skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This guy clearly doesn’t understand the subtleties of typography, given some of the edits he’s made to this font.... that’s okay though, because if he likes it better and it works for him, everyone’s still happy.
I'm a fan of playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). It's kind of an emo-ish game BUT it's fantastic cardio, and in a game structure it's easy to keep the motivation up (I'm a very competitive person, I think that comes with the territory for intelligent people).
It’s not based on DejaVu Sans Mono. It’s based on Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, which doesn’t have nearly as many glyphs as DejaVu Sans Mono.
For math, I find it's all practice. You have to do lots of problems, which isn't really possible in a short period of time. Always do all your homework, spreads your studying through the year and exam/test questions will be similar to ones you have seen already. I also don't like to study last minute, better to get a good night's sleep.

For everything else, I would say write a cheat sheet (not to use). The act of writing forces the information through your brain and out your hand.

EDIT: should add, when you're actually writing the exam, read all the questions first. Then start with the the ones you know right away. If you have to think, come back to it later.
Clarification edit (damn you HN):

As for "reduction in mortality", what about this study.. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=S....

From the abstract:

>The J-curve association was observed between average TC or LDL-C concentrations and total mortality. Malignancy was the most prevalent cause of death. The health of patients should be monitored closely when there is a remarkable decrease in TC and LDL-C concentrations with low-dose statin.

IOW remarkably low LDL concentrations increase death rates.
From what I understand, the article is about the fact that Apple may be keeping track of the devices' position at all times, as part of the OS basically.

The prompt that asks you every time if you want to give your location is for when you're using apps.
>Reduction in LDL correlates so well with reduction in mortality (statin trials) that

Citation please.

From my other comment:

In fact, if you would be so kind as to refer to some studies where, as you say "Reduction in LDL correlates so well with reduction in mortality (statin trials)", I would be very grateful, because, afaik usually those studies found "reduction in cardiac mortality", but all-cause mortality figures are more important.
http://macdaddyworld.com/2008/10/27/adventures-in-cocotron/
Engaging the Soul in Business
When you consider a huge portion of the user base - especially the iPhone user base - the simplicity of 'deleting' an app is fairly dangerous. It's not totally impossible to remove an app in your pocket by accident. I'd hate to have to explain to my mother why her mail app was suddenly missing. That said, allowing for some sort of on/off toggle in settings would be welcome.
I'd pick something you want to do or understand that clearly requires some sort of math, and figure out what you'd have to learn to do that. Math is enough of a grab-bag of fairly different things, especially at the intro level, that I find it easier to wander through with some sort of direction--- so I have some reason to want to learn this particular bit of math, as opposed to randomly choosing subjects (i.e. should I learn some combinatorics, or some differential equations?).
Changing the rules of the Digg Fail
Just tried it out on Windows 7 with ClearType (same settings I use with Consolas). I don't know if there's a problem with the way ClearType is rendering the font or what, but it looks terrible on my system. Is ClearType supposed to be disabled or what?

Screenshots:

11pt http://i.imgur.com/Weq4G.png

12pt http://i.imgur.com/L4UDZ.png
big thank you to the VLC team for keeping this great free video player going!
Yeah, too bad you didn't go with Android, because it's totally open and Froyo is gonna run great on your G1 and -- oh wait, that's not true at all.
> try building a dynamic forms system that gets stored in the DB (fields, references to validation rules) allowing a user to build some forms and for another user to supply values for those forms

this is fairly trivial. one area where the static typing really helps. the type system is the dsl.
Well, sorry I couldn't be the third datapoint.
It seems many are having issues with gmail via exchange/activesync on iOS 4 eg http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=932449

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=5e07d...
Yes, that is a poor idea (and Australia has been full of those for years now) but the concept of restricting access if your PC is compromised isn't awful and would have to be worth discussing further.
Ask HN: Dealing with nuisance phone calls
We are a small business that has a number so we can receive calls from clients. Unfortunately, recently we've getting about one call a day from people who either seem to be phishing (by asking us for personal details) or are trying to sell us investment plans.

Each of these calls only takes a couple minutes to deal with. However, it is rather distracting. Furthermore, because we now assume whenever we get a call it will be one of these, we are worried we'll get a false positive and miss and potential clients.

Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions about dealing with it?
I have always wondered what sort of optimization, if any, is done to make buildings with multiple elevators handle button presses most efficiently.
> Not every platform is as fucked-up as Rails ... mod_wsgi for Django (or any wsgi compliant Python framework) just works with no headaches.

erm... Phusion Passenger is the deployment platform of choice for Rails (Rack) applications. It's even easier than mod_wsgi.
This is my very favorite a shopping site: http://wowcool.org
The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada,adidas, also including the jeans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time.

free shipping
competitive price
any size available
they do wholesale and retail! All are extremely CHEAP: http://wowcool.org
their products：
jordan air max oakland raiders.
Ed Hardy AF JUICY POLO Bikini.
Christan Audigier BIKINI JACKET.
gstar coogi evisu true jeans.
coach chanel gucci LV handbags.
coogi DG edhardy gucci t-shirts.
CA edhardy vests.paul smith shoes.
jordan dunk af1 max gucci shoes.
EDhardy gucci ny New Era cap.
coach okely Adidas CHANEL DG Sunglass.
Worthy of my recommendation, go and see: http://wowcool.org
I do not understand at all why there needs to be any distinction whatsoever between "system apps" and "app store apps".

Yes, it's the way Apple does things. But why? Linux distros have used package management to push updates for everything from the kernel to the mail client for over a decade now. It's not like the technology is new. Internally, there can't be much of a distinction between the two categories of apps. So why can't they be pluggable like everything else? I get that they're an integral part of the device's UX, but I can't think of any reason why they can't be upgraded through the package manager all the other apps use.

Maybe the reason is maximizing the wow factor upon upgrading, and even that seems like a minor benefit compared to the advantages of, y'know, rapid security patching.

EDIT: Timothee above mentions that other apps depend on them, and I suppose it's true, version-based dependency management does seem a little overly complex for such a device (it's definitely not like Apple to say something like "This application requires Mail 2.53.x to run").
If you're looking for something to just make any text show up really large in your browser try http://nirmalpatel.com/largetype/ I made it because I wanted something like QuickSilver's Large Type feature but accessible when I'm not using QuickSilver.
"I never drained the sink after washing up. It was just something that always slipped my mind."

This example is exactly what I'm talking about. The mind that was slipping is called working memory by the brain scientists. It seems to be the seat of focused attention, and is attached to the brain's logic and reasoning circuits.

"At some point, I simply chose to remember it and ever since then: no problem."

Habits and actions like this are stored by procedural memory. It seems to use different brain circuits and signals than working memory, so one can be strong while the other is weak. Once it learns how to do a process, it tends to be tenacious about holding onto the memory. The process tends to be triggered by location (kitchen facing the sink) and circumstance (washing up), without much involvement of conscious thought or working memory. It is the seat of habit and addiction.

Procedural memory is why there are so many funny true stories about absent-minded professors who have moved to a new house (generally involving amusing the new owners, then getting hopelessly lost -- repeatedly).

"I changed behavior that I had for years and that I always said 'I was just incapable of remembering'."

Indeed. But years of failure followed by sudden success is not consistent with a rational decision and a well-ordered plan.

"Having to defend a choice that goes contrary to societies expectations is much harder than defending a claimed 'incapability'."

I think it goes a lot deeper than simple face saving or effort avoidance. (Although there's plenty of that!) The brain seems to have a machine that constantly makes up cause-and-effect stories to explain events, but the logic is usually pretty superficial. For human events, it tends to latch on to choice as the cause. "She nearly hit me because she chose to recklessly answer her cell phone while driving." In reality, the ringtone activated her answering procedure, hijacking her brain. Her fault was not making a decision to be reckless (an act of commission), but rather failing to build a stop-and-think-this-through decision point into the answering procedure (an act of omission). The thing is, her brain probably makes up the same silly story, and she will not improve if she believes it.

There are spectacular examples of this in the brain damage literature. If you ask certain paralysis patients to hand you a glass of water, and then ask them why they didn't, they will tell you the most wonderful malarkey about how they just didn't want to. Or how they don't want to strain their shoulder. Or how they are teaching you to take care of your own glass of water. The OMG-arm-refusing-to-work signal just isn't making it through, but their storyteller is running just fine, thanks.

"I bet these people have a hard time keeping relationships going."

The ADHD divorce and family chaos rate is said to be appalling.
> has ASP.Net MVC got anything like cucumber available to it out of the box?

Cucumber isn't strictly speaking out of the box - it's dead easy to install of course, but it's not part of the rails core distribution. Rails still uses Test::Unit by default.

Specflow (http://www.specflow.org/) is a .Net oriented BDD framework that uses Gherkin - essentially Cucumber for .Net.
Tell HN: Thank you for the feedback
I really appreciate the feedback on the naming of jQUery Combinators and the cultural issues around obscure CS topics. Thank you.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1449777
Sorry to say that if your exam is tomorrow you've probably left if too late to guarantee doing exceptionally well. Personally I always preferred intense study over one or two weeks to prepare for an exam, but I think that is a personal preference.

Here are some things that I learnt from doing exams. This is aimed at university exams more than high school - the difference being that at (my) university exams typically consisted of a small number of long questions on a particular area, whereas high school was often a large number of small questions.

- Make sure you have good exam technique: work out roughly how long you can spend on each question and still finish the exam. Stick to that timing leaving questions unfinished if necessary (unless you are writing essays, probably better to submit 2 complete essays than 4 incomplete essays). Read the paper through at the start to work out which questions you think you can do well on. Do those questions first. If you get to a hard part on a question don't waste time, skip to the next question and come back to it. You don't have to do the questions in the order that they are given to you. It's a game - score as many points as you can by tackling the easy bits first.

- If it's a math type paper then you might be able to pick up the odd mark here and there by explaining what method you would have used if only you had the time.

- Past papers are the best study tool. If you have them or can get them then do so and work through the questions. Ideally work through one or two past papers with your study materials, then do one or two under exam conditions.

- If you're really out of time to study then you can gamble: pick the bits of the syllabus that you already know well and focus on mastering those bits, ignore the rest. Then hope like hell that the questions that come up on the day are on the bit that you studied. This can work really well or can turn into an utter disaster.
Almost every single one of his replacements hurts my eyes. The 0 I like, the 1 looks like it was chopped from the left, the z-3 is ugly, the and sign could have been nice but the top part is too small and off to the left, the Q's tail looks abominable, and those angle brackets look as large as Cleopatra's nose.

Maybe it's just me. To each his own I guess!
I had a similar idea when I built RubyFlow - http://www.rubyflow.com/ - it's a Ruby community link site. Some people thought it was an amateur hack at the time.

However, RF does about 80,000 pageviews per month, has over 1000 registered users and gets about 10 posts a day, and SQLite hasn't proven a problem whatsoever. It's hardly a big project but it's bigger than 90% of small, part-time projects that use technologies that are more advanced than they really need.
I don't think its fair to say that Cocotron has implemented more than GNUStep.
Yeah, but in my opinion the actually confused ones are the FOBs (first-generation immigrants)! Some of them appear to have been flash-frozen when they immigrated and long for an India that no longer exists.

FOB = "Fresh Off [the] Boat"
The "two stage" process would make an interesting blog post, btw.
You can have the API's without having the apps. This is what MS had to do with IE, for example.
> I have other wagers about skinny people with hypertension, but it's getting too far off topic now.

I would like to hear this. I have read that hypertension may be caused by renal failure to excrete salts and is not connected with intake.
F5 Week in Review, June 14th-18th, 2010
in link form:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1449777
Makes me want an iPad to read it on.
We may be able to draw some insight from the Apple Store app as well. Like iBooks it was shipped separately. Like the App Store and iTunes apps the Apple Store app lets you make purchases from Apple.

Is it simpler to have all the "purchasing apps" together, bundled with the iPhone/iPad or to strip away more system apps? The iPad didn't ship with calculator, stocks etc. The answer might go right back to Gruber's point: the iPad itself shipped out of the OS release cycle while the Apple Store app shipped just before the new OS in part to aid with the purchasing of iPhone4. Maybe both of these will be included in iOS5 next year.
The GNUStep libraries are LGPL. And they've been implementing Cocoa for years, so it would surprise me if Cocotron is more complete.
It is to some extent, but probably less than usual. I'm not really in a position to give advice, as my longest relationship was less than 3 months long.
Well, I guess you can just count me in the "knows how to code" camp. :) I know very little about typography but find the subject pretty interesting.
Insight, "private beta"
Context anyone? I assume this refers to this article published by William Georgiades several years later?
its not technically, but it is practically. i wouldn't say they -collude- but their discount rates (what merchants pay) have been going up. there are also new, completely arbitrary fees (yay NABU). and there is no incentive for prices to go down because the purchaser (the merchant) is separate from the consumer (the customer). V/MC rates could eventually inch up to 4 or 5% and there's pretty much nothing anybody can do about it except pass the costs to the customer.
Being able to find quality applications for my problems has been the biggest deterrent to me in participating, as a customer, in the Android market. I have not encountered any real problem in getting an application once I know it exists.

Whatever can make finding good solutions to my problems easy will become my first-class Android market. Right now I often find myself haranguing other people with Android phones or sifting through blog and forum posts in order to tease out what the quality applications are.

The sad part is I'd classify my mobile computer problems as really pretty simple compared to my lap/desk top problems. With my mobile (excluding communications) I'm almost always either trying to find/retrieve some specific fact(s) (how do I get from A to B, what is that star, is that a good price, what time was the meeting, show and tell with pictures, play music) or record some fact(s) (photos, voice, opinion on wine, exercise results).
"It is pretty aggravating," he told me, referring to the rumors floating around about him...

Yet the article does little more than add to the sensational bonfire. He values his investments, so he's prioritized them. It seems like his friends see him as an investment - a good one in my opinion, and have chosen to help him out. With the IPO coming he'll be able to get square and that still leaves him in a fantastic position.

He made the choice to be cash-poor and it seems he did so not out of ignorance but with an understanding that he had income sources(friends, businesses, etc) that would help him get through any dry spell. The divorce certainly doesn't help, but this seems pretty logical for an entrepreneur.
Practice answering questions under time pressure. Time management can be a big problem in exam situations.
It's probably good for the AV-software manufacturers though.
Workarounds will be easy to find and the market for "antivirus shells", programs that pretend to be antiviruses, will actually help spread viruses.
I tried it out on my Ubuntu box and realized it's practically indistinguishable from the default Monospace font:

http://sha.ddih.org/f/monospace.png

http://sha.ddih.org/f/mensch.png
> And I wanted to add, that with C you run into (solvable but hard) `scalability' problems in terms of effort needed to cope with algorithmic complexity, much sooner.

I have certainly seen this effect. In retrospect, I wonder if this could be somewhat mitigated by real refactoring for C?
I agree that this is a poor article. But you assume he's being completely truthful.
I really don't think caste plays that much of a role (in day to day Indian corporate life) as it is made out to be. Past 5 years working in this industry, I have never been asked about my caste or been discriminated against because of it. It seems the non-Indian is more obsessed with caste than Indians, nowadays.
Interesting... very well produced and they sound great. A bit off my normal foods, but I need to broaden back out again, and I'll drag my roommates with me >:) Mwahahahha

* adds yet another blog to Reader * Damn you, Google Reader! You're devouring my life, and I love it!
"Design an elevator" also makes an interesting interview question.
It's subsidizing the losses amazon is sustaining by selling e-books for cheap while keeping publishers happy.
Is it just me or has the Australian govt gone a bit nuts with respect to the Internet in the last year or so? Every other week it seems I see a new story like this.
Of course they could be separated. What I'm saying is that considering that some of the apps are not completely sandboxed, the simplest decision to make is to just keep all of them.

Plus, it helps Apple's branding: as long as they're not forced into separating the apps and the APIs, like Microsoft was, they won't.
Regardless of whether he is being truthful or not, Tesla Motors' products do seem to speak for itself. He'll be fine 8-)
Cromulent use of the word 'embiggen'.
... or the 0.5 pir^2 and 0.5 gt^2 link, it's really eye opening to people who did not quite /get/ the math. Math, in educational sense, (not in the purist proofs sense) is all about seeing the links between things. Geometry and calculus are fundamentally related. We're still stuck teaching kids "sohcahtoa".
You have a lot of good ideas and notions. I'm with you on some of them, totally. However, it was a bit long.

I agree there are problems inherent to democracy and it would be nice to try to solve them.
Shopify for one.
Its another good example of the Australian governments patronising attitude towards their citizens/inmates.
Suggesting that Apple silently correlates and feeds back iPhone GPS data to Skyhook's access point database is speculative, at best. Occam's razor says Skyhook is using off-the-shelf hardware to identify access points at a distance, especially if your island in the middle of nowhere affords clear line of sight.

Your wifi only being on sporadically isn't dispositive either. I took an Airport Express to a hotel once for a two-day conference, and for months afterward my iPhone thought my apartment in Seattle was in downtown San Diego.
I don't agree with all of his decisions either but find it a bit ridiculous to call him out on "not knowing the basics", given he created one of the most popular scripting languages in existence.

As I understood the discussion there is no definite "right" or "wrong" on the issue anyways - it's merely one of the many tradeoffs. Quite possibly one where he wasn't fully aware of all details and implications. But heck, if you need to argue then how about arguing for or against a particular way to do TCO in python instead of going ad hominem against the guy who built the entire playground that you're building your little sandcastles in?
Base 10 isn't arbitrary. It's believed that it's based on the human condition of having 10 fingers.
I don't see added support for the Broadcom HD decoder that Asus is shipping in some of their newer model Eee PCs (1005PR). Anyone know if there plans to add this? It would really help out HD decoding on the low-end platforms (esp since the cards aren't integrated, so they can be bought as add-ons as long as your low-end machine has a slot).
The iPad Keyboard Dock Works With the iPhone 3GS
Most programmers never have the need to know about a ternary tree. We can often get by thinking at most in terms of lists, sets, tuples, dictionaries, arrays, etc.
Certification is meaningless when stuff doesn't run.
Just a quick semi-meta comment: if you have a comment which you put a lot of time into and which resonated with people, strongly consider blowing it up into a blog post. It may be irrational, but the perceived authority of 500 words wrapped in an attractive Wordpress template murders the perceived authority of 500 words appearing at the third level of indentation on this page.

I like to think that I've written some fairly useful stuff here over the last year or so. To the best of my knowledge, none of my comments has ever gone to Slashdot and the New York Times, but the comment that I turned into a blog post about programmers and names just did.

Your own blog is also a little easier to cite in resume-type situations. (Hypothetically assuming I were to seek funding, I have at least one HN comment that I'd point to to say "Read this, it is strongly indicative of the future success of the business you are about to invest in", and that is a little quirky.)
I'm still waiting for an "auto-search subtitle" feature like the one in Media Player Classic.
ICFP Contest Retrospective