard to find a solution, as we believe there is great potential for this technology on the iPhone. Please take this into account when considering use of the RedLaser SDK."

So they probably analyze a lot of different video frames before finding an accurate one.
Meanwhile I can see it in a different light: since MacHeist is so famous, being included is a cool thing for an indie app. Saying "whoa, my app is in MacHeist" seems OK, as would be "37signals reviewd my app" and so on.
Tool of the Day: Bill On Site: Invoicing To Go
I'm simply pointing out an easy counterexample to It takes hundreds of people to make a good movie.

It doesn't have to be that way.
It would be nice to see the history of a search over time from the inception of Google to the present (with the same keyword search).

When you're in the barn, its hard to smell the odors - so having this progressive timeline is probably the only way to objectively see how much ground we are really losing.
Key fact: 14% share for Skype founders "in exchange for providing Joltid software and a significant capital investment". Would love to hear just how "significant" this capital is :)
working in an organization through which lots of money passes would not be such a lucrative career

No, those people would just go work for the government.
It's not that complicated. Quality takes time.

As Greenspun said once, if we want software engineers to be treated with respect, we need to force employers to respect a certain minimum standard of quality.

Regarding your example...by releasing something badly designed/programmed into the wild and taking money from customers, you are committing fraud. It needs to be seen this way otherwise we will never be forced to take the time to create quality software.
Even more alarming is when Google sprinkles shopping links inside the organic results! I recently did a search for "calculator" and the 3rd listing (inside the organic list) was a Google shopping box of links.

This really upset me, but what can we do?
Except that wasn't your point... you said lots of people were required to make a great film, which is much stronger than lots of people can make one.
A sobering read about the problems our system faces is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice.

During the last boom a full 40% of all of the profits in the system came from the non-productive activity of people manipulating cash flows. This is simply not a sustainable financial structure. History shows that economies that are based on financial manipulation rather than production don't last. The USA isn't the first to combine of financial manipulation along with the export of production and the knowledge that previous lead to persistent economic advantage. In the last several hundred years Spain, Holland and England did this. In all previous cases it was a big factor leading to financial collapse and the loss of empire.

Is there any reason to believe it will work any better for us?
Yep. Sure, to survive in the long term, you've got to survive in the short term first. But taking a shortcut that ultimately results in losing a customer's data (or indeed, losing track of their money or their stuff) is a bigger risk than getting your product out of the door a day late(r than you wanted).
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough
at the end of the chain there's actual liquid money changing hands

Naked short selling doesn't require one to have any money to invest nor any shares. You can still make a lot of money and destroy a company's shares if well connected enough. The price falling on the shares is only produced by the apparent glut of shares offered for sale, they don't need to sell initially to produce a price fall, the offer is enough. Once the naked sale has iterated through a couple of loops and many other offers appear as the stock falls then the price plummets, not because of sales but because of lack of sales.

You make money because no one buys. Traders can make money any way the market moves and if sufficiently skilled and backed can make the market move - it _is_ just numbers going up and down.
Amazon RDS - The Beginner’s Guide
A method remembers its context? I am not sure how to not understand it. Understanding all the implications might be another problem.
Yes. This approach works. I used it when I actually did work in a proprietary language which had no usable objects, but did have half-decent lambdas. Most people did not understand or use them at all, but one new guy with a Java background asked me how to cope. I explained to him how to use closures to implement a simple bank account class, and he got it immediately.

I don't think this guy played WoW, though. :)
Ganeti - Virtual Servers Management Tool from Google
As a writer I've always admired programmers, and with my brother being a programmer I recognized the same processes going on.

I worked as a reviewer for a couple of years, and I have to tell you that the day job is very constrained, especially when politics get involved in it, which is why I quit and have been focusing on novel writing.

What works well for me is sort of a prototyping. I start with the key notes (basically 1/2 lines of integral plot) for Act 1 (or the 1st 1/4) is the introduction of everything, and usually ends with the revelation of the problem you're exploring. Act 2 (or the middle half) is where the character tries to solve the problem, and in the middle of this section should reach rock bottom, he then has a revelation or some such and then starts building up for the final confrontation. Act 3 (or the 4th 1/4) has the climax and is usually followed by a 'denouement' which is where everything goes back to normal. However, the denouement isn't as integral as the rest, in fact many novels/plays/movies leave this out and it can frequently be a twist in horror movies (for me the only thing that made Quarantine a passable movie is because it had no denouement - everyone died) and tragedies.

The next step is usually turning those acts into chapter summaries; these are 1 liners that explain what the chapter is advancing in the plot (this can literally be as simple as finding a key to a locked door), what I'm currently working on has chapter summaries of single words as it's enough to remind me of the plot). Once you have the goal of every chapter you can begin work.

Honestly as a writer I would say you're completely fucking nuts for even wanting to try. However, I'd recommend anyone give it a go as it's very self-fulfilling. I dumped over 40,000 words onto the sidelines last week when I found myself wandering as it had taken me over 3 months to get that far and I was missing the aim (the story is sound however, so it's not been abandoned), what I replaced it with I'm at 10,000 words, full plot outline and about 5,000 words of notes. However the 40,000 words I dumped had itself supplanted a 30,000 word work that had swallowed a gargantuan 9 months and died because it was written in the complete wrong narrative. The effort to rewrite defeats the purpose, so it's now getting major plot revisions and will be written in 1st not 3rd. Despite all this, you don't feel the stress from dumping months of work essentially into a trash can because you can actually see how your writing changed from start until trash.
Central bank money, created and debased at will, vs. Wealth-backed money, intrinsically valued by the wealth that backs it. Freedom to choose money that doesn't inflate allows multigenerational wealth transfer, etc.
the idea of using a distributed grid of agents to create sense data about our planets inner workings doesn't excite anyone on HN?
It looks like eye-candy excuses tyranny...
Prostitutes do not do anything for revenue. Most of them have clearly defined limits as to what they will and won't do.
I'm surprised it's selling at all. Aren't there any decent free barcode apps for the iPhone?
My response to YC RFS 3
There is nothing stopping you using tagged tuples in haskell. I don't think it is done so much because type signatures are very useful and cross:: (Num b)=>(a,b, b) -> (a, b, b) -> (a, b, b) is more wordy than cross :: (Point p) => p -> p -> p.

You can use newtypes but then you lose the genericness.
[reposting a relevent comment I wrote here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834920]

For those trying to start a writing habit: here are some tips that have helped me over the last month, to the point that it's starting to feel automatic:

1. Set realistic goals. Mine is "500 words per day, no excuses." It takes 1-2 hrs.

2. Start when it's easy. I started my 500 word per day rule over a week-long vacation. This builds the confidence that you can achieve your goal in a reasonable amount of time.

3. Have a routine for getting started. I have a special writing playlist and play the same song every time I start writing. Over time your brain forms associations and will automatically go into the appropriate mode.

4. If you're having trouble getting started, try imagining how good you will feel once you've hit your daily goal. While you're doing that, count from 10 to 1 as if you're about to launch the space shuttle. Then start.

5. Focus on daily progress. Your feedback loop should be "I won at writing 500 words today," not "I'm now 10.5% done instead of 10.3% done."

The writing itself is never going to become truly automatic or habitual. What will become a habit is expecting that you'll make progress every day, and knowing that you're capable of succeeding today.
You are right. I had known his mathematical work, but didn't know his biography.

That said, his physics work seems to have been in general relativity, not quantum mechanics. Given what I know about how he messed up when he stepped out of his area in math, I find it more likely that he has made similar types of mistakes in quantum mechanics than that he has truly demonstrated that mainstream physics is wrong.