skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Stroustrup: What Should We Teach New Software Developers?
System-level video decoders were used in Macromedia Director during multimedia and early Internet days, but developers found it didn't work very well... you had to choose an architecture(s), then had to test for its presence and do version-detection, then handle the installation/support process for audience members who needed it.

"Use the system's video" sounds attractive, but just pushes the problem down the stack. Your mileage may differ, but I've seen people try it before....
It's due noting that India didn't ignore Thorium, holding 25% of the worlds reserve it saw well in advance that Th232 has a half-life as long as the known universe and gives the country energy independence. With current estimates, India essentially holds as much energy in its thorium reserves as the world has uranium reserves, meaning it itself could sell enough energy to likely run the world for 100 years, or run itself (at present demand) into the next millennium without a concern.

The US is presently worrying about where to find its energy independence, while India has already found its independence for the next 1,000 years.
We're talking about deployment to production machines - what's the difference between 3 seconds and 5 minutes? Your machine is sitting on a fat pipe in a datacenter, where you can push a 300MB deploy (which is a LOT) trivially. I highly doubt you're rolling out code changes every 10 minutes... not to production anyway.

Sending diffs removes your ability to roll back at all, or if you're somewhat devious about it, it still wouldn't allow you to roll back more than a single version.

I'm surprised you're so concerned about time-to-deploy for an action that happens, what, once a day at most? Twice? The amount of safeguard you gain for the trivial non-human-time (it's not as if some guy is sitting there copying files) increase is pretty massive.
What right? Copyrights & Patents are not natural in a free market; they're government creations. Remember patents and copyright only exist to encourage people to produce, not because you're entitled to profit from it. As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce. Most small companies don't even bother patenting ideas because they don't have the time or the money to.
If I'm reading it correctly, he's not really pickling the generator itself. Instead, he's counting the number of times he called the generator and pickling that instead. Then, to "unpickle", he retrieves the count and calls the generator that many times.

Two major limitations of this approach: (1) You can only pickle generators that generate the same sequence every time they are restarted. (2) All the work the generator did prior to pickling must be performed again on unpickling.
BackPress: Core PHP libraries for your web applications
URI canonicalization with an X-Canonical-URI HTTP header
So no one is worried it will be off the market permanently? I thought investors were prone to panic?
Microsoft Loses i4i Appeal, Will Alter Word Software
DIY ViDock (External notebook graphics via ExpressCard)
Figlet output sighted @ 1:26 :-)
A related article from earlier in the year about the money made from e-mail newsletters: http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/feb2009...
what is the incentive?
I think their implicit assertion that a transparent advertising market is bad for the public is completely false and self-serving. Let's be honest folks, Google's ad market is their biggest product, by FAR.

An opaque market serves only to push each customer as close as possible to their maximum price and benefit Google as much as possible, while providing the consumer (even a very inquisitive tech-minded consumer) no insight whatsoever about how much companies are willing to pay for their eyeballs.
And the idea of patenting an algorithm is ridiculous. Algorithms are mathematical formulae, i.e. a representation of natural laws. Making them patentable is as pointless as patenting e=mc^2, or Planck constant. For the same reason gene patents are pointless and outright dangerous.
Isn't the point not that other people can implement it, but that they didn't come up with it? Not that there isn't serious abuse of the system, but it's supposed to protect innovation, and ease of implementation can be innovation.
In case anyone missed the trend of Bump showing up in R&B videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQJccwiMxpU

I love it
Thoughts on a Successful Launch
If college makes people more productive and college-educated females continue to leave the workforce at a higher rate than college-educated men, a lower proportion of college-educated men will mean a less productive society. This is only one measure of a society, and clearly not the most important one, but this trend does have actual ramifications. It matters.
Well, SA provides all the primitives required for setting proper sharding up - admittedly it could use some more documentation and an out-of-the-box anonymous sharding lib. The example is fully functional, though, and once you've wrapped your head around it, it all makes sense and does indeed work (I've used it in production).

Sorry, but "seeing what patterns are most widely used" is a lame excuse. You could just look at what real world sites do today (and did 4 years ago) - or simply jump right to implementing the only anonymous sharding model that can possibly work (see how mongodb does it).

I'm not meaning to bash django as a whole here, but I had a true WTF-moment looking at that page. It seems the home-grown ORM is becoming a ball on a chain if something like that takes this long...

Anyways, at least it's progress in the right direction, looking forward to real partitioning support, hopefully in earlier than another 4 years.
Discussion point for HN and Andrew Warner (if reading): How would you grow an email newsletter business from the ground up and get new subscribers?
Inside the Scene-Stealing 3-D Technology Behind James Cameron's Avatar
I want a version of Tap Tap Revenge that is $5.99 without advertisements. Video interstitial ads? Guess which iPhone game I'm going to be avoiding now.
This is a VERY important point: copyright (and other IP) exists to benefit the PUBLIC by promoting the creation of new works. Granting temporary monopolies is a means to that end.

From the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

So: some people may create software, incentivized partly by the prospect of patenting it.

Other people will be unable to create or sell software, because of those same patents.

The question is, which factor is larger? If software patents are decreasing the amount of good software being produced for the public benefit, then the public no longer has a reason to grant them.

Has that point been reached? Many say yes. And the same logic may apply to other areas of IP.
Unfulfilled Promises of Software Technologies?
"99% of the time they're not a measure of ability, they're a measure of obedience, and your ability to persuade teachers."

This is false. Grades correlate reasonably well with ability. Plenty of people get good grades without corresponding ability, but 99% is a laughable exaggeration.
LightSail Energy is hiring an office manager/executive assistant/sanity provider
LightSail Energy is looking to hire an office manager/entropy architect/executive assistant/sanity provider, with plenty of room to grow. We're an exciting young startup backed by world class investors. We're making inexpensive, efficient energy storage systems -- the missing link in the plan to make the world's electrical grid green. Interested? Please apply at scrane@lightsailenergy.com
A similar article in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984896.
It would in all likelihood simply be called what it is, a citation based ranking algorithm applied to web pages.

The implementation of that algorithm would be googles trade secret but you or anybody else would be free to come up with their own implementation.

Technically speaking google has patented a number with this (the number required to program a universal Turing machine to exhibit the behavior the algorithm describes).

I don't think they should be able to do that.

The fact that microsoft is now prohibited from selling their flagship software means that some people might wake up to the downside, the one that smaller parties have been aware of for a much longer time.

Of course this will most likely simply end with MS buying up the party that sues or some cross license deal but the better outcome would be a total abolishing of software patents.

They're a plague and a brake on progress.
At least when I last used it, the error reporting was lacking. Errors'd hang the page and wouldn't give accurate messages/line numbers.
"But I do believe there needs to be some level of legal rights protection"

It's called copyright. Before software patent wars we had software copyright fights

The way things are going we might as well put cooking recipes under patent protection
Well that's good to know, I picked this up a few months ago and didn't hear much about it again and since the start of the christmas season I've barely had time to touch any games. It's good to know there's now an expansion out there.
Where is mankind headed? - Free-Press-Release.com
Right, and that's part of the problem. The whole culture and language are so alien to most people that it is incredibly hard to map concepts.

As far as I can tell the only non-native speaker who is actually fluent is Daniel Everett. Given that the language is the subject of a fair amount of linguistic interest because of its uniqueness, it's pretty amazing that he is the only one.

Not only that, but even with a natural aptitude for languages and desire to learn, it took him 7 years of living with them to get to that point.
the latter is what we're trying to accomplish. Facebook, Google, YouTube all have great touch versions, why shouldn't everybody else?
Algorithms are not mathematical formulae. Those are inherent in the universe.

Code is nearly as arbitrary as a novel. It expresses an idea in specific terms. There are lots of ways to write the same program, and lots of possible programs to write. There is only one correct way to write e=mc^2.
For most iPhone applications, why is this better than the built-in GameKit, which allows for peer-to-peer discoverability over bluetooth and WiFi without any active internet connectivity?

I could see an argument for cross-platform compatibility, as GameKit is iPhone-specific.

That said, is the service being provided sufficiently difficult to implement that it warrants paying (and relying on) an external service? How likely is it that an open source version of the server/client could be produced?
The potential is less important than the actual effects though.
you should watch the interview with thriller, covers a lot of those things.

But to save you time...good content + spam friends and family.
1. Algorithms are a representation of logic, not natural laws--something like quicksort is just a priori math, sensible regardless of what your natural laws are.

2. It's merely an application or representation of natural laws to design a steam engine or something too.
Personally, I think Gruber did a pretty good job of distilling it.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
And you might also think people grew out of watching soap operas, sci-fi movies, Dungeons and Dragons, or what not, but no.. we're human and there are plenty of grown up folks engaging in silly activities that aren't hurting anyone else. Let them alone. Humans, for the most part, like drama and humor.

I can only thank god I'm not growing up if it results in a life so dull that you can't be a little childish and poke fun at things.

Anyway, while I'm here.. someone else added a column for Haskell: http://i.imgur.com/hF6mS.jpg
watching that too. im glad andrew is covering this space.
Is it safe to blame the existence of netbooks on OLPC? I wasn't following along in detail but I got the impression of a certain amount of causality there.
Yeah, if the validity of your visa hinges on passing all of your classes, you will do what it takes to pass those classes, language barrier or no.
When your post is about your expertise in CSS you better be demonstrating expertise in CSS.

While we're on the subject of adding little value, the impression I got from the article was that this was yet another Top-10 style compilation of commonsense that you could find on other sites like A List Apart. Instead, I would prefer to read more about the OP's actual experiences and growth, i.e. something unique and original.

There is nothing troll-like about criticism, particularly when an improvement is suggested. Instead, I would look towards yourself and your "Slashdot" witch-cry.
US appoints Howard Schmidt as cybersecurity chief
Source Engine is essentially the original HL engine + years of heavy duty modification. (This may somewhat fall afoul of the "replace all the parts in the robot one by one, is it still the same robot?" identity problem). I've never ceased to be amazed at just how flexible the orignal HL engine turned out to be!
By leaving out the definition of that long function name you mask the increased cognitive load of your change. If you include the definition of your new function it doesn't look like an improvement anymore.
Microsoft's plan is to remove the feature from Office: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/dec09/12-22sta...
> Are fewer males applying as well? If only 40% of applicants are male, then I'd say the ratio of college entrants is just right.

> Otherwise, I don't see a problem. I don't really see a problem anyway.

That reasoning wasn't acceptable when other groups were under-represented, so why is it acceptable now?
Sales of music video games plummet in 2009 | Reuters
Sounds like you're describing plan9?
But he would be lying. Yegge would rather maintain the concise code with sparse comments if and only if it were Yegge's concise code with sparse comments. If it were someone else's, he'd rather it were in fact rather heavily commented.
The (private, liberal-arts) college I attended has for many years now had a fairly striking imbalance; currently it's 59% female and has been hovering around that 60/40 mark for at least the past decade, if not more.

Edit: the US Census bureau provides data. Most recent figures (http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2008....) show 10.3 million female college students to 8.3 million male college students.
> It is dangerous, but high paying work. Few women go there at all.

Every oil/gold/silver rush attracts sex-workers, most of them women.
Thanks for coming back with that.
http://qntm.org/?moving - last entry at the bottom.
"As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce."

There are untold exception to this - It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Drug Patents, in particular, are incredibly important. Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth would they have any incentive to do that if, once it was approved, they didn't have a temporary monopoly on it?

Remember - Patents are good for only a short period of time, under twenty years in most countries, and after that it's a free for all - anyone can use the process's and systems that were shared and documented.

With all that said - 90% of the software patents really are nothing more than crap - usually consisting of an engineer having an idea that most of their "skilled and educated in the arts" peers could have come up with in less than a week's worth of work and discussion. Public-Key cryptography class patents are few and far between.
Another way is to lurk for a few months before posting.
Grades correlate reasonably well with ability.

What would be evidence for that statement, in view of the parent comment to yours that disagrees with that conclusion? Where would one look for research on this issue?

One old book that I read back in high school days

http://www.amazon.com/Wad-Ja-Get-Grading-Game-American-Educa...

suggested that grades correlate less well with ability (or any other meaningful characteristic of students) than supposed by the teachers who give grades to students. I'd love to hear about current research on this issue.
Would be nice if we could get a slacker statistic like percentage of slackers by country.
I went to a 62%/38% female/male ratio, and social dynamics were alright. A lot of girls kept their hometown bf. (they had to), lots of parties, and getting laid was easier.

Now I had a close friend that went to a 70%/30% guys/girls school, and the atmosphere was definetly different. Things were more boring, nobody was getting laid, and the few women that where there were acting like they were walking over water.
People were more concentrated in studying than having fun (parties with only dudes, get boring pretty fast).

I know I am overgeneralizing, but things were ok.

Now if the ratio gets even worse, then who knows. Girls/women will have to date somebody that makes less then them or that has lower education level.

To a certain degree, that is what currently educated black females are facing.
AP news pictures of the decade
One thing I still can't understand is how so many people are okay asking for an extension on something. I can't believe how many of my peers ask for extensions on papers and programming assignments. It's unreal. School might not be as high a priority as my startup right now, but I never turn in anything late. I think tardiness is the worst kind of habit to have.
James Altucher: Microsoft Will Buy AOL Next Year [Speculation]
That's a fair conclusion, although supporting evidence is hard to locate. My best effort: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728044
discojesus - the ENTIRE point of patenting "Office/Excel/Spreashdeet/Word" processes and systems is to PREVENT open source alternatives to Word and Office.

We're talking about _patents_, not copyrights here. Nobody is suggesting that Software Copyrights aren't perfectly valid and an important part of the industry - without even having to Poll, I'm going to guess that 90% of HN residents are strong proponents of Software Copyrights. The Free-Software proponents, even those on the GPL V3 bandwagon, _rely_ on Copyrights to further their aims and ambitions.
I'd say the VAST majority of sites just plain don't need it. I say that because I read the web all the time on my iPhone and it works just fine. I hardly ever even think about the fact that I'm viewing it on a mobile device, I'm just reading a web page.

Now, for certain sites where there's a benefit, mobile tweaks can be fantastic. But even among the three you list, I've had annoyances. I wish I could remember what it was I was looking for, but I was on google.com on my iPhone the other day looking for something (an app/service from Google itself, I think), and didn't find it in the spot I was used to. I was stumped for a few moments before realizing that I was on the mobile site. Likewise, I've gone to the Facebook mobile site before, trying to do something that wasn't possible from the Facebook iPhone app, and been confronted with the mobile site, which also didn't have the feature I was looking for.

So I guess my feeling is this: while I was initially excited about the idea of mobile-specific sites, I now feel similarly about them as I do about Flash heavy sites: in theory, if everything is executed perfectly, they're fine. But perfection is very rarely achieved, and so it ends up screwing the user up in some unexpected, user-unfriendly way right when you need it not to. So my initial inclination is very much against more "mobile sites" (hey, if it really needs a touch specific interface, an app from the App Store is preferable -- yes, I know I'm being inappropriately iPhone-specific here!), though in favor of small mobile-specific tweaks to normal sites. Changes in font size or moving one column/sidebar somewhere else? Slight interaction changes to make things more appropriate for a tap interface? Sounds great! [And it strikes me that putting these at the level of CMS templates or design frameworks and the like might be the best route.] But a totally different site? Almost never necessary nor even an improvement when it's being used on a sufficiently sophisticated phone (which, they all will be, very very soon).

I know much of this overlaps with what you're talking about and forgive me if I'm being too kneejerk just to the idea of "more mobile-specific sites". It just always stings doubly bad when somebody has poured a ton of work into something that tries to make your life easier but in practice actually makes it harder.

Thanks!
Concur. Check out customize.org for OS-X-like themes for Windows though.
Darpa seeks proposals on studying the physics of lightning.
Well, not really. They'd only have to license it from Google if they implemented their search engine in a manner covered by Google's hypothetical patent.

Of course, apparently Google feels they have more to gain by keeping their algorithm secret than by patenting it.
More to the point, the only ones who got the visa in the first place are the ones who already were top performers.
Also keep in mind that the author teaches at Babson, which is a private college devoted entirely to business administration students.
We could drop all quotas, let individual choice and the market determine the higher education populace, and fire all the social engineers who waste space and tax dollars pondering this rubbish...

That wouldn't work though, b/c liberals wouldn't have anything else to be paid for if the optimum solution emerged without their meddling.
Review this Startup - Lose It or Lose It: The Why, How, and How Much
If you want to expedite this process, move your pupils around a bit in order to simulate REM sleep.

Does this actually do anything?
Somewhat hypothetical, but: how difficult is it to reverse-engineer a drug's exact composition with only the final product (the pill/vaccine/etc. itself)? If it's difficult enough to be economically infeasible, then patent protection here could be replaced by simply keeping the drug a secret.

Of course, that kills the generics market, and I suspect it's not such a difficult problem to RE a drug, but... just curious.
At my college, the professors explicitly told us to always ask for extensions if we needed it, provided it was a few days to a week in advance. It is a form of time management to know ahead of time that you have 60 hours worth of work due in the next 48 hours, and talking to the professor builds communication skills and the good habit of giving feedback to your superiors.

If you're talking about asking for an extension 10 minutes before the deadline (or 10 minutes after), that's a whole different kettle of fish.
"neither were promoted for anything related to doing what investment firms are supposed to do -- finding good opportunities to invest in."

"instead pumped out mediocre returns while gobbling up fees off of their clients/investors."

Your words succinctly capture the true nature of almost all financial services firms.
Heroku CNAME Entry Valid?
Why not just fund general research like we already do, but more so?
This is the 3rd time this has posted. I'm surprised nobody has any opinions. There's a good bio of him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Schmidt and he has written a book on cybersecurity (http://www.amazon.com/Patrolling-Cyberspace-Lessons-Lifetime...) although this is aimed at managers rather than technicians.