skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "Here's a description, implement it perfectly without testing".
> That's not even close to how developers work

You'd be surprised. Also, terrified.
Apple wasn't first-to-market, and that is why they did so well. Hardly anybody who is first to market does well. Apple intentionally showed up late to smartphone party, letting them watch and learn from the mistakes of their trailblazing competitors.
It's a wonderful idea and the shots were amazing, but was there any kind of technological barrier before? Has this seriously never been thought before?

Or maybe it's just the "I could have thought of that!" feeling.
U.S mom sends adopted child back to Russia
I'm sure someone will apply Gödel's incompleteness theorem to the Python syntax, and complain that they want to do something that isn't expressible in python (or any other language you choose).
head(s) are certainly rolling in Cupertino; can't wait to get my hands on one though
I think paying the money is the trigger point for some problems.
The article answers that question, if you had bothered to read it. Current hardware RNGs rely on Newtonian physics and generate numbers which -- if you had sufficient knowledge of starting conditions -- you could predict. The method described in the article uses quantum entanglement to produce completely unpredictable numbers.
It seems vastly more likely to me that someone "arranged" to "lose" a phone ahead of time, to get it to Gizmodo with some kind of plausible deniability.

Presumably also there are uniquely identifying IDs in the phone (IMEI, but for a dev phone maybe that is in flash), or just a limited number of these phones, so Apple can do inventory and find out who lost the device. At that point, extensive interviewing to make sure the loss was actually a loss.
Not that I doubt what you said, but the 'due diligence' comment reminds me of this: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/89kto/student_finds_cel...
The HTC Desire is for all intents and purposes exactly the same phone as the Nexus One, and is available just about everywhere for a bit less than the iPhone.
CBP is a different sort of dickheadedness than TSA.

TSA: Undertrained goons hopped up on terrorism paranoia. Will make your life absolutely miserable if given the prompt to do so (e.g., a tiny contraband item in your carry-on). Can't do too much to make your life miserable outside of missing your flight.

CBP: Will. Fuck. You. Up. As a non-American working in the US, I fear the CBP like the motherfucking gestapo. Each agent wields an insane amount of power to alter one's legal status in the USA, and they never hesitate to express this power to you. Unlike the TSA agents, who get no respect from even their employer, CBP goons are given a huge amount of unquestionable leeway in their jobs.

I've seen TSA workers cite regulation after regulation to make a traveler's life hell - but they've always been professional at least on the surface. I've seen CBP agents be blatantly racist, insulting, and grossly unprofessional and conduct themselves in ways unbecoming of a human being, much less a government representative. And there's not a damn thing that can be done.
Uh, I beg to differ, and hopefully help some people out, Google's Adwords customer service number is 1.866.2.GOOGLE.

I've had 2 great experiences with them, both involving multiple calls over a week's time solving Adwords account problems. (I'm only managing ~$15,000 ad spend per month, so it wasn't because I'm a big fish.) I do believe that's US support only, but I could be wrong. It's been the better part of a year since I've had to call in.
Or now, if for some reason you still want one. It wouldn't cost you quite as much as Visual Studio Ultimate, but it would likely cost you more than Visual Studio Professional With MSDN($1,199) and a fairly impressive modern PC.
The cynic in me thinks it will actually push the state of the art of obfuscating Python (which isn't widely experimented with as far as I know).
>my friends who are working on Wall St. (CMU kids) are being paid.
They are working as programmers/quants?
The ones who are going to be partners aren't being paid.
Gizmodo is in pretty serious trouble, too. They knew what they were paying for (they have expertise in these things - they can't just claim they bought the thing off of Craigslist), and I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Gizmodo ends up in jail over this.

Apple has the same right to their property that you have to your own private property because Apple is just a voluntary association of employees and shareholders. Their individual rights give rise to Apple's rights. If someone stole something you made, like your private journal and plastered it all over the Internet, you'd be livid, and the perpetrator should go to jail (how long is for the courts to decide). For that same reason, whoever was involved with this at Gizmodo belongs in jail (again, how long is a judicial matter).
Google's Innovation Factory (and how testing adapts)
Old news for the man that hacked Hacker news, but certainly not for mere mortals like me :-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976
I like the spirit of this. Personally, I'd love to see lawyers move toward plain text (to make it easy to process legal documents as raw data) rather than toward more sophisticated presentation text, but that's just my bias.

Of course, the two aims are not mutually exclusive.
I would describe it more as a multiply-linked list.
The important distinction in a skip list is that you get random access, in a different sense of the term, and so binary search makes sense. Similarly, you could justify a binary (or another non-sequential) search on a traditional linked list by assuming huge evaluation costs.
Is there a non-video version of this?

edit: nevermind, found one: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/anger-mom-adopted-boy-back-russia/s...
Physicist Sean Carroll interviews the creators of Lost
It's more on the border between a stupidly formatted table and a USA Today sidebar.

Now this is an infographic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philgyford/4505748943/sizes/o/
I'd like to see some comparison with real Ethernet switching companies like Extreme, Brocade or Force-10.

Ethernet switching isn't really Cisco's cup of tea. They're OK at it but it's not really what they're best at. Same with Juniper.
You know that Gödel's incompleteness theorem concerns itself with provability and not with expressiveness?
> But it's hardly clear cut that we're seeing anything more than a temporary heating phase.

It's pretty clear that human activity has been significantly affecting the climate.

I know this is Wikipedia, but this article is mostly citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...
I imagine Apple's lawyers can shred that ruse. As an expert site, they knew exactly how likely it was that this was lost (near zero), and they knew they could profit from its clandestine possession. Whether they give it back afterward is immaterial to Gizmodo's profits and to the secrecy Apple wanted to protect.
If binary search is complicated, what is _simple_ by your standards?
It isn't complicated compared to the convoluted stuff that programmers code to implement business "logic." The dirty secret of software development, however, is that 90% of industrial software developers can't handle abstraction at all and rely heavily on domain knowledge when coding anything. Programmers handle the cases that are normal for the problem domain, and QA tests the cases that are unusual in the domain context (and makes the programmer fix them.)

The code will behave incorrectly on some edge cases, but if the developers and QA have covered the problem domain pretty well, it won't matter. First, most of the edge cases will never happen. Second, people get angry when software fails for no obvious reason, but they tend to be a lot more forgiving when software fails on inputs that are "freakish" or "wrong" in the domain context. Searching the widget catalog results in "500 Internal server error" when the widget catalog is empty? Well, duh! When should the widget catalog ever be empty?! The search page shows screwy results because someone entered an item with a negative price? Well, duh! Get that stupid item out of the catalog! Instead of thinking like a mathematician or a system designer in order to avoid mistakes, the typical development approach is to think like the customer so you only make mistakes that the customer can sympathize with.
The main issue I see with your argument is that you're supposing interest to be correlated with anticipated ability and enjoyment of the profession.

I'm not, I'm suggesting that a set-up that prefers those with a natural inclination or enjoyment/ability of a particular field should not be undermined in favour of those with a possible passing fancy.

If the system is detrimental to those with skill/enjoyment/inclination based on a particular set of their shared minority traits, this might be a problem in need of correction.

Unlike French Fashion trends, programming is an important driver of our society,

Whether something is important to our society or not should make no difference in correcting inequities in opportunity.

There's no way of knowing that when most women do not even take an introductory programming course.

The assumption here is that there is a large pool of women waiting to take courses that are being discouraged. I see no evidence of that at all, and that's what I'm questioning.
I would rather think in invariants - knowing what must be true at particular points in the code, at the start of loop bodies, etc. Essentially, doing a proof in one's head.
Why built-in? Good library support (and bearable syntax) should be sufficient.
1) The site is called FUDzilla. 2) GW's IT has always sucked. Mostly funding issues.
All right. It's in perl. Here's what I have:

sub binary_search {
my($ary, $val) = @_;

print "Looking for $val...\n";

$val < $ary->[0] and return undef;
$val > $ary->[-1] and return undef;

my $min = 0;
my $max = @$ary - 1;
my $mid = int(($max + $min)/2);

while($max - $min > 1) {
$ary->[$mid] == $val and return $mid;
$ary->[$mid] > $val and $max = $mid;
$ary->[$mid] < $val and $min = $mid;

$mid = int(($max + $min)/2);
}

$ary->[$min] == $val and return $min;
$ary->[$max] == $val and return $max;

return undef;
}

my $ary_size = int(rand(10));
my @ary;
for(my $i = 0; $i < $ary_size; $i++) {
push(@ary, int(rand(10));
}

@ary = sort @ary;

print join(",", @ary), "\n";
my $rv = binary_search(\@ary, int(rand(10)));
print "Returned $rv\n";

I see already that it has the famous 'large array' bug. Not something I encounter in my work, so I'm not on the lookout for it. I'm curious if you'll find anything else wront with it.
But they would want your free App's ads to make money.
That exchange sounds as if it was made up by a teenager who has seen Pirates of Silicon Valley one too many times.
I was more mortified at the tone in which this was posted. Something about it seemed far too carefree and nonchalant, as if the most important thing is quibbling over the subtle shade of blue in their uniforms. These being the people who complained so much people didn't take them seriously that they now get fake cop badges and uniforms.
You are right about the UI. (Of course the UI is not made at the Cambridge office, where we only produce nice software. :o)

I have heard that Citrix is looking into making better UIs. All our top managers have been converted into Apple fan boys for a start.
Girls are perhaps less likely to try programming when they're younger, which means they come into undergraduate programs less well-prepared, which overall may contribute to fewer women pursuing CS as a major.

(I don't have the data to back that up - yet - so it's worded vaguely).

Anecdotally, I know several adult women who are learning to program and kicking ass at it.
Again you're not quite understanding the point. Squeak already is a massive project of the kind you're referring to, but substituting instant source access/change/immediate feedback for having kids type in code.
> (No, writing Firefly fan fiction doesn't make it any better. That may be "creative" but you're still unhealthily immersed in somebody else's narrow world.)

What the hell, man? Writing fiction is inherently creative, and it's a very challenging, rewarding experience -- and it doesn't make a bit of difference whose world you're writing in. Why the scare quotes around creative? Why do you consider immersion in a fictional world unhealthy if-and-only-if it's somebody else's world? In order to write fiction, you're going to have to immerse yourself in an imaginary world, and most of it will be your own creation, even if you're writing fanfiction.

I'm hearing some off-hand disdain for fanfic from you, but it's exactly the opposite of consuming entertainment. If you doubt this, then try writing fanfic sometime. Consider me vexed at your ignorance, sir.
Why should the whitespace be frustrating? It was never an issue for me, or anyone I know who gave it a try.

The IDE that comes with Python (IDLE) is good enough to help you with the whitespace. And even in MS Notepad it should be fine. Closing parens without editor support is much more frustrating.
Just saw this on Sachin's blog - http://sachinlet.posterous.com/the-leaked-next-generation-ip... .
I suspect that many (such as myself) also became less interested during their first programming course.
If you use a really high resolution screen for a while, every lesser screen looks bad in comparison. It's the expectations ratchet.
Can/do you write in C? Would someone care to translate this?

I'll do it tomorrow at work, but if someone can post and/or email me an equivalent C version it will reduce my time. Not a problem, but just more convenient.

You'll need to give me some way to contact you so I can send you the results.

EDIT: I've just realised the spec I usually give asks for the first occurence of a key to be returned in the case where there are duplicate keys. I'll modify my tests to account for that. It's an especially useful feature in a binary search, but rarely implemented.
This is not something I'm well-educated in, but it's something I'm interested in. Do you have references to these statistics that you can share/cite/etc? I'd like to read more about what you've outlined.
Digital Textbook Sales in Higher Education - A Five-Year Projection
This works up until the point where it's decided that refusal to disclose your password, while not a criminal offense in any way, is grounds to prevent you from boarding your flight.
It's an interesting problem. People miss the point - that programmers are missing the basics and not really thinking the problems through, relying on our tools to think for us. Too many of us are hackers by day, myself included. A binary search just exposes the weakness.
Tools To Add Some Spice To Your UNIX Shell Scripts
Regardless of whether they protected that person, they would appear (IANAL) be liable for damages under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act - given their understanding of how significant the device was and where it was from - and if it's true they paid big $ for it, they'd be liable to have those damages doubled for improper methods of acquiring the thing.

http://thetradesecretsblog.wordpress.com/trade-secrets-law/c...
This is not a quality link. It's a blog that uses a test from October 14th, 2009. Most browsers have had a lot of improvements since Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10.0
Interview: Neo4j Emil Eifrem talks to Robert Scoble
I keep waiting for this headline:
"Gizmodo Digs Deeper: Reveals iPhone Prototype to Actually be a Nexus Two Prototype"
I dunno. With all the fake photos out there I feel like maybe Apple had to step up their slow-leak campaign to include actual hardware this time around. There's some pretty strong competition out and iPhone 3G owners on a 2 year contract are now looking at a small early termination fee if they wanted to jump ship. Now is a pretty good time to build hype post-iPad -- let consumers know Apple hasn't forgotten about the iPhone. Between this, the iPad launch, iPhone OS 4 and new MacBooks Apple has pretty much dominated the tech media for the last 4 weeks.
These questions were actually rhetorical. (I actually answered them, though in less detail)

The thing is that I was kind of surprised by the length of the post compared to the relative lack of insight. Usually John Gruber brings interesting points and reflection to his posts, going in depth on a lot of his arguments; but with "Why 960x640" as a title, I was hoping to read something I didn't know or didn't think about. Here he mostly stated facts without, in my opinion, really answering the question "why does an iPhone need a higher resolution/pixel density?".
I think it's funny how no one has noticed that the iPhone/iPad SDK essentially has resolution independence built-in. All the Interface Builder default controls are vectorized and can scale beautifully.
Having to do it in C is even more perverse than doing it in my head.

;)
Don't be bad-mouthing APHeLP -- we don't need to be getting into a language holy war here.

(Actually something as straightforward as a de-crufted PHP with APL's matrix handling would be a pretty wonderful language, when you think about it.)
Greenhouse looks interesting. I'd be intersted in seeing how it stacks up against Atlas. Can anyone offer insight?
Available direct from publisher: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html
The best way to be a team lead is not to be one. Companies impose a title "team lead" when its not necessary at all. If you are skillful, helpful and bring good energy to the team, other people will respect you, trust you and learn from you and thats what a team lead should be.

An imposed Lead is someone who is a point of beaurocracy, someone who can selectively hide/filter information to have a better control, a step in the approval process and many other unwanted things.

"I am Team Lead, I will schedule 1:1 and frequently schedule lunch ...." sounds like trying too hard. It is sure good to have team lunches, having 1:1 with everyone in team etc, but for some other reasons
The author's point is precisely that this sort of freedom is available to more than just a wealthy elite. After all, it's not the "rich and educated" living paycheque-to-paycheque and wasting away in dead-end jobs.
All I did was re-iterate the parent comment in blunt terms

No you did not. What you did was restate my comment in broader terms, and then attacked your restated version of my comment.

I think I get it now:
1) Men's poor choices == men's irrational hangups.
2) Women's poor choices == men's systemic sexism.

Don't put words in my mouth and then attack me for what you said. It's intellectually dishonest, the definition of a strawman argument, and I want no part of it.
Hey dude. I suspect this is a total breach of hacker news conduct to contact you, but I just responded to this Chinese birth calendar thing if you're interested. If you want me to take down any mention of you, let me know!

http://kldivergence.blogspot.com/2010/04/other-day-someone-t...
IiNet, Pirate Party slam AFACT political moves
AdSense is much different than AdWords. If you're rejected by AdSense there's no recourse.

Anecdotally, my past experience with support for both AdWords and AdSense has been terrible. I'm glad they've got an 800 number now.
Parent said AdSense whereas you said AdWords, gigantic difference in the service experience you get. Which is mostly logical since AdWords users are directly paying customers, while AdSense users are more like vendors.
I really do think Gruber's going to have to eat his own chowder on this one.

There's just no precedent for Apple doing this. They've never played the resolution game. Remember 15" laptops a few years ago? While Sony and other higher-end makers started cramming more pixels in each year, Apple slowly went from 1280x854 to 1440x900 and stopped there. Only in 2010 have they started to offer (and only as a BTO option!) the 1680x1050 res that you've been able to get on Vaios for years. Apple just prefers to concentrate on their antialiasing algorithms than to pump pixels.

I think a much more likely resolution bump would be 1.5x each dimension for 720x480. It'll be a little short of HTC and Motorola's 852x480, but if Apple doesn't cut the color resolution with a Bayer pattern, their display will still look better. And most importantly, it'll use less memory and run faster than a full 960x480.
This article is implying that ATT lied to FCC about their involvement in the GV rejection decision.
This is noted here: http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/att-dont-blame-us-for-the-i...

Additionally, there are no sources to back up the claim mentioned in this post. Net result - ignore until further information is available
Really? I think I just heard his bank account increment.
I know many happy PC users and (call me crazy) I tend to think that due to Jobs' cultish following that a lot of Apple shortcomings go unreported.
For those interested in the specific app, here's a QR code to the listing on the Android Market:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=230x230...
This news is about 1 week old.
Not really the main issue here, but: I thought it's practically impossible to put a minor without a parent / guardian on an international flight? Has this changed lately? With all the war on terror and such, I'd think that long distance flights would be guarded even more than local ones.

Then again, there's an issue of how did she put a child who theoretically "is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviours" on a plane without anyone noticing anything strange. This article is missing so many facts, I'm not sure if I should take it seriously...
"Match.com made $342,600,000 last year. That's $137,000 in user fees per marriage." - There's your key takeaway.
I bet you're an experienced programmer considering the attitude. It's funny, the longer you stay in programming the more you start to truly grasp how much you don't know. But you get better knowing that. Paranoia about one's own abilities and planning accordingly creates confidence and quality. Unwarranted hubris just causes you to work weekends.
I think we're not very close.

This discussion is about a 162 dpi display, so quadrupling that to 648 or quadrupling on two dimensions gets us to 2592 dpi. That's the right ballpark [1], but only on iPhone-sized devices. The iPad is 132 dpi [2], about 10% better than a typical CRT from a decade ago [3]. MacBook Pros recently got the first resolution increase (36%, to about 115 dpi) in about 5 years. At that rate it will be more than 20 years before we reach the limits of human visual perception on large displays.

[1] http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
[2] http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
[3] http://viewsonic.com.pk/pdf/us_eng/products/pf77.pdf
I fucking hate Bell and Rogers internet :(
Success doesn't come overnight.
Photograph of Steve Jobs' office
As if people need new reasons to think Americans are shitbags. Thanks lady, thanks a ton.
Ask HN: Review my startup: rapidly share memories on HippoCamps
So what processor is in this thing? Does it have the A4 like the iPad?
Convert straight quotes to curly quotes

I agree with everything but the above.
Wondering about what will be Apple's next big product ...

Internet TV?? OMG!

iPad will rule the world because of the Internet TV!!
iPad will be the perfect interface for controlling a TFT on steroids, and the target markets fits so well it makes a lot of sense. Does anybody agree to me?

I see the iPad as an enabling device, it's ease of use and hipness will create a big market on the less technology savy.
The only downside is you don't have remote-control over the depth/aperture. you'll notice most of the high-quality editorial photographs have great depth that isolates the animal and makes a greater image.

with this setup you need a really wide lens or a fish-eye to make a good composition. cool up-close photos but you give up control over the mechanics of the camera.