skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Imagine humans in prehistoric times thinking about making contact with aliens: "Will their spearheads be made of stone or a more advanced material?" If aliens will come we'll see that the questions you ask here are irrelevant, as the terms programs and programming languages will not apply to their technology -- it will be something completely different.

Admittedly, programming has mathematical foundations (algorithms) so it has a good change to still be relevant.

If they do have programs, then the according to the Church-Turing thesis the programs could be translated to human code, but not necessarily in a clear way.
I believe I read recently that some experimental logic circuits work best when creating an "implies" gate (fewer circuit elements vs a nand), so implies is used as the fundamental gate.

Edit: jonsen's post has better information. I was indeed thinking of a memristor.
Its very interesting and would certainly like to put it on some of my sites, but the lack of a paid plan is turning me off for 2 reasons:

1: Without a revenue method, how will they survive? I dont want to spend time integrating with something thats going to possibly go away.

2: If it does stay free, it makes me feel like I should expect little "powered by embed.ly" things being inserted into the code I get back some day.

Anyways, to summarize: Id like to use your product, but wont do it unless you charge for it or somehow make a server version that does not need to call out (similar to how Maxmind GeoIP is setup).

There are very few "free" services that I rely on, and the ones that I do are typically large open source projects (ie- apache, linux, etc..) or free offerings by huge companies that wont go anywhere (recaptcha)

So basically, if your intention is to keep it free, why not make a downloadable database of codes we can update from time to time with cron? It would be more economical in every sense and doesnt force our webapps to stop working if your servers go down.
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There wasn't anything in there about 'smart' girls. He talked about hot girls, but nothing about meeting and talking to intelligent girls despite the title.
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£40m super computer project launched in Wales
Thanks I sent out an e-mail, here's mine just in case mirsad.saci AT gmail.com
I used it and watched high school students use it for a couple of hours/week over a period of 8 weeks (varying degrees of technical expertise, in an entrepreneurship mentorship program with an end goal of the students building their own apps) and found that while the easy access to phone functions is pretty cool, it's still very limited and clearly aimed at non-programmers (think scratch).

likes:

- lots of powerful features that make necessary mobile app features (e.g. "pull up your contacts list!") super easy

- "puzzle piece" logic building inside app inventor is really easy to understand (ish), and pretty well done

- the process* is easy for non-programmers to do / understand / see in action

dislikes:

- how difficult it is to go beyond app inventor's available functions, if you know exactly what you want to do, or how you would do it if you could just pull up code (e.g. it's really hard / awkward right now to have multiple "screens" in an app)

- the android "look" in general, and the strict limitations of app inventor wrt visual styling

- the emulator is, unfortunately, _not_ easily accessible for non-programmers

- everything runs inside a java vm, and generally feels a little cumbersome

- the process* is slow and full of 30-second chunks of lost time

* process: make changes to the program -> "package" the app -> take a photo of the generated QR code -> download and install the app -> test your changes on the phone
I definitely enjoy some of their articles, I just singled them out mainly because they come to mind as an online news source with a clear left-lean. Still, while the politics stuff is usually well written, they bring themselves down a few notches with trash like the 'Celebrity Skin' section.

Also, the 'Living' section is full of quackery, with amazing articles like this one about how having an enema would protect you from Swine Flu: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-evans/swine-flu-protect-yo...
Ditto to the second part. I'm pretty sure any astronomer could use IRAF to replicate his image processing in about five minutes.
Your example is wrong. Functions parameters should be guaranteed to be error-free in the first place. If you decided that a NULL string was an error condition, you should test for that before calling printf.

You should test return values, not parameters.
The easiest way is to treat printf() as a procedure rather than a function, and to restrict your use of compositional style to cases where it's still a good idea.
I have my power-three: money clip, phone, keys. When my wife drives (and leaves the keys in her handbag) I realise just how often I subconsciously check myself for all three when out and about.

I like a clean handkerchief - useful for everything from an acute bout of the common cold to the acutely embarrasing spillage of a colleagues coffee cup while on the phone.

As a boy, I always wanted to be the one with the string and the buttons and the matchbox full of interesting odds and ends in my pockets. It never happened, so the fixation remains. Perhaps a smartphone will solve that for me - Twine? They have an app for that!
Wallet, keys, phone, pocketknife and lip balm in my bag or pockets. Notebook (the paper kind) and MBP if I'm going to uni. I don't own a utility belt (although I would very much like to some days) because I keep my tools at work or in the car.
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No, we don't control the network infrastructure at most of the locations - so two computers could easily have the same IP address on the local internal network as a computer several hundred miles away.
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I've researched this very thoroughly over the past few weeks, and this is what I came up with:

1. If you want a physical keyboard, either get the Motorola Droid (in the USA)/Milestone (same thing rest of the world), or wait if you're not keen on this device. The keyboard is apparently an either love it or hate it kind of thing so definitely try it before you buy it.

There is also the Samsung Galaxy S Pro with a keyboard available on only one US carrier (IIRC, Verizon).

Personally, I'm waiting for a better Android with a physical keyboard.

2. If you want/don't mind a touch-only experience, then you got plenty of choice. The top end is the HTC Desire, which is very good (a die hard iPhone fan friend of mine is now a convert). HTC do cheaper and lower spec'ed devices too like the Wildfire so have a look at those.

If the screen is your top priority, the Samsung Galaxy S is apparently the one to get. But Samsung masacared the Android UI with their own "improvements" which you may or may not like. Check it out.

Finally, if you want the biggest screen, the Dell Streak clocks in at 5", which may be a touch too big for your pockets. I have big hands and loved playing with it at the shop but I didn't buy it because it is so darn freaking big. I suspect you'll find it to be too big too.
You're disagreeing with the wrong person here.
Sure, and add to that:
Actual proof that the people already involved are doing something now beyond navel-gazing. Vision and courage and whatever the tin man was looking for are wonderful, but what matters more is doing. I'm not Toto. This isn't Kansas. If you want my work then show me your work.
>threat to national security

The real threat to national security is the predominance of special-interest groups who are currently in control of the US Military machine, having it fight un-just, disgusting wars, in the name of the United States of America.

The true threat to national security is the Pentagon itself, which simply wouldn't be necessary if it weren't creating its own reasons for war around the world.

You want real national security? Stand down your soldiers, America. That is the only true way to be secure in your beds, Americans.
You still have to navigate to the proper box and hit the speech-to-text icon. Personally I just avoid using my phone while driving. Too distracting. Upside is I now look forward to long red lights.
Facebook to launch child safety 'panic button'
"They offered me money in exchange for solving their technical problems. I did X, Y, and Z while there."
Well allow me to be the lone dissenting opinion. (Edit: what follows should be interpreted as a rant against this practice, not against you personally, or your business idea :)

Harvesting user's emails from a 3rd-party site that you plan to compete against is unequivocally and unambiguously a shitty, low, underhanded practice. Not to put too fine a point on it.

You didn't put in the footwork or the dollars necessary to get those customers yourself.

You didn't get the customer's permission to contact them (and NO, just because a customer posts his email address in plainview does NOT mean he's implicitly given you his permission.)

You didn't achieve a real and meaningful relationship with your customers or your competitors.

You just harvested some emails that were left in plainview, no different than any other 2nd-rate spammer on the net.

Ethics aside, any business that depends on the glomming of email addresses/discussions from 3rd-party competitors is...the best word I can find is "uninspired". If you don't have a problem with this business model, you don't have a problem with targeted spam.
By "we all" you mean a tiny number of hard core nerds who hang out on obscure forums. I know several people who own HTC android phones, and not one of them has re-flashed their phones or expressed any desire for removing Sense.
So true. Last weekend I've been hunting for a 1x1 battery status widget. This is (in its basic form) a 'hello world' type of application, so there are maybe 20 or 30 different ones on the app stores. Yet none of them looks good or offers any of the functionality I had on my Palm Treo battery management software. The App Store is a huge dumping ground of all sorts of crappy weekend projects, with a great professional app here and there, but buried among all the thrash. The rating doesn't help, because as soon as people start charging for an app, the bar is raised so much that the only thing commenters and raters do is bitch and complain. I have no idea how to fix this though.
A useful summary (eg. I found my experimental code from last year a lot easier to understand when it used functions rather than procedures) - though I couldn't help laughing when he started saying "mistakes", "correct" and "incorrect".
If you have to check your return values yet you can't check your arguments, how do you compose functions? foo(bar(x)) requires foo to check its argument, since bar(x) could return an error code and foo() needs to know how to deal with it.

You don't have to check all possible instances of spurious arguments--you should be allowed to specify some preconditions--but you definitely have to check for error codes!

Example: Suppose we're writing a basic filesystem. We have the following primitive functions:

unsigned long getino(char pathname): For a given designated device and path, get the inode number of the designated file. Return 0 (there is no inode number 0) in case of error.

MINODE iget(unsigned long ino): For a given designated inode number, return a pointer to a data structure in memory containing the INODE data; allocated if necessary. Return NULL in case of error.

You can either test your return values from these functions, in which case you will do this:

unsigned long myIno = getino(path);
//error check myIno
MINODE * myMINODE = iget(myIno);
//error check myMINODE

or put some argument checking in iget() and do this:

MINODE * myMINODE = iget(getino(path));
//error check myMINODE

How much argument checking has to go into iget()? Exactly this much:

if (!ino) return NULL

It seemed like a neat idea at the time, and considering I called that particular composition of functions a dozen times in that project, there was a lot less repeating myself in teaching my functions to understand error codes.
You are confusing the "BBC Front Page" (http://www.bbc.co.uk) with the "BBC News Front Page" (http://news.bbc.co.uk).

I believe the BBC's customizable front page is aimed at consumers of the domestic UK BBC output who naturally consume their own personal set of BBC output (6+ TV stations, 7 national radio stations, tons of local radio stations, all of the different programme-related websites).

The idea of the BBC front page (ie www.bbc.co.uk) is that you can pull together a customized front page that reflects the tastes and choices you have in the BBC's output.

Outside of the UK most of those options are not available and so it seems less valuable.
You know AJE is has a completely seperate staff, management, and purpose to Al Jazeera (Arabic)? If you missed it, there was a really good article about them on HN a while back: http://www.walrusmagazine.com/print/2009.10-media-the-most-h...
Seems to me like you should just be coding in a functional language. Coding in Scheme might be easier than turning C into Scheme.
...but no-one uses them anymore.
If you upvote it, it appears on your "saved" list: http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=awa
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could you point me to the futher reading on strains 1/2 and differences between them?
Granted it doesn't delve deep and is just a broad overview couched in a fun story, but do you know of better books that gives a chronological history of the development of philosophy?

Some things I find useful to understand how they developed, in what chronological order, philosophy especially. Much of philosophy is a response to preceding ideas, and it helps to understand it all if you start at the beginning and work your way forward to present day, rather than read disjointed segments of it out of context from how it developed.

I'm sure there's something better than Sophie's World for that, I just don't know what it is.
I don't expect you'll respond, but, what happened in the 4 hours between your first civil response and this second rather uncouth one?
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Ask HN: Documenting webapp development?
For database development we have E-R diagrams, for desktop software development there is a (large) family of UML standards. How do you document webapp development? I am particularly interested in documenting the interaction flow.
Meh. Wake me up when you can use the device itself to write software for the device. Until then, the barrier to entry is still too high.
The question misses one point - a full (no-cache) refresh in Firefox is done with Ctrl+Shift+R. Most (if not all) browsers support Ctrl+r for refreshing the page as well, but i'm not sure what headers are sent in each one.
Good job on redefining the meaning of equality.
I think this sort of experience will actually make you a great business oriented founder. Having tried it yourself, you understand the difficulties behind implementing ideas that are clear in your mind.

Also, since you've done some real work yourself, you should be able to sniff-out people who truly don't know what they're talking about.
That's not a "seo-spam-like-website", that's Quora.

If you haven't seen it, you really ought to take a look-- there's some amazing content there, including inside information from some pretty heavy hitters.

There have been quite a few Quora posts here lately; search around.
I was involved in the last redesign of the BBC News website (2003) which went from a single column site to the current 2-dimensional layout they have today (I left the BBC in 2006).

I like and welcome the changes, which I'm certain were huge in terms of technical work to achieve them. When I worked on it the BBC News Website had 6 month+ type iterations which meant relaunches and redesigns had to be limited to every couple of years.

My biggest grip with the design is that there still appears to be fewer news stories (what we called display items internally) on the page than other sites such as CNN. I am waiting for the site to launch to actually test that.

I also am not sure whether squaring off a single playback box for video is the right approach over blending in lots of video stories as equal citizens to text stories through-out the site (something CNN and others do v well). Again, time will tell once the site launches.

Overall, I'm slightly disappointed there is nothing radically new or experimental (and even a little copied from CNN perhaps) but I know that Paul Sissons and the rest of the design team and BBC News have done a fine job and I look forward to using it.
I agree. By the few code that I write[1] outside of my day job is not in C. Also, I didn't meant C, but any language with garbage collection. I used C syntax mainly to reach mainstream imperative programers.

[1]: http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm/
Yep — exactly. To use software parlance, if using this convention would halt or inconvenience your production, it's a smell and a likely indication you've got a spaghetti setup on your hands.
You don't even need a script tag. Any tag with event attributes will work, e.g. <span onmouseover="alert('XSS')">Hello World!</span>
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As the old cliche says "if we don't know where we're coming from, we won't know where we're going". Great comment
BBC CMS does apparently do lightbox-ed galleries - http://pressitt.com/public/files/2009/12/17/713/OneDay-Light...
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IMO, the larger the budget you have, the more valuable the 99designs model becomes.

I agree going to a trusted professional is always a good idea, budget allowing. The value of 99designs at that level isn't so much to crowdsource your fundamental design as it is to quickly generate multiple views/impressions/takes on a particular theme, either for the benefit of your chosen designer, or to present a list of basic designs to the stakeholders. 99designs becomes a way to get a bunch of cheap "looks" at different designs, that your GA and stakeholders can use to help define what it is they're actually looking for.
Ah… Do you think I should change my wording? Because if it made you laugh, it could also discredit my point in the eyes of those who don't agree with me in the first place.

I'd like to correct that, if possible.
Cash, phone and keys with high odds of a camera or leatherman.
In my pockets:
Wallet, keys (inc utili-knife key), HTC EVO, gerber pocket knife, leatherman skeletool (carbon fiber edition), antihistamine tablets (due to severe allergies).

In the bag:
MBP, power adaptor, 20' extension cable with several sockets at the end, belkin travel surge protector, spare battery (I have an old-gen MBP), beats-by-dre studio headphones in protective case, two pairs of v-moda bassfreq headphones, iPad, iPhone USB cable (for iPad), (paper) notebook + pen, DVI-to-VGA adaptor, epi-pen + antihistamine drugs, emergency Cliff bar for energy drops, business cards,.
Wallet, phone, knife, keychain with mini-maglite. A mini-maglite is an eminently practical thing to have around--just as durable as a full sized maglite, powerful enough for most uses, and easy to carry around. It also makes a nice big keychain handle.

My bag traditionally carries more stuff: water bottle, MacBook, caffeine pills, pens, note cards, power adapter, highlighter, calculators, post-it notes, whatever paper I have accumulated since I last garbage-collected.
Lol, thanks for your thoughts.
I make sure to always have a paper notebook with me. I use it for anything from to-do lists to scribbling software designs and ideas. Often, I open it on the bus and don't even write anything in it. It has become a kind of token or reminder in that it makes me focus on ideas or planning my day instead of just getting lost in random thoughts. Although the latter is also important from time to time!

Also, the current Economist. It's small and light and ensures I always have some good reading available.
There's no such things as unbiased news, all news stories are written for their specific audiences across geography and culture. All news stories of the same event have different narratives, to fit according to the intuition and interests/expectations of the intended audience.

When people say BBC news or some other news is less biased (some say read Chinese news about the US). It's really because it's a different narrative that sounds new/fresh, it covers different tangents that boring local media has never went.

So just watch whatever fits your taste/ideology.But if you are out to change your perspective and encompass as many divergent views as possible.

Just go for the highest contrast, and read history.
How much is apple a charisma-kei company? The media and some customer segments treat it like that, but I wonder how it is as an actual employee?
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> Apple isn't necessarily more cohesive, they make a single model of phone. By definition, everything they do is 100% cohesive.

There are five iOS devices (iPhone 3GS/4, iPod Touch 2nd/3rd generation, iPad). Two of those are phones and the rest aren't, but only because they can't make calls. Who wants to do that, anyway?
As far an an overview of these strains through the history of the country, I'm actually looking for a book that covers the longer version right now. The problem is that once you start giving concrete examples -- such as the Civil War continuing to evolve the United States along Hamilton's dreams -- people start getting offended. Many of these great political events and policies already have a narrative in people's minds, and people get touchy when you start redefining their version of history. And that's not even getting into the last hundred years!

As far as how it started, here's a great introduction to the Great Debate. It's a description, in the Framer's words, of the issues they saw at the time the Constitution was created. Note that during the Constitutional Debate Jefferson was mostly neutral. Once he started serving in Washington's cabinet, however, it became obvious that these two strains of thought were always going to oppose each other. Jefferson noted that each day he girded himself to prepare for battle. Washington as well tried to stay above it all, and managed to do so during his presidency. Afterwards it became obvious that he was more of a smart-guy-and-structure person, but he managed to keep that mostly under wraps.

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=4878
Or, they felt you turned an honest, personal, on-topic comment into a bad joke.
No one is carrying around an iPad?
Here's the (8MB PDF) about the BBC redesign in 2002, known as "The Glass Wall" document http://www.liamdelahunty.com/blog/media/theglasswall.pdf
> Make functions, not procedures

I can't agree - you don't need results of functions for checking errors - in many higher level languages you can return multiple values, you can use exceptions, even in C++ without exceptions you can do this by in-out parameters, for example:

http://www.nopaste.pl/rtt

I think it's cleaner than making nested if then else-s over every invocation of your functions.
I disagreed with your "extreme example", on the grounds that checking arguments instead of return values is a bad idea.
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Are there any Australian startups here and if so, are any of you primarily targeting Australian users?
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