2009-04-03 front | Hacker News

1.

The problems with url shorteners (schachter.org)

2.

Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (techcrunch.com)

3.

Open letter to Blackboard: $1M to charity if you drop patent litigation (desire2learn.com)

4.

Twitter, Ruby on Rails, Scala and people who don’t RTFA (ikaisays.com)

mechanical_fish on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Announcing HackStars

If you're going to donate this much of your time, spend it writing open source software. Stuff that you can take with you. Stuff that will remain in your toolkit and in your portfolio until you decide otherwise.

6.

Tiny computers + wireless mesh network + Python → Awesome (pycon.org)

7.

Linux is Obsolete [1992] (groups.google.com)

8.

Ask HN: What Paid Services Do You Use For Your Startup?

9.

IBM On The Verge of Buying Sun for $7 billion (nytimes.com)

10.

Chat startup Chatterous (YC W08) throws gauntlet down against proprietary closed chat widgets (venturebeat.com)

11.

E Text Editor: Releasing the Source (e-texteditor.com)

12.

Announcing HackStars (techstars.org)

13.

Lessons in Graphic Design Theory (tutsplus.com)

14.

Erlang Doesn’t Fit The JVM (hypotheticalabs.com)

kapitti on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Announcing HackStars

$6,000/founder and as many 0.375 FTE slaves as they can round up - MBAs around the globe rejoice, TechStars has solved the "I've got this amazing idea, if only I could find some developers" problem.

16.

Posterous (YC S08) launches Twitter commenting/tweetback and oAuth (blog.posterous.com)

17.

Rails Template: Create a Twitter Application in Seconds (intridea.com)

18.

Google Is Not in “Late-Stage Talks” to Acquire Twitter (allthingsd.com)

19.

How Geico Wastes $90MM a Year on SEM (tippingpointlabs.com)

barredo on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

Techcrunch gossip.

Arrignton adds in a comment:

> its well sourced, but who knows. Usually simply posting the rumor shakes a lot more information out of the tree. We’ll be updating.

Yeah. Sure.

gojomo on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Announcing HackStars

Even if this program deserves a critical assessment, that doesn't belong in a sarcastic headline.

22.

Simple and Impressive Design Techniques (smashingmagazine.com)

jonknee on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

One of those just started:

http://wrongtomorrow.com/

I should start adding Mike Arrington quotes, he's almost as bad as Scoble.

andr on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Announcing HackStars

So, like, I can be in the same room with the mentors? WOW!

wheels on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Twitter, Ruby on Rails, Scala and people who don’t...

I think one thing especially for people coming to web development from other angles in programming is getting used to the fact that you have to know so many technologies / languages to get the job done.

In the early days of web apps, you could mostly get by with Perl, SQL, HTML and a little bit of Javascript for mouseovers and whatnot. Framework? CGI.pm, baby.

Now you generally need HTML, CSS, Javascript, a Javascript framework, a backend language of choice, a framework of choice in that language, a high-performance backend language of choice for the critical bits, and SQL.

I did web apps from 1997 to 2001 and then picked back up in early 2008. It was pretty dizzying at first just knowing where to start. In the systems / multimedia world where I lived in the 7 years between it was C or C++ and a framework.

So what's the connection to the story? I think it's in the web world, perhaps as a result of its relative infancy, we apparently have to get used to the fact that the right solution to a problem is often using mixed-mode programming where individual tools are selected for individual tasks -- that development abilities in the web world is as much a question of breadth as depth. We shouldn't be so disenfranchised that our tools aren't general purpose.

26.

Proposed Bill Gives President Emergency Authority To Halt Web Traffic; Access Private Data (motherjones.com)

27.

Bill Venners chats with the Twitter developers, in Twitter on Scala (artima.com)

iojovnb on April 3, 2009 | parent | context | on: Linux is Obsolete [1992]

Silicon is obsolete, monolithic CPUs are obsolete, suppling high voltage AC to each machine is obsolete.

In engineering obsolete means "it works".

29.

Reddit pycon keynote video (blip.tv)

30.

Dice.com Shows 45% Drop In Tech Jobs (techcrunch.com)