skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It occurs to me that if Google is smart they'll take a hands off approach with QPX. It's a service ITA runs for its customers and it's got to have some pretty stiff service level guarantees. For a bunch of their customers, if it's not up their customers can't book flights (well, they could book them, but they couldn't find out which flights to book).

Google's infrastructure is just not up to this level. Customers with multi-year contracts like Alitalia will be none too pleased if QPX's infrastructure and code is mindlessly "Googlized" (well, Alitalia might be a bad example given Google's problems with Italy, maybe they'll say "Nice airline you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it." :-).

I can seem them doing the above, spinning off or ending QRES (a problem of bad timing as I've noted elsewhere), and then doing interesting things with various parts of QPX. At the very least ITA has a whole bunch of interesting data feeds ... then again, I wonder what sort of contractual restrictions there might be on them. Still, Google would be miles ahead by buying ITA and only requiring negotiations instead of starting from scratch, i.e. not even knowing what data feeds are out there until they hire domain experts. And then there's capture and formatting and all that stuff, all already done in C++ by ITA.

They could be buying ITA for its domain expertise plus its pile of crackerjack programmers, the ones working on QRES wouldn't be pleased to be moved from Common Lisp but that could beat the alternatives. Tough luck for the QRES Oracle RAC people at all levels, but perhaps there's a good market for their expertise (Microsoft sure had fun there when they screwed up with Danger/Sidekick). And the QRES front end software is in Java (only the middleware is in Common Lisp).
Hahaha, then if I avoid using social media to procrastinate, it gives me a button so I can post about my success on twitter.
Ok, so I will be that guy. You should really talk to a designer about your site UI/UX. To me it looks very much like a windows/java application and I honestly wouldn't use it or trust it with my data.

I know that sounds harsh, but trust me. It's better someone tells you and you can fix it then if everyone stays "nice" and doesn't say anything.
Where do we see your YCRFC submission?

Just a simple search, and I turned this up:

http://www.ngbasic.com/

Hosting this would be relatively simple. Don't know if it's any good.
This is an obtuse argument. The obvious point being made by the parent is that Facebook, as all companies do, will at some point or another put its own interests above those of its users. When you're selling widgets this is usually no big thing and you just start to fade away or have to reinvent yourself, but when you deal in personal information it's a different story.
Do i get additional points for resisting going on that website to record a point ??

(Killer app, i think).
Was Microsoft and Adobe CC'ed?
They're still hiring Lisp programmers. I got a "mostly Lisp" job offer from them a couple months ago but turned it down.
Probably 80%+, in the early ages.

Troll alchemy - I mean troll hugging - is a subtle art, and it took us many years to get the main development channels into reasonable civility.

For example, http://irclog.perlgeek.de/perl6/today has been quite gentle for the past 5 years or so.

I guess when one builds a language (Perl) modeled after a natural language (English), one attracts quite a diverse crowd, as basic literacy was the only requirement...

Compare that to Haskell, modeled after mathematics, which attracts folks who thinks in higher-order logic... And as you could imagine, exchanges like the one you cited was quite difficult to express in equations.

On the other hand, civilized exchanges like we see in ycombinator.com is quite difficult to express in equations, too... :-)
> how many of these "insurgents" are fighting against the US because they feel the invasion to be illegal?

I'm sorry but right there is the naivety. Yes there is fighting because the US is in control - but the current government is also seen, by the insurgents, as US stooges. They would fight to depose them even if the US left. Then there are many different factions - all of whom would want control.

I appreciate this is the line the US government are selling too; and it is good not to just lap it up hook line and sinker (clearly they are staying for other reasons too). But there is a truth to what they say.

Whatever reason the US went (I am sure the oil played a large part) getting out is going to be incredibly difficult. Whatever move they make will be frowned on by someone.
:-D It is the first and only self-defeating application. And intentionally so (I'm the author).
I think in some cases you can skip and they let you pretend you never left. However, you will need to pay taxes on the missing years etc.
Course Review - The Art of Exploitation: Bootcamp Edition
Let me present an argument in favor of the ternary operator. tl;dr -- It is an abstraction on a conditional assignment pattern.

We start with your "readable" approach:

var a;
if (condition(x)) {
a = 4;
}
else {
a = 5;
}

That has all the glory of line noise, repetition, and a declaration to make our language happy. This example is a little exaggerated. We can make our declaration more useful and our condition more of an exception:

var a = 5;
if (condition(x)) {
a = 4;
}

That is still two assignments or, rather, the "a =" pattern repeated. And that is just for a trivial single branch. How can we abstract that out? You have two options. For simple conditions, we can do this:

var a = condition(x) ?
4 :
5 ;

It might be better to abstract it out like this:

var a = value_for_a_with_environment(x);

Sure, you may be using a ternary operator or if...else underneath the hood in value_for_a_with_environment(), but give that function a relevant name, and someone can get the gist without having to know the details.

It could just be arrangement and syntax we despise. Here is another language's approach to the ternary operator:

(setf a (if (condition x)
4
5))

Or with consideration given to the environment:

(setf a (value-for-a-with-environment x))

Once I learned some of the value and abstractions of functional programming, I stopped feeling the ternary operator's use was ugly and realized it was more that I hated the line noise involved in using it. That colon looks a lot like a semicolon.

Also, it is limited. In nontrivial code, I have seen cascades of ternary operators.

var a = cond1(x) ?
4 :
cond2(x) ?
5 :
cond3(x) ?
6 :
7 ;

or

var a = cond1(x) ? 4
: cond2(x) ? 5
: cond3(x) ? 6
: 7 ;

Pick your favorite arrangement.

We really want a non-binary-looking structure like this:

(setf a (cond (cond1 4)
(cond2 8)
(cond3 12)
(t nil)))
Audrey, how do you think the combination of Rakudo and Parrot is coming along? Do you like the overall design of this Perl 6 implementation?
I just added to my resistances: Resisted checking number of users in LizBrain.

In fact your account will expire after 30 days - so that LizBrain does not become a dependency too ;-)
Check out www.tungle.me - Super simple very intuitive social calendar.
With the new <audio> Tag.

A few weeks ago, I "converted" an old flash animation of mine to HTML5 <canvas> and <audio>:
http://www.phoboslab.org/files/venetianization/
Nintendo 3DS launch rumor and a Project Natal leak
Why a video with no summary? (I don't want to view a video, unless it really advances the point)
Worse here.

"The connection was reset

"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

"The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments."

Not ready to pay a subscription fee for yet, methinks.
Never heard of Cloudomatic before, but I wish I had. It seems like a great service and I actually like your UI ;) Good luck with it !
voting nationaly is overrated (you have 2 options).

And voting in your state of last residence already works like you described. You vote, you pay for that, for medical services you didn't use, for roads you don't drive, etc, etc...
Any of u guys thinking what I'm thinking? This (way cool) process MIGHT be a way to resurrect the Hoyle-Gold-Bondi steady state theory (http://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/ideas/bigbang.htm) - if this guy was 200 times the mass of our sun, who is to say we don't all live in the expanding after-math of just such a (albiet much larger) hyper-nova? Maybe the big bang was something similar to this, and has happened an infinite number of times before, and will again. Just a thought, but I never liked the concept of finite time, for aesthetic reasons. If I'm wrong, please (seriously) let me know how, since just naively it seems that the aftermath of this explosion, if scaled up, is similar to the aftermath of the so-called big bang.
I am biased, but Guestlist is pretty good. A lot of our UI design focuses on making the app feel faster than it is while remaining highly usable:
http://www.guestlistapp.com
Windows Intune cloud service: A simple guide
Apple has stopped updating its Downloads service for 3rd party Mac apps
I don't think removing the "8" from the title in this case was warranted. This is not a list post, and the items are not quickly read, content-empty mini-articles, but short essays that all fit together.

Calling it "Eight Short Studies on Excuses" is as reasonable as calling this Mozart set of studies (http://www.classiccat.net/mozart_wa/265.htm) "Twelve variations".

On the topic - interesting and well written. What are the advantages of the normal mode of excuse-evaluation compared to this?
اخر تحديث لبوكس الان اس برو حمل من هنا واعرف المميزات - شركة الصباحي
Did you read the article? The author specifically mentions that he doesn't normally use Adobe Acrobat:

The worst part is, Acrobat isn’t even the best free PDF reader. Next time I will go with my usual default.

With "usual default" linking to Foxit.

Plus, you know, Adobe Air has Linux support. So it can install unwanted-but-necessary-to-view-some-site-or-run-an-app crap there too.
>When trying to close an online account, [users'] information and connections aren't ... erased; they're just unpublished. By deleting all your data, Suicide Machine says, your private information is snuffed out on website servers.

Do any of these sites guarantee that data will actually be deleted from their servers? I would bet that this "deletion" doesn't remove any data, but just unpublishes or archives it, like closing an account does.
And non-free.
Red Gate's doing a bang up PR job.
Being fat is bad for your brain
I agree that the US government has shown a remarkable ability to mess things up but we have also been running a huge healthcare system for a while so extending Medicare to everyone would be far simpler than a totally new system.

As to savings on "paper trail" is really a savings on the billing with 5 different insurance companies the doctor needs to handle each one separately and have separate negotiations on cost etc. Also because the government is covering everyone doctors and hospitals spend less time trying to bill people who can’t pay etc. And becomes the government has such close ties with the doctors they don’t need to closely examine every single treatment just a random sample to avoid fraud.

PS: lack of interest in the trial period interesting I am pointing at the Medicare system as the trial period. The government already spends 50% of every healthcare dollar so it's not exactly a new player in the system. Medicare is actually run at lower cost than most private insurance companies. There is even a standard idea of supplemental coverage which private company’s already understand and are used to.
Rather than write up the results, here’s a video that Anthony put together.

WTF? Some of us are busy and would love a quick write-up. Not everyone is a teen that can spend all day watching YouTube videos. Hell, some of us work places where we can't even see the video if we wanted to!
We were in Ashland,OR for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a few years ago. The public radio station repeatedly said they were located in "the mythical state of Jefferson".
Without trying to be overly self-promoting, we've spent a lot of time making our UI look good over at http://www.woobius.com . Worth having a look and including it in your inspiration list, perhaps.
As a US expat, I setup an S-corp for 2009 and it is VERY beneficial for consultants who live abroad and can setup their own US company: because it allows me to pay myself a reasonable salary underneath the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion; to take business expenses against the remainder, and most importantly, NO self-employment tax.
Rotavirus vaccine and herd immunity
4.2.2.2: The story behind a DNS legend
As a fan of Clojure, I've got to agree.

I was really hoping for a section after 'why you should use Clojure' dedicated to 'why you should use Scala', but there wasn't one.
I think the performance won't be a big problem in the foreseeable future. There's some great competition going on between Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera. With every new version their Javascript engines get faster and with the coming WebGL we'll have hardware accelerated drawing in <canvas>.

This competition is precisely what was missing for Flash.
Doesn't seem to me to have any resemblance to the Big Bang, other than involving (kinda) a bang that is big.
I "pledged allegiance" thousands of times from about age 5 on. Until about age 13 I didn't even think about, pledging allegiance constituted a ritual at the start of a day of school, which was pretty ritualistic in and of itself.

Even after I started to think about not saying the "Pledge of Allegiance" I decided that the cost was too high, by observing the Jehovah's Witness in the classroom who didn't say it.

I think that after saying the pledge became a habit, it became a matter of saying it under duress. And the school authorities cooperated in promoting this.

So, I personally regard that pledge as voided by the semi-official duress placed on my as a child by school authorities.
As Microsoft is the only very large corporation I've worked for so far, I'm afraid I can't really make a comparison.
Facebook Behaving Badly « Bokardo – Social Design by Joshua Porter
I think the overall design is sound, and the bus number of Rakudo is higher than Pugs.hs, so it's good. :-)

In addition, I try to remind myself of the Confucian Analects: If one does not hold the post, one refrains from contemplating in the affairs of that post... (不在其位，不謀其政)
I agree. Does anyone have time to watch and give us a summary here on HN?
I'm all for simplicity but this solution is by no means a no-brainer. A major change in so many people's habits can only happen if there are only positives. This is doomed to failure. No wonder they closed Comments on this one in the Developers' Forum. It is always best to acknowledge your bloopers fast and Google should do so.
Can someone help me with this apparent contradiction: "pledging allegiance" is pretty much the oppostise of "being free". How do you reconcile the two?

Really, the textbook definition of being free is that you have no allegiance.
Threadsy is first web app to implement Gmail OAuth
How To Create Your Own Blogger Template Theme | BradBlogging
It wouldn't be as easy as breaking up Ma Bell into regional carriers vs long distance because the internet doesn't follow geographical boundaries. It could make sense in some respects to split Google into different companies based on verticals like search, email, apps, mobile, advertising, payments, and enterprise, but even then there aren't clear divisions.

Would Gmail, as a separate company, have to license Google Search technology for inbox searches? And register as an AdSense publisher?

How would Google Search broker a deal to be the primary search engine on Android phones produced by Google Mobile? And would Google Checkout be able to integrate with the app store?
The train that never stops
Average tuition costs for 2009-2010: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html

I think at $35k/degree the public university route is probably the most bang for your buck. I wonder how these schools compare to similar state run schools in Europe/Asia.
EPub Bud: Publish and share your own books
I think a large number of programming jobs aren't - this is how we wind up with such a mind-numbing process for both job seeker and hiring organization.

I have interviewed at a number of places where the job description would have led you to believe the position was for a hard-core development person, with a desire for the type of experience in candidates that could only be obtained by being a tech lead dev or architect with dev responsibilities at a forward-thinking software shop. I've have generally been surprised to often find what companies were really after was someone willing to work with a previously purchased tool or framework, placate internal users, and perhaps do some scripting on the side. Perfectly fine work, but in no way matching the job description.

People who've been filling these positions now begin to think of themselves as programmers (even if this type of job is all they have had). Then we, when hiring for something approximating actual dev work, are surprised to find that all they have done is lightweight admin of some tool set and some scripting.

A giant red flag for me at this point is to apply to a job, offer to provide code samples, and have ZERO interest from the hiring group in seeing those samples. Seriously? But, then I realize, they aren't REALLY looking for a programmer - they are looking for more of the role I've described above. We could look deeper under the covers at reasons for this weirdness, but it's probably too depressing in general.
It's worth watching the video - if you [maukdaddy: "work places where we can't even see the video if we wanted to"] then don't watch it - you'll just get very jealous because you'll have no hope of getting your organisation to do anything remotely this good.
This should be easy to fix with a 'configure my controller' option. They could let you choose which keys do what for their game, and maybe show the most common configurations as options before you make your own.
"Ruth the Superman

The tests revealed the fact that Ruth is 90 per cent efficient compared with a human average of 60 per cent.

That his eyes are about 12 per cent faster than those of the average human being.

That his ears function at least 10 per cent faster than those of the ordinary man. That his nerves are steadier than those of 499 out of 500 persons.

That in attention and quickness of perception he rated one and a half times above the human average.

That in intelligence, as demonstrated by the quickness and accuracy of understanding, he is approximately 10 per cent above normal."

Popular Science, 1921

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-10/archive-why-ba...
Jobs isn't voting these stories up, HN users are.
Ranking tech companies by revenue per employee
I think that Javascript, the language, itself has barriers to performance. I think few programmer know, for instance, that a dictionary lookup is 100 times slower than a switch statement. (If you don't believe me test it! It's what I found under Firefox anyway.) The language absolutely begs for a real map type... Objects just don't cut it because of performance (it has to be concerned that someone might have extended the Object prototype) and because of their limitations, e.g. confusion if someone defines a key string called "hasOwnProperty".

If you actually try to use some of it's nice functional features, as well, you can forget about performance. Maybe you think engines can solve these things, but I doubt it will ever compare to any language built from the ground up to have reasonable performance.
(Really? The current government is seen as US stooges? Really? Those crazy insurgents. :-)

There's no naivety: I understand very well that there are Shiia, Sunni and Bathist factions. And I'm sure that the civil war would continue. But Jesus, the US has been there seven long years at exorbitant expense.

Remember, though, that this is the line that apartheid South Africa used to avoid letting the blacks vote: "if they do it, there will be chaos -- why just look at how much chaos and violence exists now -- just think about if that was set free! They frown now on apartheid but they would frown on that too."

No. The US leaving will be "frowned on" by no one. It will be applauded by all. It's been seven years. It needs to end.
New Ruby podcast. Guests include DHH, Obie Fernandez, Ryan Bates and more.
One thing to keep in mind is that around 50% of all students fail to complete their degree in 6 years. We're talking about 4 year degrees here. I believe around 30% never complete a degree. The opportunity cost of getting a degree for many majors makes it, from a monetary point of view, not worthwhile.

If I could do it all over again I would have gotten a two year degree in nursing and been in the workforce at 20. I ended up going to graduate school in mathematics and was in school until 29. I lost 9 years of earnings and my pay as a community college instructor is less than what my nursing friends make. There are other factors to take into consideration but here I'm only considering things from a money point of view.
We use Pivotal Tracker at my day job and I really like the UI/UX. It's intuitive, functional, and simple, all things I look for and try to emulate in my own work.

Update: Link http://www.pivotaltracker.com/
Apple has been much maligned in recent weeks, but I support Steve Jobs on this.

Allowing kids to program on the iPad would empower them, and unleash their creativity; these are clearly undesirable side-effects that Reichsfuehrer Jobs is quite right to suppress.

I think Apple should do an ad campaign to highlight this: "Don't think different. In fact, don't think at all. Let us do your thinking for you. By the way, you owe us $$$$"
Apple has been enforcing the "no interpreters" rule for a long time.
"Del Percio argues, is that the brains of athletes are more efficient, so they produce the desired result with the help of fewer neurons. Del Percio’s research suggests that the more efficient a brain, the better job it does in sports. ... but even the most genetically well-endowed prodigy clearly needs practice—-lots of it—-to develop the brain of an athlete. As soon as someone starts to practice a new sport, his brain begins to change, and the changes continue for years."

This is what physical education was supposed to be about. Unfortunately, it's turned into, at best, an incompetent teacher with a whistle shouting at kids, or, at worst, disappeared altogether. I think we, as a society, are missing out on something pretty big.
That might be problematic. I was under the impression that most of those "verticals" don't actually make a profit. Adsense is the primary revenue engine for the whole company.

More importantly, it seems a little pre-mature to talk about anti-trust action against Google when they are facing pretty robust competition for pretty much every one of those verticals.
Inside Pixar’s Leadership
Social News Website for Financial Articles and Tips at Tip’d
If you're interested in submitting questions for our guests, follow @coderpath on Twitter. I usually tweet out a day or two before we record to gather questions from our audience.
Airline wants to charge for carry-ons? No problem We can survive it