skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think there's been much to speak of no. Probably the most useful work has gone into runtime optimizations, JIT etc

I heartily strongly disagree about concurrency. Concurrency is handled badly by most languages because it's a horrible thing to run more than 1 thread per CPU. But I won't start another rant on that.

>> " the new manycore environment we seem to be kicking and screaming our way into."

Again, I don't buy the koolaid. We were using multi cores 10 years ago and warning that we'd all have hundred core CPUs.

I too have written multithreaded code, and decided the solution was to stop writing multithreaded code.
In the CEO's defense: he just broke the screen, not the whole phone. I guess.
Wikipedia seems to think he was anything but a Nazi: 'Hammerstein-Equord was involved in several plots to overthrow Hitler' etc.
they ranked the fake-high ones high, even downloading them, while snubbing the fake-low ones. Apparently, flat-out lying works. But only sometimes. Eventually, some of the previously top-ranked songs began to creep back up, and previously bottom-ranked ones slid down.

My takeaway: Societal cues are a heuristic that can help people make decisions more quickly/efficiently. However, these can be overturned (when wrong) by actual evaluations of intrinsic quality.

I actually don't see anything wrong with that system.
Would it actually be that hard to put everything in a single jar file and generate a class to boot it? Is it more than tracing dependencies and setting up the servlet configuration? Admittedly I have avoided the whole Java infrastructure, but using Jetty as an embedded web server has been painless.
I wonder if he got the free phone promised at the beginning of the clip?
Tell HN: Check out my little app
I think it was actually the corner of the tank, concentrating all the force of the blow into a couple of square millimetres.
Wow, very interesting. Thanks for the explanation!
A Few Interesting Ratings System Observations
Maybe he was a transvestite?
Actually I am fine with that headline ("PHP must die").

I didn't bother reading the article, because I know all the arguments about what is broken in PHP (and also what is not) and it was unlikely I would learn anything new and I have better things to spend my time on. I just read it as saying something like "Shaolin Kung Fu should die" It is just an opinion about a tool, not necessarily a correct one.

Now if he had said "PHP programmers must die", then sure, I can see why that would bother people.
I should have been more explicit in how it's going for me: slowly. Very very slowly. I think it's a function of the amount of time I am dedicating to it and the book is written in a very intense dump-everything-in-one-go kind of way.

But I'm slowly getting there.
This is important reading:

http://www.feedparser.org/docs/html-sanitization.html

I'm not convinced it's possible to stop a browser executing code, because there are so many possible ways a browser can be given code to execute. Not only do you have to read all the specs for all the versions of the browsers, you've got to find all the bugs in them too.

Case in point: An earlier version of this code didn't remove javascript from CSS expressions, making it possible to get past it in IE6 and 7.

I gave up trying to sanitize HTML, and instead used a library to render it to plain text and stuck it in a <pre> element with usual HTML escaping. But I need to take a very paranoid approach in my app.

EDIT to add: I think this is probably one of the better java implementation, and has a good whitelisting approach to HTML. However, it's let down by taking a blacklist approach to CSS.
One wonders, how would it be possible for this gentleman to work under the onus of such a horrifically restrictive enterprise-y change control board and yet have the ability to upgrade the toolset for 50 or 60 seperate products, his words, without going through said onerous change control process? It seems like there is a giant gaping hole in this company's processes, not surprising as it sounds like a horrible place for anyone with talent to work.
> I too have written multithreaded code, and decided the solution was to stop writing multithreaded code.

Not too long ago on some thread here I said I thought that writing solid multi threaded code was hard and I got reamed for it.

I think I have above average experience in C and writing an operating system kernel has given me a good amount of insight in to how difficult it really is.

Anybody that thinks writing a multi-threaded program is a walk in the park hasn't done enough of it yet (or at least, not enough debugging, especially under high load you can have the weirdest problems if you aren't very very careful).
But not all tools are equal. Some programming languages are a lot better than others.
Also see "The different kinds of done" by Andrew Burke at Shindigital: http://www.shindigital.com/blogpost/37
> Concurrency is handled badly by most languages because it's a horrible thing to run more than 1 thread per CPU.

I'm not sure that's a viable position anymore.

> Again, I don't buy the koolaid.

Yeah I know it seems like trendy nonsense but the power-wall is real and every chip designer I know has given up on improving single-thread performance anywhere near the same rate we used to. (And yes, I've listened to one of IBM's research scientists discuss this and when asked explicitly what they were up to with POWER6 and he basically they did it because they could, but they didn't see any future beyond that and overall they were going back to focus on parallelism like the POWER architecture had in the previous designs.)

> I too have written multithreaded code, and decided the solution was to stop writing multithreaded code.

Amen.

But again, I don't think that's viable. We need some way to use multi-threads somehow to get the performance we need in future programs. It could be full multiple processes maybe instead, but we'll need something.

I think we can both agree that it certainly shouldn't be like it is now.
CEO took it well at least. There will be hell to pay off-camera later, no doubt. =)
Sony Ericsson Hazel
It's a classic. The web site is here

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/handbook.html

and includes the text of the chapter 'The X Window Disaster'.

First hit when googling for the book name itself is a pdf of the whole thing (of indeterminable legality).
Obligatory clicktoflash link:

http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

"Ever wanted to get rid of the scourge of the web that is Adobe Flash, but still retain the ability to view Flash whenever you want? With ClickToFlash, you can! Using ClickToFlash, all of those icky Flash bits that have infected most webpages on the internets are replaced with a nice, smooth gradient and the word "Flash" set in a nice, pleasing font. When you want to view the Flash, just click on it!

ClickToFlash supports viewing all those ADORABLE meowing cat videos, annoying dog videos, and hilarious rickrolls from YouTube without using Flash at all! That's because YouTube also offers H.264 videos, which are used when viewing YouTube on the iPhone. With ClickToFlash, you get access to those same, higher quality videos.

Come join us! The web is so much better without Flash."
I was a vegetarian for 5 months. Not nearly as long as other people I know, but I think it was long enough for me to get an idea of what the diet is like. Anyway, I didn't have much of a problem finding interesting things to eat. Pasta/rice is often the base or filler of a meal, but there's multitudes of different vegetables and ways to prepare them to keep it interesting. I particularly like Asian and Mexican food, and it's fairly easy to make a number of dishes that contain no meat.

I felt healthier, slept better, and had more energy. I think the value in these diets is cutting out large amounts of sugar and processed foods.
I have a desktop and a notebook. I put my personal projects on Dropbox, plus some other things, use imap with Mail, rss with NetNewswire, so everything syncs and it works really well - I get the mobility when I need but use the desktop at home (I don't think I could stand using a notebook at home).
I think you could have problems if you use applications you can't sync between the too, or projects with really large files that are hard to sync.
My only gripe with my setup is browsing; I'm working (well, sort of, when I have time) at some utility to save snapshots of my tabs and send them between the computers, so I can close the notebook with tabs open and get the same tabs on the desktop.
What a super piece of writing. The 'phones on the hook can be used to eavesdrop' is fairly well known, but the main point of the article I think is that you no longer stand a chance to figure out what is going on in consumer electronics.

When I was a kid I'd make a bit of money repairing TVs by cannibalizing a few other 'corpses', such an endeavor would be nearly impossible today.

I fixed a computer a few weeks ago, the motherboard was put together with el-cheapo capacitors that had all blown their tops until there wasn't enough of them left to stabilize the circuitry they were in.

Easy enough you'd think. What would have taken 5 minutes in the pre-smd time took me a couple of hours and it was still sub-standard work.

Now I've been 'out' of electronics for a long time, almost 30 years now, but in a way I'm really happy. I'd hate to be an electronics hobbyist today, the state of the art has advanced so far that you're probably best off buying an FPGA kit and using that instead of rolling your own circuitry.

Arduino seems to capitalize on that feeling, to allow people to take a small step back from those black boxes and to open them up again.
The past is the future for hi-tech
From my limited experience, Clisp also is a fine option for running on Windows in case you are looking for an alternative.
http://www.dollardns.net/

Despite the name, it's actually free. I use it for a bunch of my projects.

There's also http://www.zoneedit.com/ .. But I haven't tried them.
Shame, that sounds just about perfect for me. I've been living in the south bay/peninsula for the past 5.5 years and would love to move to SF (SOMA required, due to the Caltrain commute), but I won't be moving until summer at the earliest.

Ah well... I'm sure someone will snap it up quickly!
Have you seen the video of Google asking people to describe what a browser is?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
Thanks for spoiling my productivity ;)
Sure, but it's an avoidable problem.

Writing multithreaded code on a single core is like saying to the OS:

"I don't know what order I want my code to execute, here! You decide some random pattern, and I'll write a ton of code to deal with your random execution of my code."
I so hate being forced to watch advertising.
I'm afraid I didn't read the front page carefully enough, then got very confused after creating a chat room and clicking the Chatify button.

Eventually I noticed the bar at the bottom of the screen, expanded it and saw the chat, but it was only after returning to the home page and reading the description again that I realised why it was working the way it did.

Works nicely with a lovely clean look.
You can add me to that list too.

Short version: Client of mine (legit business, bricks and mortar store, been around for years) had their PayPal merchant account suspended. No warning, no explanation and no appeal. It really is an evil way to treat your customers.

Result: They've switched to eWay http://www.eway.com.au/ who have so far been brilliant
This is spam.
I don't think that this appellation is correct ; iirc, at a time, homosexuality too was considered a disease of civilisation.
Trilantic Capital Partners
We are a global private equity firm focused on control and significant minority investments in North America and Europe; We employ flexible transaction
he could also tested his damn application before upgrading php.

in his make up world that makes it too dificult to fix his code, he would have to go trhu 7 levels of testing hell... so why not apply it to the platform?
Agree. Reminded me of a post I made a while back about wanting to get back to simple system: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/just-give-me-simple-cpu-and-...

But there's a lot of fun to be had with Arduino. And non-digital electronics is still fun. Just go look at some of Forrest Mims' circuits in his original books. Lots of fun with a 555 timer.

Also, see the good Make: Electronics book from O'Reilly: http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=9780...
> On another note, I see from your self-censoring that you know the difference between bashing and criticism very well, witness the difference in your first and second versions of your original comment ;)

I wish posts had version control. I tend to post things and then almost immediately head towards the edit button to delete things that don't meet a re-run with a more critical eye. It creates confusion sometimes, which is unfortunate.

I suppose I ought to compose my posts before posting them, but I've found it hard to stop myself from posting quick replies. (They always start out as quick replies...)
Multithreaded code can be useful on a single core when you have blocking syscalls. Non-blocking I/O can help but doesn't eliminate this. Further, non-blocking I/O carries its own complexities.

Though I have to say, your characterization of the issues with multi-threading is nothing short of hilarious.
If you are doing HTML sanitization, white-listing is the way to go (both HTML and CSS). Another thing to note is that if you are trying to get away with sanitization by some regex magic, you are destined to fail.

In many cases, you don't have to use HTML at all. Use something like MarkDown and it will save you a lot of time and frustration. http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
He forgot the 4th conclusion item:

if you have a mac, don't waste time on 'security' options. it will just piss you off and still not be any more secure.
HN chat room: http://chatifier.heroku.com/hackernews

I think there should be an option to chat without installing the bookmarklet.
OpenSUSE 11.2 Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend
An x86(Moorsetown) based LG smartphone running Moblin Linux
Whew. It's good to know that if we were wrong in the past on some topic we'll always be wrong.

Oil is not renewable. The crux of the argument for peak oil, as I understand it, is not that we'll run out of oil but that extracting it will become quickly very expensive. And building alternatives, as we already know, is very expensive. So that we'll have a period of time where we'll have a dramatic decline in our standard of living.

It doesn't matter if we'll always have oil if very few people will use it.
But then he would have made a male sex robot with female clothing. (I think the market for those is pretty small.)
I don't know, but I'm tempted to go and find out.

Not unpacking a .war file would be a fairly major deal I think.
It was hard for me to notice the open chat button.
Great post. I also had a similar interest in tinkering. Fixing broken things and breaking working things. I remember opening old VCRs and reading the schematics glued to the inside cover. Although I didn't understand, completely, how electronics worked at the time (just basic I=V/R). I knew what a blown fuse, capacitor, or resistor looked like and could spot a cold solder joint. But eventually the devices got too complex and programming became easier.

I'd like to make a few additions:
While schematics aren't included anymore for most devices you can still get the repair manual by calling the manufacturer. A pasted schematic can't hold all the information that goes into most electronics these days.

Apple didn't need to "borrow" opensource tech. The XNU kernel is designed and developed by Apple. They gave it away. The FreeBSD userland stuff is also free to give away. Borrowing, in quotes, implies that Apple has done something underhanded which is not the case. This is the big difference between the GPL and BSD licenses. Only one is truly free. Also, the whole modern OS thing is old now. They've owned NEXT technology for 12 years. If they didn't buy them work on their next OS would have carried on anyway. But I doubt they would need 12 years to complete it.

With the development or Arduino, Beagleboard, and Bugboard getting into technical development has never been easier. This is vastly different than 20 years ago when the most you could hope for was a box with some blinky lights from a 444 chip. Now, even novices, are creating some pretty cool stuff.
Regarding tinkering with electronics, I imagine microcontrollers are both cheaper, information about hacking them more readily available, and the choice of architectures more numerous than they were in your childhood [1]. So now you can tinker with things which have a network stack and an IP. Pretty nifty, if you ask me.

Regarding the IP issues: there is a lot more investment involved developing the software and chipsets which runs a modern cell phone compared to the rotary phone you took apart. Without the patents and copyrights protecting Apple's rights to the MacBook in front of you (and me), it would never have come to exist, because there would be no economic incentive for Apple to invest the billions that created it into R&D in the first place.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_microcontrollers
N70 N72 Power Button Switch Ways Jumpers
> "I don't know what order I want my code to execute, here! You decide some random pattern, and I'll write a ton of code to deal with your random execution of my code."

Writing like that makes me jealous.

There is so much insight in that one line, it shows how much you've done better than any long exposition ever could.

That level of brevity is something to aspire to, maybe one day...
True enough, but it was the most recent example from HN, I can find you much better ones if you want.

In fact, I could probably find more of them than I care to remember, which is why I posted that bit of text in the first place.
Asking a function that formats a number and that is defined that way in the documentation to format a string is a programming mistake. As the discussion clearly states, it's a minor change in application code that would make it both clearer and more robust.

I would go as far as recommend using a USB shock device to issue a warning to the programmer every times a mistake like this is made. ;-)
Grandma's Homemade Chicken Soup
I think that it only works in websites with jquery?
Entrepreneurship is like love
To get into a chat you have to drag the little bar at the bottum of the page up to expose a window that you can chat in.
Are they naive and didn't have people try to break it in that situation first?

Or are the genius and put the guy right in front of a sharp corner?

The CEO seemed to be genuinely laughing. If I were HR at their company, I'd put this on the recruiting site. Shows what they do and a pleasant environment very quickly.
Same - and it only seems to work on certain sites. I can't get it to open up on HN.
Clojure.core/str makes sense now
With the >>>'s color dependent on whether the test passes.
Just click on the bookmarklet.
Security Flaw Makes It Easy To Bypass Verizon Droid Screen Lock
You can 'flag' stuff that you think is spam using the flag link.
@jgc: assuming you have this book, does it cover more than just the Make kit? I'm more interested in arduino than make stuff.

thanks!
City residence IS voluntary. Very much unlike country citizenship, which, for practical purposes is involuntary for the vast majority of (non-European) people.
The $160 Lesson: Apps Beat Devices
Yes, true, a 100% safe sanitizer is a dream at least for older browsers versions. Of course you can choose a different approach using a different markup language.
My approach to this problem is to preserve as much html you can.
The older version was laking of a css black list that has been addded.
By default this sanitize encode unknown chars, and is easy to add white or black elements
Given an implementation of Python, yes, you can prove list.pop will run in some (constant, one would hope) number of clock cycles on an abstract architecture. Building reliable machines to simulate such architectures is part of CS, but not a science.

Science is the construction of abstract models which match observed phenomena.
Have you ever seen or used the bellcore 'mgr' windows manager ?

Besides the plan 9 stuff I thought that was one of the most elegant attempts at making a window manager, all the interaction was through stdin / stdout.
Javascript unpacker and beautifier
I actually like language comparisons. Since I can not be a master of all languages myself, I find it interesting to see what features people value about "their" language and what different languages have to offer.

Also, it is not just senseless bashing. If I invest in learning language X, of course I have an interest in X becoming popular to protect my investment and make it more valuable. Unless you can take that aspect magically away, I don't see how language wars could realistically go away.
My app gets people uploading test data which is provided formatted in HTML, so I don't have the luxury of requiring a different markup language.

But you're right, using HTML is very often overkill.
I would largely disagree that there are no longer things that the curious individual can tinker with. Granted, a lot of consumer electronics are too complex for the average person to fix or figure out, but that doesn't mean there aren't things out there for the curious.

Arduino, and products like it, as others have mentioned, offers a great way for someone to get into embedded systems. You can get a decent setup for around $100US that offers way more potential than opening up an old phone or TV.

I've grown up in the era of the black box, and I was still able to find things to pull apart and figure out when I was a kid. Even better, technology had gotten to the point where things like LEGO Mindstorm allowed me to tinker with something without upsetting my parents by breaking something they used. Later, when I got into music and started playing guitar, I made some money by figuring out how to repair tube amplifiers, a decidedly old technology, but one that continues to thrive in the guitar world. I purchased several tube amps on eBay for ~$20 each. I reverse engineered them and turned them into guitar amps. I built a tube amp from the ground up, even putting together the turret board and drilling the chasis.

I do agree that there is value in keeping things open, but the argument that there isn't anything out there for the next generation to open up sounds a lot like another "Well, back in my day" story.
It appears to run only in websites with jquery
Where to stalk journalists on Twitter
That is one awesome article.
What are the cost of goods on components/labor? It seems like it would be worthwhile to manufacture a small run, if you think you can make your contracting rate. There seems to be bit of a move towards proprietary hardware (Boxee, Smith & Tinker, FitBit) in the star tup world so bringing a physical/electronic product to market is a neat/valuable experience.

Worst case you could just make it a "kit" and sell through AdaFruit or Sparkfun, in that case your cost will just be parts, a cardboard box and some miscellaneous packing materials.
Redirect The Sub Domain To a Sub Folder with .htaccess
In this post I want to explain " How to redirect the sub domain to a sub folder with .htaccess". I had implement this for labs.9lessons.info and demos.9lessons.info. I hope it is useful for you.
You're referring to mcurl. It's an absolute necessity unless you want to shell out extra PHP processes. Still, you have to poll it and the code is not friendly.

Ruby is no gem either (I've always wanted to say that), with the one advantage of having dedicated high-level programmers as advocates within the community.

I haven't seen anything close to RoR or Django in PHP. Nor did I see a Twisted or node.js variant.