skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have the same opinion and I don't see anything weird about it.

They're both OO languages without many features compared to C++ or something, but Obj-C is dynamic and much more flexible (see NSProxy, NSArray class clusters, etc.) whereas Java is not at all.

Plus Obj-C is actually C, so you can write "if (!i)" without the compiler deciding you're too stupid to handle implicit type conversions.

By the way, I've noticed that people (who don't seem to use it often) complain about the extremely long method names in Obj-C, but if you count by the number of tokens instead it can be pretty terse. And I think that's how reading natural language is supposed to work, anyway…
That's not simple. Simple would be doing what everyone wants it to do with one command that's really easy to remember/discover.
What so hard about building these kind of devices nowadays? It seems to me that all the components are readily available (there is no technological breakthrough in any of them, excepted maybe the screen), and the size of it should make it easier to pack more features or cheaper ones.
Unless it's all about the software.
Does anyone have a link to further information on the muscle repair stuff she cited? The part about how after 25, your brain might just give muscles up for lost?
Wait, link didn't seem to go to article referenced, but was interesting anyway. I would undo my upvote if I could.
For what it's worth my first Intel SSD (X25-M G1) died in under a year and I wasn't pushing anywhere near that much data.
Does anybody know if the battery will be user replaceable?
Funny. How can you be so disconnected that you miss the 10's of millions of devices that have been sold in this space at that level of the corporate ladder.

I don't actually have a touchscreen based phone or a tablet, but I can easily see that people want them because of the numbers that have been sold.

The reason I haven't got one is because my current phone is doing just fine and I like to keep my stuff until it is broken beyond repair before replacing it. Touchscreens vs keyboards are a long-term no brainer decision, buttons are mechanical, touch screens are 'solid state', requiring no moving parts other than the fingers of the operators.

They allow for larger screens and don't require slide-outs or other weak links like that to operate. They'll probably be cheaper in the longer term to manufacture than a keyboard. And they use the most logical interface that we know of, simulating the 'real world' where you press on the thing that you get your 'feedback' from.
Steve Jobs Doesn't Want Shit In His App Store, And Neither Do I
I think that the interface is very nice.

Re. privacy, it may be a good idea to disallow invoice URLs in robots.txt, using a common pattern or subdirectory.
This reminds me of a small demo party.
What makes Cocoa and Cocoa Touch really nice isn't that parts of them are delightful, it's that all of the parts work really well together. They were written to take advantage of Objective-C and the tools were built for using them. Interface builder makes UIs really easy and CoreData makes persistence almost automatic. You should try building an iPhone app and see how it compares.
It will be interesting to hear what he thinks of Mercurial after running into some of its warts.

I think it's valuable to read the opinions of people who are just getting into this game. Those of us with lots of experience with the everyday tools of the trade might not see a lot of substance to this critique, but it's important when designing any product to make sure it's approachable for novices. There's often a tradeoff there for power or flexibility, which git has been unwilling to make (probably rightfully so), but it does seem that things could be done to make the tool easier to get into, without necessarily compromising its power.
To a lot of the people who prefer Hg to Git, I ask this question: What's the proper way to do a feature branch in Hg? (serious question) The three answers I've heard are:

* Use hg branch <branchname> like git. The problem is this always requires me to do a push -f, which doesn't feel right...

* Use clone. Really? For a feature branch?

* Use the LocalBranches extension. Really, feature branches (the #1 productivity gain since switching to DVCS) isn't in the core code?

I have yet to find an equivalent to what I consider a core git workflow.
Another tack is a "don't take it off the page" javascript thing that generates the invoice without ever submitting the address to the server.
There are free market doctors in the UK, I shouldn't worry that all yours will vanish.
I'm hoping this leads to a standardized way of commenting on links.
This this:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mixergy-for-ambitious-ups...

If it doesn't work, let me know (via email). We've been having some trouble with the iTunes link, but I think it's fixed now.
It’s Not the Control, It’s the Secrecy
Those fools. How could they not embrace the cultural shift towards just giving their stuff away!

Both sides of the piracy argument have equally retarded expectations and fantasies for the future.
This seems to be less about Mercurial vs Git, and more Jon Chu vs Git.

Although I haven't used Mercurial, all of the issues he brings up I found really easy to solve when I started using Git (~2 years ago). The number and quality of online resources has only improved since then.
AppStore Delisting?
On the radio in the UK recently there was an interview with artists in Manchester about how budget cuts might affect the city. What came out in the interview is there are more music artists than ever in the city and many are making albums in their bedroom. I've a few CDs now that artists have persuaded me to buy after the gig.

Not a record label or a pirate in sight. Record companies have more than piracy to contend with. No longer is expensive equipment needed even to produce a physical album.
Not sure why you inferred that anyone above supported the auto company bailouts (or the airline bailouts, etc.).

Taxes are not paid in exchange for bailouts... at least if they are tell that to all the other companies that have failed over the years and not had the government swoop in to help.
The problem is that every git command tries to be extremely flexible. That means the documentation for command X has to cover everything X can do, and when you're just trying to find out how to do action A you have to skim through all the other crap X can do.

For example, 'git help checkout' clocks in at 236 lines. 'git checkout' can change the revision/branch you're at, create a new branch, or revert files without changing HEAD.

The help output for the equivalent Mercurial commands:

* hg help update: 38 lines
* hg help revert: 41 lines
* hg help branch: 24 lines

If I want to revert a file's contents in a git repo I need to wade through 236 lines to figure out the exact command I need. With Mercurial I need to wade through 41, because I know: "Oh, I'm reverting a file, I need an 'hg revert' command of some kind."

Mercurial commands each do one thing (rarely two, almost never more than that) and do it well. If you want to combine commands, write a script. This makes the documentation concise and easy to read as you're working.

Git commands each try to be flexible enough to do many different things. The price you pay is that any time you need to read through the documentation it's an exercise in trying to search for a word in a man page and hoping everything you need is somewhere nearby.
This does not seem unusually high for me. I live in the U.S, in a city with some of the best hospitals in the country, and it looks about median.
I've (male) been going to they gym almost a year, after 30 years of sloth, it's made a huge difference.

I've heard some concern from women who don't want to work out too hard because they don't want to bulk up. I'm no expert, the responses I've heard have generally been something like most women aren't genetically prone to bulking, you're just going to get more fit, stronger and toned.

In case there are any women here who have had similar concerns. IMO you're much better off being strong and fit. Working out is not (necessarily) about body building, it's about health, ability and quality of life.
I am extremely disappointed in the Obama Administration and outraged. This is unacceptable and we as a society MUST push back and demand this be stopped.
You could use bookmarks if it's just going to be a local branch that only you work on, and you don't want anyone else to see the branch name.

I'd probably use a named branch. Yes, you have to use push -f the first time you push that branch to a remote repo, but I think of that as a "hey, do you really want other people to see this work-in-progress branch?" safeguard.
Too bad VCs haven't figured out a way to short startups yet.
> Simple would be doing what everyone wants it to do with one command

Everyone comes to the plate with different experiences/expectations. You can't hope to satisfy everyone.
As far as I'm aware, TRIM takes care of the performance degradation. Not sure that OSX supports TRIM yet though.
The chairman may be subject to Senate confirmation and dragged in front of a committee now and then.

However, the larger practices of the Federal Reserve, especially dealings internationally, are not regulated and essentially secret.
That's not completely accurate. What bank would refuse to take money its competitors were getting?

Goldman was the healthiest (best capitalized relative to the systemic risk of the crisis) of US iBanks, and thus if there had been no bailout, it's strategy would have been to wait for things to get worse and then acquire various less healthy banks at a huge discount.

To prevent it from attempting this strategy, the government instead bailed out most of its competitors, but Goldman conceded to the deal as long as it was officially "forced" to participate. This was done only for PR reasons so that it could retain the perception of being the healthiest bank while not having to resort to a fire-sale buying binge fueled by an influx of capital that might very well have been from foreign governments -- do you think China wouldn't have sent over $20B in exchange for a huge stake in one of two remaining US iBanks?

The AIG risk was a big factor, but AIG too would have probably taken capital from abroad.

The US Government bailout was partially to retain stability and partially to avoid having the firms that survived become too powerful and foreign funded.
Or it would if OS X supported it.
Grb gives you wings:

http://grb.rubyforge.org/
I wish more people knew Latin, too. My interest in languages is one of the reasons both that I am here and that I have a φ in my username. I posted the translation because I thought doing so would teach the most people a useful Latin phrase which I didn't know.

Perhaps I should have posted a link to the Wikipedia article instead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes

[edit: added first two sentences]
> Since we learn from the online docs

That's an assumption.
push -f is what I use, "force" makes it sound more sinister than it is.
How Blocking Search Engines Can Increase Ad Click-Throughs
iPhone OS 4 jailbreak available, enables multitasking on 3G
Man, this whole tea-party thing was fairly inconsequential to the point I was trying to make. I brought it up as an example and because my parent brought it up.

This was the supplement I was trying to tack onto my parent's comment: "Some technical understanding of this issue is prerequisite to understanding how the negative consequences outweigh the positive." This concerning internet privacy.

And I said "tea-bagging protesters" as a quick, lazy, way to refer to a group of people. My intent wasn't pejorative, but I am aware of the sexual act. I just didn't make the connection while writing.

I am aware of the seething tone of my comment, but besides that I didn't say anything untruthful. I could have said this:

Most [members of almost any group of people] are [discussing|protesting] stuff that is way over their head, but they don't need a good technical understanding of since the issues are dumbed down to terms which fit their competence.

I emphasized the word "need" for a reason.

If a person has a low level of competence or technical understanding of a subject, then it makes sense that you're going to have to dumb down the communication in order for them to get some semblance of understanding.

Thus, we place our trust in qualified experts. Thus we (generally) accept what is taught to us in schools about chemistry and mathematics, because it's better than re-learning it for ourselves and because we assume we're learning from an expert.

But my position on internet privacy is a little different. I feel that you do need a minimal technical understanding of the issue. A technical understanding that most people don't have, thus the issue slips by. All this in response to this part of my parent's comment: "I really don't know what has to happen for online privacy to get a stage."

So again, I'm basically saying I don't think this'll find its way on stage until it's too late. Because there aren't enough people who have enough technical understanding of this issue.

So, This: Some technical understanding of this issue is prerequisite to understanding how the negative consequences outweigh the positive.

Then the Tea-party thing as an example of where the issue would slip through (though I admit I may be wrong on this point).

Then This: I don't think this'll find its way on stage until it's too late. Because there aren't enough people who have enough technical understanding of this issue.

Anyway, this is all my fault for not writing clearly enough. I'm outta here. I should also apologize if I sound like an irritated a-hole. I didn't sleep last night.
Apple’s iAd will probably not destroy life on this planet as we know it
Although the 160GB has a slight write advantage over my 80GB G2, it appears those last 15% make quite a difference. That wouldn't be totally out of line from how regular HDs behave once they approach 100% utilized capacity.
SSDs (the intel ones at least) have a buffer of cells that are inaccessible to the OS (that buffer is larger on e models), maybe that's double for the 160?
Merlin Mann “The Philosopher” on Hypocrisy
Agree. I live in a mid-size city with a couple of world-class medical facilities. The waits for specialists are about 3 months.
I wouldn't think so ... but this is so disabling in and of itself that I would think that doesn't really matter.

It would depend on the reason, e.g. an inability to make hard decision is much worse than an inability to do a necessary but cruel thing.
For serious use:

scala/lift, clojure (and learning java through those 2!)

erlang, perl (yes, perl, I never used moose before)

-----------

Will get serious at some point:

objective-C, OCaml, haskell,

F# (when i get VS2010 license)
I'm in the habit of using doing a setbuf(stdout,NULL) in the beginning of all my console apps, anyway. Buffered console I/O is something that made sense 20 years ago but certainly not anymore.

If you did a setbuf(stderr,NULL) as well as setbuf(stdout,NULL), you'd achieve the same effect that the author's going for, with no need to remember to flush.
In fact, 'traffic analysis' is exactly what you would use to focus the actual decryption power available to you towards the more likely sources of paydirt.

And storing all email until you might want to decrypt it would be another possibility, though that might be prohibitively expensive. This is actually one of the few cases where spam has a net positive effect, increasing the size of the haystack considerably.
I can agree with that.

I guess it boils down to people needing to act responsibly. We must each fulfill those responsibilities that are incumbent upon us. If I'm entrusted with those SS#s, I'd better take care of them. If I took reasonable measures to do so but they're lost, I'm less bad then if I was irresponsible and just lucked out.
I just installed Eagle Mode - very interesting indeed. The fact that you can put instructions, documentation etc. right there in situ with the relevant controls is quite interesting.
Anybody notice the picture of the woman standing up and holding the device? I think it's the last picture in the roll. Not only does she appear somewhat uncomfortable holding it but she is using a pillow in her right hand while standing to kind of prop up the device. Very strange choice for a product shot.
The Manning chouser/fogus book is shaping up really well (and rhickey's talking about release of 1.2 soon!).

Get a MEAP discount code off their website:

http://manning.com/free/dotd.html
New Jersey Bankruptcy Lawyer
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Apple designs a product knowing it will sell millions of copies, so it makes sense for them to spend the time to get it right. PC manufacturers have greater volume, but no individual product is anywhere near as ubiquitous as a Macbook Pro or iMac. They're stuck in a trap where no single model can sell well enough to justify an Apple level of quality even if they had the design sense to produce one.
Tom Merritt leaving CNET for TWiT
Android software; why? Because it's written in a language I loathe

Okay, you despise Java -- and that's fine -- but you prefer a product that can only be programmed in Objective-C? Schizophrenia much?

I've written for both platforms. Cocoa Touch with XCode is certainly nicer than Android but Android's language is slightly better than the choices available for iP[ad|hone]. Either of them would be nicer with Python, Ruby, Lisp, or even JavaScript.
Justin.tv is hiring software engineers [SF]
This seems like it would be a dangerous move on Yahoo's part, aside from the acquisition of talent. This is only my gut feeling, but I don't see users being so vested in the FourSquare service, that if they're unhappy with the direction it is taking, just jumping ship to Gowalla. A lot of people already check in through multiple services, and it wouldn't be too hard a decision to stop checking in with one if it's flavor turns sour.
Biggest suppliers of cheap money - so called central banks underwritten by essentially clueless taxpayers - scratch that - future taxpayers.
I did the same thing :)
Asana is doing some lofty things in the way of streamlining connectivity through a super snappy interface that really jolts the offline advancements of HTML5.

Does anyone know what's going on with 280Atlas? I haven't heard much after they launched in beta about 4 months ago.
Hg allows local branches natively, but it tends to prefer pushing from repository to repository rather than from local branch to local branch. So you can do it either way 1 or 2 (whatever suits you). It sounds like #3 might be based on outdated information.
Except that state capitols are mostly closer to people than the national capitol. Perhaps the laziness we're talking of has an interstate threshold?
push -f is the thing. Requiring -f just makes you think twice before accidentally exposing the rest of the world to your changes without merging them.
Scala and Clojure run like molasses on Dalvik and JRuby will likely be the same. The Dalvik VM that Android targets is not like the JVM and one of its deficiencies is that it supports dynamic languages very poorly. Duby may run fine on JVM but if it's really Ruby-like, it'll be bad on Android.

No. If you want to write professional-quality apps on Dalvik, you'll be writing in Java or another language just as weak in imagination and straitjacketed.

Which is not to say that Objective-C is an improvement. At least iPhone apps used to offer Lua or even Scheme scripting. No longer.
You should try building an iPhone app and see how it compares.

I have, and Android wins for me. Cocoa Touch is a decent API (in most cases; what's with NSImage vs CGImage vs CIImage?), but Objective-C is seriously outdated. It usually needs more boilerplate than even Java, and manual memory management, lack of namespaces, and header files are silly in 2010.
Eagle Mode - Zoomable UI
I also live a few blocks from my state capitol building and I rarely see protests. Maybe one or two a year with 20 or 30 people. It just doesn't happen.
Rails Can Scale
That's true, but the assertion that that there's no contribution to the economy and society from bank profits is a false one.
Yeah. My former technician, who I still keep in touch with, needed surgery to remove a long shunt that had been surgically implanted when he was a child, due to hydroencephaly.

It took months for him to even get the first appointment, an x-ray which did little for diagnosis. Months later, he got an MRI, which supported the diagnosis of calcification of the shunt, but wasn't completely conclusive. More months later, a biopsy was taken, and again, that wasn't entirely conclusive, but at this point the doctors were suggesting that it be surgically removed.

So, he goes in for surgery -- nearly 6 months after the last round of tests. The surgeon begins removing sections of it, but it's slow going because the shunt keeps breaking apart and falling back into the body.

The surgeon actually runs out of time to finish the job and sews him up, having only removed around 6 of the 18 inches of shunt.

Then, only a couple of hours after the surgery, my tech was asked to leave the hospital, because they were out of recovery rooms and couldn't put him up any longer. They also couldn't spare a gurney or, apparently, a wheelchair; he was walked out of the hospital while still groggy.

Now he'll have to go back in for more surgery, all at further public expense, to finish the job that should have been finished last year.

...Oh, except for one thing: this is in the U.S.

He's a young kid by the way, and the only reason that he isn't completely bankrupted by all of this is that he's covered under a public care option specifically for children that had hydroencephaly.

--

I've done my best to respond calmly and civilly here; I know that it's easier to win opinions that way. At least, that's what I want to believe. However, this "free market health care" nonsense absolutely infuriates me. Its proponents will point to any weakness they can find in socialized health systems, while simultaneously wearing rose-colored goggles for our own ailing health system. They're lying to themselves, and they're lying to other people, and it's absolutely embarrassing that a modern, first-world country doesn't consider health care to to be an import aspect of an advanced society -- one that, like education, should be provided to the greatest number of its citizens possible.

I've had an aunt die of stomach cancer, and my grandfather slowly dehydrated away in a hospital because that, apparently, is how congestive heart failure is handled in the U.S. I keep in mind that most doctors do the best they can, and most hospitals are understaffed and overbooked. But, to ignore the ills of our system here and be "glad" for it is preposterous.
Negatives: touchscreen not implemented, months or years away from sale
A website completely devoted to this:

http://www.androidtablets.net/
Google's Go (www.golang.org)

I'm also considering the "seven languages in seven weeks" book (http://www.pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-sev... ). I know some of those languages already, but I think it's worthwhile to spend a few weeks getting an overview of what else is out there.
It continues to amaze me how many and adamant apple's apologists are. Stockholm syndrome?
For me it comes down to this: If the language uses blocks for its own constructs, it ought to let you use blocks for yours. If blocks are a bad idea for your constructs, then they ought to be a bad idea for `if` and `for` and all the other constructs languages like Javascript provide that have blocks of their own.
Labels bring to the table the ability to work with experienced audio engineers,etc, but IMO it's debatable how much of that makes its way into the final product since most CDs have no dynamic range.