skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's sort of funny how that works; older computer systems only provided numeric error codes to save memory. Then Moore's Law caught up and we went for all-natural-language messages. But given the multilanguage problem, now it looks like it's actually more usable to provide numeric codes. (in addition to natural language)
Yes, it is. However, if you don't include search keys in the text presented to the user, it isn't going help when you get a dialog that says (FTA):

Sterownik ekranu przestał działać, ale odzyskał sprawność.

That's missing something at the beginning or end that allows a search engine to say "aha! this is looking for this error message, which in English is this".

This is a hard problem, at the same time; the translated log files[1] from work look something like this:

2009-12-13 14:21 BACK-E-00234 <text here, with optional parameter values>

The key piece is "BACK-E-00234" (it's from the BACK module, it's an Error, and it's message 00234). When we have messages to display to the user in a dialog, we don't show that key information (or have a way of getting to it) because it's ugly.

It's unlikely that the message mentioned in the article was hard-coded to Polish; instead the author is arguing about users and the searchability of non-English error messages. To increase the searchability, you need to include key details (e.g., "BACK-E-00234") that make the message significantly uglier to read. One possible way around this is to make sure your error dialogs are selectable/copyable (maybe put a button to do this), but on copy silently insert the search key details.

[1] Our untranslated log files look more like:

<M ID="234" T="2009-12-13T14:21:00.00000" S="E" M="BACK">...parameter tags here...</M>
From the FAQ:

"How well does Sleep Cycle work with 2 people sharing a bed?

Our experience is that it works very well. Normally your body will "block" the movement of the other person and the iPhone will not detect that movement. You can test this yourself by using the test function in Sleep Cycle."
Just have a look at their FAQ to see how badly apple's closed development model hurts applications all over the place. For this application to really work, there's a huge list of precautions you have to take and most of them are based on the fact that third-party apps don't enjoy the same API as the apple based ones do.

The app doesn't work if you lock the phone, the app doesn't support the iPod Touch, the phone needs to be connected to power because there's no concept of different (hardware) sleep states.

And of course, the app would not wake you up if you were to get a phone call or SMS during the night.

Most of these limitations would go away on open hardware with an open SDK.
I doubt portable games would affect OpenGL's use on the desktop directly. Games on the major consoles are typically not ported to portables and vice versa, so the two markets will remain segregated. And while console games are frequently ported to PC, portable games are not -- although perhaps this will change with the adoption of WebGL mentioned in the article. In any case, portable games will not directly help the performance, stability, or feature-richness of desktop OpenGL drivers in the way that console games help desktop Direct3D drivers.

That said, one way that portable games could contribute to the general advancement of OpenGL is by being the first platform that new programmers learn. A typical console game requires significant coding experience and artistic assets to compete, while the expectations (and costs) for a portable or web game are much lower, making such a game a more appealing target for a beginning programmer. And perhaps those programmers will continue to use OpenGL when they go on to make desktop games.
The link to the side-by-side sound file is redirected to a useless page. Did anyone manage to track it down?
Setting the Record Straight on Weight Loss
It's a topic worthy of a full scale sociological study. I feel like the historic lack of competition & choice for consumers when it comes to (mainstream) operating systems plays a big role. Maybe it has been passed on through the generations of techies. If your platform of choice wasn't hugely popular it had little chance of surviving long term so people seem to develop fierce loyalty. Microsoft's influence of dominating the OS market seems to be the goal everyone wants. We're always talking about how "X is going to kill Y" or "X is going to DOMINATE the market" You rarely see someone say "X could carve out a good 20% of the market and I would be happy" The ironic part is these people never seem to understand that competition is good for everyone. In a huge market there's nothing wrong with having a small market share. It still equates to many millions of users.
Hard to agree as people from other countries may poorly understand English.

That's a big problem to learn computer in foreign language (If you had context menu with items: Afgdfguw, Eetgreg, Uga, Boo, which would you choose?)

If problems occur then, anyway, regular users are not those who would try and would fix them.

For an advanced user, sure, use language you want. And if you choose your native language and if you can't find a solution to your trouble, try different keywords. Or reinstall nVidia driver in english version.

English speakers will have a hard time to understand this.
A) Go to a doctor

B) It sounds like you're chronically dehydrated. How much water do you drink a day? Tea, coffee and soda don't count.
I know. That's why it's hard to answer the question.

A quantitative improvement in display quality and performance is not enough. And, remember, Amigas were relatively inexpensive machines targeted at home users (the whole video art thing was an accident), so, making the thing output 2160p120 3D video is not an option unless you could do that on a budget.
Seems to be broken atm, clicking on the bookmarklet-induced icons gives 'No writing errors were found' no matter what typos or grammar mistakes are present. I'm guessing the back-end can't handle the load at the moment or something.
14 Days of jQuery and the New API Browser
The war between Apple and Google is here to stay.
Seems the author never try any software/website originally written in languages other than English. Then, the English version is usually awful to use or get help ...

And the issue is primarily due to the large online population and knowledge base of English-speaking people. You can find enough info about any topic if such population exists, i.e. I found a lot info about linux in German language, probably due to popularity of the OS in Germany.
A Startup's Odyssey: Developing customer relations with a CRM
Well, I could do that pretty easily and start toying around, but I'm thinking more along the lines of setting up a hosting provider using one of the existing web frameworks for node.js (like Express, Coltrane, etc), a templating engine, and database interface. What if there were a straight forward way to say "drop your templates here, put your models here, and your javascript to interact with them here"? I'd like to get a simple blog or super light weight CRM up and running on a host somewhere and start load testing it :-p.
Hmmm... Including a button on dialog boxes for googling (or bing'ing) the error in language-neutral form...

Nice item for a future GUI wishlist.
How does this compare to the Lift framework?

Seems to me that if you'd rather write in a functional style (scala), having a framework that is written in a functional style that has the benefit of actor-based concurrency and Comet (Lift) might be a better choice. It can also be deployed as a WAR...

What are the benefits to using Play! over something like Lift, especially if you'll be building in Scala?
If a project is abandoned and you need it, the ability to work with the code yourself (or hire it done) might mean the difference between a controlled migration and a crash migration that would probably fail.

It helps if the vendor cares, but they might not have a choice. There are plenty of ways to lose control of a copyright, from being bought out to bankruptcy.
So much wasted vertical space?
The Secrets of Female Technology Leaders
I've been a TDH zealot, as you put it, since 1986. It's amazing how hard it is to evaluate coding ability in an interview without it.

I readily concede that coding ability isn't the only thing a dev needs, but it is absolutely required for most jobs.
Yeah, after posting this I jumped on the #node.js irc and got the same response. It's too new, a lot of people are goofing off with it, checking it out and trying out different implementations and such.

I wonder if there are any production websites running on node.js.
Aliens with a taste for pick 'n' mix: geometrical patterns
Giving up my dreams? I refer you to http://yudkowsky.net/.
Optogenetics: controlling brain cells with lasers
Startups with Something to Believe In
sorry - i downvoted you by accident while trying to select for cut + paste :(
Project - Home
Thanks for the tip, topcoder looks pretty interesting in general, too.
My 'hobby' site gets around 4.5m page views a month. It makes a bit of money, but not enough to live off.

It has, however, been the main reason i've got my past few jobs. Having something that you can point to that has some sort of impact can open a lot of doors.
If Unicode causes the Chinese regime as much suffering as it has caused me, I take back everything bad I have ever said about it. Bring on the canonicalization issues!
The payoff for working while in school is now quite low. When my father was in university during the early seventies, he could pay for his tuition, texts, and car for the whole year with one summer job. The kind of job you can get today wouldn't cover a fraction of that even if you were working year-round.
Codility people, if you're reading, here's a bug report.

The test window's layout is fubar if you use a small window
size. I was using 800x600 and the language selection buttons were hidden behind the source code text box. Something (couldn't tell what) overlapped the first two lines of the instructions.

Firefox 3.5.7/Ubuntu Linux 4.10, FWIW.
Could be your browser. What version are you using? I promise the load coming from here is nothing compared to the number of users on WordPress.com.
I use git branch all the time. I'm just keeping a list of branches that need to go out in the next release in the text file (maybe with some notes).
Good idea! And for the right company, they'll be impressed that you're doing your due diligence on them.

I haven't done exactly this (hey, I made some of my best (but most painful money) working on wretched code bases), but I've done this sort of thing when helping my company decide whether to partner with another.

If you've got enough experience looking at code bases, you could ask them to let you at a terminal with one of their experienced engineers at your side. 15 minutes of that could convince me the code base was worth dealing with (obviously, it can take considerably less time if not :-).
Cool thanks for the tip.
Umm...congratulations? Not sure what point you're trying to make here. Your earlier statement was:

What makes me come alive is writing fiction. This is not what the world most needs from me.

But now you're linking to this site as proof that you haven't given up your dreams? So which is your dream?

And regardless, my point is just that if writing fiction is what makes you come alive, what truly makes you happy, are you so certain that you're going to make more of a difference in the long run doing something else?
I <3 Amazon, but I've started looking for alternatives (for buying, not for reviews) ever since they started charging us NYers tax. Sure, not their fault, blame NY state, but the point is, they are about 10% more expensive suddenly.
Summary: If they do become super-big expect more taxes or more hindrances.
Agreed. English is the second (or third, in my case) language to know, but it would make me very sad if everyone started using English in contexts that don't require it.
Why would your customers even need to see the log file? For general errors we have a language table that spits out the local copy to the screen. Common errors are translated (~100). Behind the scenes, the logs are in english for internal errors, and the language of the OS for everything else. We rely on .NET so exceptions are tied to the OS.

We have some older components that do spit out error codes. (like COMS, error -84413994005!) Sometimes the codes aren't specific at all and I have to install a debug version to get the information I need, or rely on a graybeard programmer to help me out.

These days programs are far too complex to rely on a limited set of error codes.
I get the same behavior.

Google Chrome V4.0.249.43
Years ago when I had nVidia graphics cards, their control panel always displayed the language of your computer's country settings, you got absolutely no option of selecting the display language yourself.

Needless to say, the controls for overriding anti-aliasing or fog-table or z-buffer settings, translated to my native language, was completely incomprehensible. I still don't understand why they bothered.
We have no basis on which to speculate as to how this situation might have come about. It would, however, be very desirable for those who are in a position to clarify this to do so

Nicely put.
Rapid Weight Loss Techniques
Did you read his review? It doesn't really jive with what you're saying:

"a brand-new cellphone, designed by Google and made by HTC, called the Nexus One. It’s pretty sweet"

"it’s so thin and rounded, it feels terrific in your hand."

"It’s loaded with gleaming, attractive features. It’s hard to choose which is more gratifying: the speed — instant, smooth response when you’re opening programs and scrolling — or the huge, 3.7-inch touch screen, which has much finer resolution than the iPhone (480 by 800 pixels, versus 320 by 480)."

"The Nexus has no physical keyboard — only an on-screen keyboard, with a handy suggestion feature that I actually prefer to the iPhone’s"

"You get an impressive, free, turn-by-turn GPS navigation program,"
You should use software in the language of its authors, given that you speak it, of course. This language just happens be English most of the time. Localization is, in my experience, almost always poorly done.
Typically on a windows box they're in resources (not hard-coded) and the resources pointed to are toggled by the current culture. Unfortunately this usually works on the premise that you change the language for the computer in one go as opposed to being able to do it per application or per session.
He had no idea what the modern English word "earth" means, even if he somehow could have stumbled upon it.
"I guess the trick is in using combining characters? I guess the first codepoint is always /."
I never looked into Lift, so I can't answer your question directly. Play!, I believe, has to offer a smoother learning curve. You can mix Scala and Java code (eg. controllers in Java, service layer code in Scala) and migrate fully to Scala when confident enough.
Frankly, as much as I like Actor concurrency, I don't think you'll use it a lot if a web application.
I'd like to see the algorithm used to do this sort of compression.
Cl-gtk2 is ASDF-installable
Chromium 4.0.291.0 (35619)

It worked fine twice, then started returning 'No writing errors were found' on everything.
That's why I write my code (var and function names, comments) in English. First, it meshes nicely with the rest of the language, keywords specially. Second, the most important docs, books, forums, wikis, mailing lists, etc are in English.
Thanks. Just downloaded Google Chrome. (I tested in Safari and FF). Will see what's going on.
Working while in school is the best thing I've done for my career. Right out of college I had 5 years of experience, which is extremely important for employers. So after I graduated I got jobs that my classmates could only dream of.
In a similar vain to what the author is talking about by writing tests you probably end up creating a better api, especially if you write the tests first.
"Kirk said last month that the international community would walk away from the negotiating table if the public could see the working drafts."

And this is supposed to be reassuring?
Ask HN: Strategies to reduce dependence on Google for Organic/Paid traffic?
Various sites I've handled traffic acquisition for see massive shares of their traffic coming in from Google, organically and paid (AdWords).<p>I know this is a problem for lots of e-comm/saas businesses - sort of in the way that many businesses live and die by Wal-Mart. For years now, Google's share of incoming traffic just continues to increase (largely at the expense of Yahoo). I was wondering what sort of strategies anyone here has employed to reduce dependence on Google.<p>As this comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1036320 explains, it is almost impossible to get a human/answser at Google - so if your site were ever to be de-indexed, or your AdWords campaign suspended, you'd have serious problems given the dependence.
How did they figure out how to make this, e.g., what movements constitute different sleep states? Are there research papers on this?

I wonder if you could use changes in body temperature instead? (Obviously not using an iPhone though.)
A personal jet that will fit inside your garage
Ditto here - anyone who is in college and not going for internships (or other jobs) in their relevant field is IMHO losing out big time.
If It’s Raining, You Might Want to Reschedule That Interview
There are some papers about it. Look at the discussion for the wakemate, a month ago or so.
Design for Boomers
The Best Thing at CES - Intel's Wireless HD Technology
This just further confirms, for me, that there is no feature C++ is not willing to include. Seems like C++ is getting closer and closer to the day when any randomly typed string of characters has a decent chance of being syntactically valid C++.
It was a free giveaway... I think they got a little more attention than they expected.

100,000 simultaneous people will easily slow down a big big network... :)

I cant see why people are pissed to be honest; it was a bit of fun. Is $100 really that much to get worked up over?
Our logs aren't just error messages; they're all sorts of messages that the user of our (backup) software may be interested in. I'm trying to figure out ways to reduce our messages so that our customers only see the details that they will really be interested in, but there is a large subset of our customers who want to be able to review how their backups went (and not just with the email summary that we send, which is generated from the log messages, BTW).

Our tracing facility, on the other hand, is purely English.
"Anyone who is educated about script writing ..."

I am to the extent that I've seen enough movies to recognize the patterns... but are you suggesting those formulas are taught somewhere as a formalized script-writing practice?
This is amazing. I didn't know the iPhone could provide your location to web apps.

Let me ask you guys a question. I had an idea for a simple location based app. It simply tells you the next high and low tide for the nearest body of water to you. Should I just make that a web app since I can now get the iPhone's location, or should I still do a native iPhone app?

Advice, pros, cons?
Star Schema Bechmark: InfoBright, InfiniDB and LucidDB
> compression

It's not actually compression, according to the author, the 'single character' is 6x larger than the original UTF8 bytes.
I've been running my Node.js instances on a shared hosting account at Webfaction. Extremely stable, very easy to set up, very cheap to maintain.

It's where I test my builds of Luno, actually. (http://github.com/ryanmcgrath/luno)
America as Texas vs. California, Part III
Damn, C++ is making Perl look readable.

Instead of adding features, they should be cutting them. C++ is 27 years old, yet there still isn't a full production-quality implementation of the specification. And they carry on regardless, adding more and more features.

C++ could learn a lot from the way Python is managed. PEPs, a reference implementation, and an individual with the power to veto - to keep the language heading in a single direction.
A Chinese Spit Crackdown
enumerate is very useful, here's mine:

def equi ( A ):
right = sum(A)
left = 0
for i,x in enumerate(A):
right -= x
if right == left:
return i
left += x
return -1

What's interesting is that all the versions I've seen so far are pretty much identical apart from very minor things. This would seem to me to be obviously the correct way to do it but I'm interested if it's just a way. Did anyone solve this in a different way of equal or greater elegance?
PostgreSQL 8.5 - Hot Standby
Does anyone know what new features / improvements will jQuery 1.4 bring? I can't seem to find a list of them anywhere.
I work for Amazon, this post is my own opinion, not of my employer, yadi yada. I obviously can't say much, but I just have to say it really is not as simple as you're making it sound ;) It goes much, much, much further than just having X people in a warehouse :P
I'm having the same issue on Chrome/Mac 4.0.249.49.
Agile is not competing with Waterfall
Just wait for SDL 1.3 to mature. From the wikipedia article: "SDL 1.3 is a major update to the SDL 1.2 codebase. It replaces several parts of the 1.2 API with more general support for multiple input and output options. Some feature additions include multiple window support, multiple input device support (many mice, many keyboards, etc.), hardware-accelerated 2D graphics, and better Unicode support."
You do that as a contractor, when you're asked to give a fixed quote for a maintenance job.

For full time positions, it's reasonable to inquire about the engineering practices of the shop, code guidelines and similar, what freedoms you have to make spot decisions, etc. But asking for actual code is just silly. It does nothing but paint you as a picky cry-baby who couldn't work with others, or cajole them into working with him (IOW, you lack both a cooperative spirit, and leadership.)
Ask HN: Where to get data for a Web/iPhone app idea?
So I want to make an app that tells you all poisonous plants that you could potentially encounter in your location, with pictures, etc.

Is there any way to get A.) a list of poisonous plants across the world. and B.) The geographic coordinates of the plants' ranges? I'd be happy even with just a shaded map, and figuring out the boundaries from that.

(Poisonous to touch would be fine, I probably wouldn't add poisonous to eat since that's probably a lot of plants.)
Ask HN: How might the most compact programming language in the world look like?
I am searching for the limits of programming language compactness. (just for fun, although this can be also interesting in genetic programming)

The definition is a bit subjective, but not very much: A programming language is compact, if the program size is small for the typical programs we want to write. (The subjective part is what we call a typical program.)

Currently I think that the programming language Joy is the best candidate to be the base for creating the most compact programming language in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language)

I have quickly defined a variant of Joy, and I have defined an efficient coding scheme for it. (This is still on paper, I did not write it down precisely enough to publish). It turned out that the really necessary tokens of joy can be typically encoded in 3-4 or in the worst case in 5 bits. This means that the quicksort algorithm mentioned in the wikipedia articel is approximatley 9 bytes long.

Do you have an idea for an even more compact programming language? Do you think that a cleverly encoded Joy-variant is near some theoretical limit of compactness?
I'm not sure that a button for search is the right way to go; it would work, definitely, but at the cost of cluttering your UI. Insertion into copy is probably a better idea, because you may be emailing the error message to a systems administrator instead of searching it.
Yes, but the dominant languages can change over time.