skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No incremental testing strikes me as a rather valueless constraint. Small experiments are one of the most crucial skills -- if not the crucial skill -- in writing correct code. It's like asking me to swim with one arm tied behind my back to see if I am a good swimmer.

Sure, I can run these 'tests' on scratch paper or even in my head, if you require me to. But real life never requires this. I prefer to prove to myself that each piece of an algorithm is correct--using a combination of reasoning and microtesting--before moving on to the next. Why would I waste attention doing this all in my head? The computer will do many pieces of it for me quickly, accurately, in a way that catches language idiosyncracies, and most importantly frees my attention for considering more abstract errors.

Edit: I had to try anyway, and (as far as I can tell) I was able to do it correctly in about three minutes. But I suspect it has less to do with native programming ability and more to do with having written dozens of variants on binary searches in the past year (I've had reason to want to handle various types of fuzzy matches, filtering and desired multiplicities in return values). FWIW, even after a fairly exhaustive suite of random input tests, I trust this binary search I have just written far less than the many I've recently written using my usual incremental methodology. Were I to include this in an actual release, I would not attempt to prove what I just wrote correct. I would destroy it and do the job properly from scratch.

Which rather underscores my point. I just wrote some code the wrong way, and even in spite of quite a lot of recent domain experience, a pretty good test suite, and a lot of staring at it and thinking about it . . . I don't trust it because I didn't test the pieces while I was writing it.
I disagree with this premise. Apple makes money from App Store sales ($27M to $170M per quarter according to various estimates found on Google) which, while small compared to total revenue, is non-trivial. Also, paid apps tend to be higher quality, and it is strongly in Apple's best interest to maintain a high quality standard in the App Store. If Apple suddenly makes it hard for developers to make money, as the article insinuates, then they will deal with a larger percentage of low quality app submissions because it isn't worth the time to make high-end apps.
> I presume IMEI isn't something that's unique to the UK?

Definitely not, though depending on the underlying system the acronym will change a bit, the function is the same, to identify a phone independent of the identity card in it.

This is why people that prank call 911 with their identity card removed from the phone are caught.
The iPhone HD: Real or Fake?
You have to chuckle at how the entire blogosphere is losing sleep over some leaked images of what is supposedly the next generation iPhone. The pics came from a phone found on the floor of a San Jose bar and Engadget was the first to post them. As soon as they did, the uproar began. Is it really true or is this just some cheap Chinese knockoff?
Make sure you use an adequate password with that encryption. It amazes me how many people use, say, an 8-10 character password with just lower case (and maybe numbers).

:)
Secrets from a search marketing manager
I had read it before as authorization, but you're right that it does command the SEC to raise the numbers at least every 5 years starting now, but it leaves the increases completely up to the SEC.

The "2.3m" figure is bullshit, the maximum that the SEC could possibly justify.
I'm glad you asked this question ;-)

The contest's purpose is not to replace real open data with scraping bad HTML, but to show people what kind of things would be possible if government freed the data. The projects are just examples but not full featured, because the scraping approach has obvious limitations. In our case, all data is scraped from the INE website (http://www.ine.es/), but there's one single data which couldn't be obtained from any official source in a programmatical way, one that is essential: the mapping between official districts number and the district name. We had to type that data (http://github.com/valakirka/monquartier/blob/master/config/d...) and that's the only reason of the small scope. If we had had normalized and public data, our app would include the data for all cities, towns and villages in Spain, and not only at the district level but also at the neighbourhood level, which would make it a lot more interesting (and that's what we wanted to make clear to the people).

When government does its part, we'll do ours ;)
How is this better than existing technology?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generato...
Not much of one. You'd need to prove that the merchandise was abandoned, not just lost. And you'd have to prove the finder did due diligence in locating the proper owner before taking ownership. Good luck with that in this case.

If Apple had the inclination they could have Gizmodo's balls in a vice.
How to install or reinstall the VMWare console plugin in FireFox
>A cash accounting system is essentially giving the option back to the customer (from your perspective at least) of being able to walk out the door. An accrual system does not, as the inference is there that you will chase them to pay.

Having been in both situations, I disagree with this summary.

You write down the bad debt in the situation of the unpaid AR in accrual, in cash, you close the invoice however you wish to do so. It's not like you stop tracking invoices in cash based accounting or who owes you money.

The real big deal between accrual and cash is "control of large expense timelines" which you can pick which date you add them in when doing accrual, and you can't when you do cash. If you do a lot of business that falls over the end of your fiscal year (not a problem in my part of the woods) this can be an issue.

Most of the rest of the changes are just changes in amount of paperwork.
It was not information. It was a physical object that belonged to somebody else. Beyond that it was intellectual property that belonged to somebody else. Gizmodo is morally indefensible here, I think.
Typography for Lawyers
It probably is not an issue for a young web company but it may be a taxable event...it all depends on the LLC's assets and liabilities and their tax accounting basis.
Ask HN: Best Android tablet device for developing a mobile GIS application?
We're developing an enterprise-class mobile GIS application that calls for running on a touch-based tablet device with 3G wireless, WiFi, and GPS -- similar to the iPad.

However, we've decided to standardize on the Android platform.

Can anyone recommend an iPad-like Android device? Beta-versions, etc... are OK. This is for development purposes only, and we can wait a few months for deployment.

Thanks!

eser AT eser DOT org
Yeah, it's a SQLite front end which is an interesting concept, but it's not something you're going to download unless you have a specific need for it. It also looks a bit complex for normal users.

My $0.99 Android app had 216 sales in its first 11 days, and is coming up on 1000. It's a "fun" app (although potentially useful in some cases) and much more of an impulse buy. Nowhere near enough to quit my job, but it's a profitable hobby.
No. Taking possession of lost property creates a "bailment", a legal relationship between the possessor and the owner, governed by local bailment laws. The offense by Gizmodo, if any, would be failure to report found property. It would not be espionage, since Gizmodo had no contractual obligation to maintain secrecy, and since Apple failed to take due care not to abandon the secret in a public place.

Assuming the story is truthful. If Gizmodo paid for misappropriation of trade secrets by an Apple employee, they are toast.
Wouldn't that reasoning be the post itself?
If Google doesn't do anything to quell the hordes of spam apps hitting the market, it could happen even sooner.

http://www.androlib.com/android.developer.myapp-builder-qinw...
This pretty much exactly describes a huge portion of the business we do. I've found cash basis very very nice in comparison to accrual for this exact use case. (And was what was recommended by an accountant in particular).

Does your accounting software make it unable to track invoices if you're not doing accrual or something? Mine does invoicing, AR, and other accounts just fine.
And the author of this article doesn't take in to account the possibility that Apple gave Gizmodo the phone to build up the hype for the new iPhone?

It's the oldest trick in the book. Costs just one prototype and the whole internet is talking about it. I don't believe anything of the "stolen", "lost" or perhaps even "mugged" stories. The "mugged" I came up with myself. Makes as much sense as stolen etc.
Securities law governs all corporate fundraising including angel investing in privately held companies.
For starters anyone with access to the pastie server logs has your IP which would be a great starting point.
tl;dr Because 960x640 will give a picture quality (in particular for texts) comparable to high-quality prints.

But that's not much of an answer. Why higher resolution? Because it will look better. Why 960x640 precisely? Because it's exactly 4 times the current resolution. But beyond that…

I guess I'm missing a more insightful conclusion like: "since Apple is putting iBooks on the iPhone, they want to make it a decent e-reader".
This article is wrong or incorrect at so many levels , i wonder why did it even get submitted and get as high as it is.
We Rubyists tend to put on the wizards hat and wave the wand around. But Ruby can be procedural too, and a lot of times can look a bit like Basic. I like Chris Pine's book "Learn To Program" because it uses Ruby very simply to teach introductory programming.

I have much respect for Python, but don't know it well enough yet to be comfortable. Would kids be frustrated by the whitespace / indenting?
What if Gizmodo does its due diligence after the fact?

ie. First take all the photos they need, then contact Apple
App Store Mistakes and Chains of Events
Where are you? Plans without a phone to subsidize are typically cheaper.
I like the conclusion of the article :)

Cleaning our teeth is a funny thing; there are no downsides, more and more upsides, and it's easy. Heck, it sounds just like exercise, except even easier. Yet, we are still quite bad at taking care of them even with toothbrushes etc. freely available.
You'll love "How to Design Programs" (http://www.htdp.org/), they put a lot of emphasis on structural recursion.
This was by far the easiest thing to see coming to the 2010 iPhone.
http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.htm...

I recently ported my company's iPhone app to Android (they both have the same look, rather than using each platform's look) and the difference between the two images side by side when testing on the Nexus One was striking. Quite simply, Apple could not have gone into the 2010 holiday season against Android phones with spectacular, dense 4" displays.
My guess would be that most enthusiastic programmers realized they would be interested in the field prior to their first programming course.
I agree with you that you (we) shouldn't feel the need to have a one-to-one mapping between problems we solve and word problems. Even in elementary physics you could argue that the word problems in many cases aren't practical, but we teach it to teach the flavor of the approach; the attitude of how we attack problems (or, less poetically, what exactly we mean when we say "cause and effect").

That said, the motivation is still greater when the students see some hope that what they are learning is meaningful.

What that motivation is depends on the level of the class. For algebra 2, it might be "we learn to manipulate rational functions because it gives us a tool to understand (or solve) a certain class of problems. Someday you may own a business where you have to worry about the average cost of something that depends on things that change alot, or variables as we call them. And you know what an average is: it's the amount of something divided by how many there are. Well if your amounts are represented by an algebraic expression, and your total is represented by an algebraic expression, then the quantity you will be interested in will look something like this (writes a rational function on the board). Now, what the fuck do we do with this?"
I notice that whenever this is a discussion about LLC, the supposely downside is always that the VC's prefer a C-Corp and therefore if one wishes to eventually take VC money, then one should be proactive and not form an LLC. That is simply not true and has not been my experience. It is true that the VC's prefer C-Corp but they never insist on investing in companies that are C-Corp. The best way is actually for the entrepreneurs to form an LLC to take advantage of the tax structure and flexibility, then when you are ready to take VC money, just let them form a C-Corp and acquire your LLC. It is not complicate and don't let any lawyers/accountants tell you otherwise.
Right. Hardly anybody asks themselves "which is the Official Best Windows Computer?"

Android is not a single, tightly-controlled product line. It's an OS. Buy whatever hardware you think you'd like to run it on.

It's just a different approach than Apple's, and one that has worked well in PCs.
More importantly, learn what you're motivated to learn. Don't try to learn the things you "should" learn, because you probably won't be able to do it until you want to learn them.
Maybe-- isn't the iPhone $99 at this point? I guess the winner in terms of phone sales could be "free" (subsidized by carriers).

Given Apple's profits with the iPhone and economies of scale, they might just be able to compete with that. Give away iPhones, make it back on app sales?
I don't think you're wrong. But I think we need the examples before we can prove you're right. Nothing prevents anyone from taking this code and building a lab out of it as a secondary method of learning.

Of course, you're perfectly free to set up your own project using Squeak. I bet you'd get a lot of people onboard with that. Then you can prove me wrong :)
Not in Europe (or at least Scandinavia). Every Android phone I've seen in the wild is either an HTC (roughly 70-80%) or a Samsung (20-30%). I don't think I've ever seen anyone using a Motorola Android phone.
This could open up a very lucrative market for Python experts.
Hmm. So you can't buy or sell lost property, but there's nothing to say you can't carefully examine and photograph something you found before you return it to its rightful owner.

So if the finder had taken it to Gizmodo and offered to let them take a look at it for $10,000 then he'd be in the clear, but if he actually sold it to Gizmodo then he's in serious trouble.
Nick Denton is more or less confirming it: http://twitter.com/nicknotned/status/12467349291
Just did so. I had slightly misread the statute (or it's been updated) when this first blew up a few weeks ago, but it doesn't cast any doubt on my comment you're replying to here: the 2.3m figure is bullshit, the SEC is left to update the numbers themselves.

While I don't find the new registration requirements onerous, you're absolutely right that the approval process for those registrations are insane. The 120 day federal approval window is bad enough, but the automatic devolution to the states is going to be a fucking disaster when some state legislature notices its newfound powers.

Unfortunately, everyone's laser-focused on the idea that the pool of small angels could possibly shrink, making it very easy for others to write them off as self-serving whiners (especially when they're inflating their claims). It reads as "shit my old boss won't be able to fund my startup".
I wonder if there's a business opportunity here? What would it cost to tool up an Android app testing shop? A bunch of phones wouldn't be that expensive.
Yeah, that's a good point the whitespace thing would be very frustrating. I guess Ruby could definitely be written in an easy to understand way as long as it's kept to a strict definition of what should/shouldn't be used.
Well I love python, but this reminds me of a set of an old paper by Peyton-Jones of GHC fame, which developed a Haskell combinator lib that did something like this. I'm sure the state of the art has left this system long behind, but it's a pretty interesting concept.

Composing contracts: an adventure in financial engineering, Simon Peyton Jones, Jean-Marc Eber, Julian Seward. ICFP, 2000
http://www.lexifi.com/downloads/MLFiPaper.pdf

See also:
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/realworld/lexifi.html
I would only consider a language with built-in big rational numbers.
Carving and whittling knots from wood
Gizmodo Lost and Found: who owns the phone in the pictures?
I see the MicroSoft marketing machine is churning at max power...
I did not find Red Gates offer too bad. But I understand that you fear that it might lead onto a slippery slope.

I guess you should just flag the submission, if you feel it's bad for HN.
Interesting and somewhat discouraging article.

I agree with the other posters that it would have been really interesting to see which of those companies actually made a profit, and or gave positive returns to investors.
SproutCore debuts new HTML5 web development tools
> So yeah, Apple has issued more stock, and by stock prices it is more "valuable".

Are you saying you can create value simply by splitting the stock? :)
That's a valid sentiment. The problem is that freedom from such issues is very rare in general-purpose computing. Certainly on x86 it's always an issue (EDIT: except on very specialized OSes, I suppose), as it is on J2ME (and I'd guess Symbian). Dedicated game consoles are pretty much the only place I can think of where your application will always run on absolutely known hardware.

I agree, both as a user and as a programmer, that the mess with Android 1.6 sticking around for essentially political reasons needs to improve fast. Minimal specs are nice, although they will necessarily change as the time progresses, and you will have to make a cut-off yourself. Support only Android phones released in the past two years (as an example, obviously not a useful guideline right now) and you will know what your lowest common denominator is.

On the other hand, even Apple's halcyon days of single-device uniformity are coming to an end. You now have two resolutions in iPhone OS to deal with, and if rumours are true, you'll have a third one in June (though that one's less of an issue since doubling should work acceptably). OSes 3.2 and 4.0 force you to consider both hardware and software keyboards. The iPhone 3G has less RAM available to an app than the 3GS and the iPad. CPU speeds are different on every release and I believe graphics performance differs too. New hardware features have been introduced that you have to check for. Between June and November-ish, you'll have to support 3.2 for iPad and 4.0 for iPhone (and 3.0 for older iPhones, if you even want to).
Android isn't so much competing on price point (the cheapest android phone is only slightly cheaper than the cheapest iPhone), but on feature sets. Want a large phone with a large high res screen, there's a phone for that. Want to sacrifice a bit of screen size and resolution for longer battery life, there's a phone for that. Want a phone with a keyboard, no problem. Want a slightly smaller phone with a keyboard, you can get that too. And so on and so forth.
Why Apple Approved Opera And Not Google Voice
He could have at least compared it to a similar iPhone app.
There's been a slew of blog posts on Mojolicious::Lite & Websockets recently:

* http://vti.showmetheco.de/articles/2010/04/mojolicious-and-w...

* http://d.hatena.ne.jp/yukikimoto/20100415/1271340273

* http://d.hatena.ne.jp/yukikimoto/20100418/1271601822
http://docs.python.org/library/decimal.html
Knowing governments' actions, this is going to be a proprietary mix made out of APL and PHP—the worst of both worlds.
The Ruby Problems site looks like it could be really interesting.

Couple of suggestions, if you had a one off membership fee (instead of $3 per solution), and a way of registering without using OpenID, I would have signed up/paid immediately.
Why higher resolution?

Because competing devices have higher density displays. And high density allows for prettier, crisper, more natural graphics. iBooks are just the icing on the cake.

Why 960x640 precisely?

Because it makes things simple. Whether you have a bitmap or some procedural drawing (vector if you will) you can easily translate it into coordinates on the new screen - just multiply by 2. No need to worry about sub-pixel drawing and artifacts occurring as result of rounding errors.
Do you want to send me your code for testing in my test suite? You've obviously tested it now, but it would still be interesting.
Gizmodo should have given it back to Apple. Apple probably had to go ahead and buy themselves a new iPhone so they could make and receive calls. They're out of pocket here!
This post says it better than I could:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/bt3cp/this_is_ap...
Two books a day? How's that possible?

Say each book is 300 pages and he reads 30 pages an hour (generous). It would typically take 20 hours to finish two books. That leaves 4 hours to sleep, eat, wash, and do his job.

Oh but he read really fast? That's just about as useful as watching a movie in fast-forward.
Mixergy interview with Jessica Livingston
If you're sending encrypted files across the internet, the government doesn't get to see how long it took to encrypt the data. And if you're running an open "encrypt anything my secret key" oracle, well, you get what you deserve.
Speaking as the author: his point, if any, is more along the lines that if we need a test-as-you-go approach to get something this simple to work, it's no wonder we have problems when we have to implement something that's actually complex.

Also: no amount of test-drivenness can save you from just not grokking the problem (as Peter Norvig's Sudoku solver showed ... er, by counter-example.)
Ask HN: Are you going to GeekNRolla (London) tomorrow?
Just made it to London from Geneva via 3 trains, 2 buses, a fairy and a few taxis. Looking forward to seeing other HNers there!
Has it really worked well in PCs? The average PC manufacturer is hardly rolling in money, unlike Apple. Nor is the average PC user likely to be too happy with their computer. Meanwhile in the Apple ecosystem both the normal user and the supplier seem to be rather happy. There is something to be said for tight integration of hardware and software in providing a good user experience.

(That said, personally I hate my MacBook Pro from work with the fire of a thousand suns, and have only used an iPhone for playing music on long plane trips since getting a Nexus 1.)
Agreed. That is one rather ugly and unfriendly looking app. I don't think most smartphone users (iPhone or Android) are looking for general purpose database tools (although there may be a nitch for tools for DB administrators...). IMHO, most phone users are looking for very specific targeted tools. Stuff you can whip out of your pocket and get something useful out of in under 5 minutes.
51 Exciting Email Newsletter Designs
I don't think that's true. The mobile industry is a pretty incestuous place, everybody kind of knows what everybody else is doing. All the companies buy parts from the same suppliers, trade employees, and see the same market trends. Two months isn't enough time for anybody to do anything significant, except perhaps for the chinese knockoffs to make it to market faster.
This is why it's important to actually know things, i.e., how things work.

As long as you keep the article's context in mind (how to deal with people who aren't motivated enough to find obvious solutions), it's not bad advice.
Obviously that will wait for the fourth generation...
Kiva cofounder’s new startup offers a crowdsourced approach to funding