skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Django style Über efficient php templates
Haanga is a template engine that uses Django syntax. In the beginning it was developed for Menéame (a Spanish social news site ), but they decided to release it as an independent project so it can be used by anyone :-)

Some Hangaa’s features:

Human readable.

Easy to use and mantain.

Highly efficient because every template is “compiled” into a PHP script.

The generated code is ready to take advantage from any PHP optimizer (like xcache).
The Science of Word Recognition
But then, how on earth did they manage to get this software certified if it did something as DailyWTF-worthy as using floating point for a clock?
Not the previous poster, but I'm sure it is Harvard Business Review.
From: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665833
I worked at a cool little company where we built a useful product. We just built it. We didn't use waterfall, agile, or any real process. We just made sure to communicate and only hired people with good judgement and critical thinking skills. A big (very big) company decided they liked our product and bought the company.

After acquisition, our new overlords decided that our process, i.e. using our brains, wasn't compliant with whatever standards they had for development. In came the agile consultants, scrum masters, TDD, CI, etc. All the things you hear these blog posts evangelize about. It brought development to a total halt as all these assholes put in their $0.02 about how we needed scrums, sprints, user stories, and story points. Developers couldn't work on the features they knew were important without cutting through miles of red tape (finding a "customer" to make a story, breaking that story down into the actual work that needed to be done, moving the story through the backlog, estimating points for the stories, etc).

Like I said above. It ruined my software department. I wouldn't wish agile on my worst enemy.
Real Software Engineering
You get self-control by finding effective ways to distract yourself from the thing you want. If you focus on the thing you want you will give in to temptation. In that vein, note that thinking about not thinking about X is highly counter-productive. The kid who tried to stare down the treat caved quickly.

More effective strategies were techniques like pretending the food isn't real (telling themselves it's a picture, made of plastic, or whatever), singing songs, hiding under the table, covering their eyes, etc.

Anything that actually gets one's mind off of the temptation will work.

The rest of the article was fluff about how it is more measurable than most things in psychology, how he came up with it, how effective it was and assorted anecdotes.
He won the IOCCC a number of times before.

http://nanochess.110mb.com/
It's trivial to defeat with the four-move checkmate, but still an interesting piece of code.
There's an old Tom Lehrer song, "So Long, Mom," about just that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo
Unlike the US we don't have a housing bubble, because of our increasing population.

"Debunking the Australian Housing Shortage" http://www.unconventionaleconomist.com/2010/05/debunking-aus...

The claim Australia has a housing shortage is not backed up by any decent data (only by very weak / spurious data provided by the property industry itself), and represents a continuing effort by the property industry to explain away all the signs that clearly indicate Australia is in the midst of a massive asset bubble.
CERN collides with a patent reality
GPS satellites are actually in MEO, at 12,500 miles away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Earth_orbit
The reason for this restriction is because your process and your opponent's run simultaneously on the same machine, so you only get one CPU. Doing your own userspace threading or whatever is fine.
AnyBots founder and CEO Trevor Blackwell (quoted in the third section of the article) is also one of the Y Combinator co-founders, and I believe both companies are in the same office building.

RiderOfGiraffes lists some relevant HN items here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1562602
Was there really an Opera billboard outside Microsoft main campus?
Wozniak's all-planet engineering skill and user empathy is the cornerstone of everything that came afterward. To this day I cannot understand why the prototypical managerial leech that is Jobs, however good his taste, is venerated over Woz. By technical folk, of all people.
Up here in the cold, dark north a recent trend in alarm clocks is to incorporate A) a gradually intensifying "natural" bright light (think light therapy) starting about 30 mins before wakeup and B) a "natural" alarm sound such as bird calls.

Works well for me in the winter. Summer not so much.
Foreign Prices Undercutting Domestic Chinese Prices?
This reminds me of this very very deep Mandelbrot fractal zoom:

"The final magnification ... is 6.066e+228 (2^760)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foxD6ZQlnlU
This fails to mention the other point about that logo.

Once you have seen Lisa Simpson on her knees, to the right, satisfying a man on the left, you cannot 'unsee' it.
also http://helmer.sfe.se/
I agree that the London Olympics logo is merely typically bad, rather than unusually bad. So the question is: why are Olympic logos always so bad? I suppose it's just a matter of having too many people involved.

What's really interesting is that the logo for the bid is almost always much better than the logo for the actual games; for instance all the logos of the bidding cities for 2012:

http://logoblink.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/olympic-logo...

are actually pretty good.

Another example: Sydney 2000. If you look up the logo of the bid, it's pretty attractive, just the outline of the Sydney Opera House in the Olympic colours. But by the time they created a logo for the actual games, they took that logo, reversed it, and added some boomerangs (gotta get an Aboriginal influence in there!) plus a picture of a running man (sorry, person) in order to get something entirely too complicated and just plain ugly.
Design Optimization: Front Page Changes +45% conversion rates.
My mistake, but this kind of methodology seems to be specific to a few industries like aviation and space, while being conspicuously absent from e.g. medicine. Ideally, the software industry would have its own life-critical standard that was applied across all domains, not that I'm suggesting such a standard is necessarily feasible right now.

Until we have such a universal standard, it is entirely possible for a bug in your free library to indirectly kill someone, in the course of everyday best practices.
Ahhh it actually sounds like your team was originally being Agile: http://agilemanifesto.org/

As opposed to how a lot of people land up doing Agile: http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/
This is related to Dijkstra's suggested style of programming. He suggested, or in fact insisted that the proper way to program is to create along with each program mathematical proofs that the program will behave as expected under each possible combination of inputs. This is something that might conceivably result in bug free programs.

Needless to say this style was not adopted, and in fact a very very different style that practically guarantees a lot of bugs was used.

So the expectation that programs be perfect seems impossible now, but it was not for Dijkstra considering the style of coding he had in mind.
For many, quine = young woman

If you've ever been to Aberdeen, the one in Scotland, then you'll know that they have a very distinctive accent. They also have a wide ranging, and pretty much universally used dialect called Doric.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_Northern_Scots

Doric has some fabulous words. Quine, which is in common use, is not really one of them, I'd say, but here's a decent list, and remember this is how the taxi driver will talk to you when you get of the plane/train:

http://www.aboutaberdeen.com/doric.php

He'll probably say: Far y'ga'ahn?

For the record, a boy is a loon, and a bloke is a teuchter, a great word you hear all the time.

But what the heck a rotating quine is, I have no idea.
http://logoblink.com/2007/12/12/london-2012-logo/ is the story from which that linked image comes, they've blocked the image it seems (from their own page too).
I was genuinely surprised that this wasn't once mentioned in the article especially given the title.
Lessons From the World's Greatest Chefs
Doesn't this just reduce to "talk about the weather"? Because if you're not going to talk about anything that isn't in the immediate physical area and isn't in the past, you're reduced to "nice weather today, isn't it?" or perhaps "See that lamp over there? I like that lamp. I don't like that carpet though."
AdAge reveals secret Google Adwords big spenders
No matter where the inukshuk originates from this one, http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?q=1600+Beach+Ave%2c+Va... / http://www.seethewestend.com/inukshuk/inukshuk.htm, seems pretty close to Vancouver to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)

In computing, a quine is a computer program which produces a copy of its own source code as its only output.
Redis 2.0.0 Stable is out
In case your imagination needed any help: http://i.imgur.com/FGwqP.jpg

Or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai0y5sLg5bg
Palm inviting devs to a node.js meet-up by the Bay
Actually, that was revealed at the beginning of the article: "It was published in 1986".
That runs the risk of not extricating yourself. Maybe you go and meet those people over there and your new "friend" comes with you. Turns out those people are boring too, so you have to move on to the next group of people.

Saying "well, if you'll excuse me I'm going to get another drink/some food/whatever" is fine. They won't follow you unless you invite them (or at least they shouldn't), since that's code for "I'm ditching this conversation, bye!"
Absolutely. The game I currently sell in the app stores is built with web technologies and phonegap, so publishing it there will be a no-brainer.

http://jsway.se/m/
And the social awkwardness of repeatedly running into someone you sort-of know in the grocery store is pretty much unavoiable whoever you are.
Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design
US govt buys world's biggest RAM disk (2004)
Because craigslist has revolutionized both licit and illicit classified ads, making them the most important advertising medium for the sex industry as well as babysitters, day laborers, and people with washing machines to sell?
The logo is pants, but have you seen the mascots? I'm not even going to find a link they're so excruciatingly excremental.

Personally, I loved Vancouver's, but think Barcelona's a work of genius; joy and athleticism in two brush strokes and a blob. Maravillosa.
Interesting website on the topic:

http://www.quantifiedself.com/

my favorit:
"Make Your Own Mobile Self Tracker with Google Docs"

http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/2009/05/diy-mobile-self-tra...

--

Quantified Self Meetup Groups:

http://quantified-self.meetup.com/
My foreign world
So it is using the value of v to generate the next world map?
Rewarding Innovative Ideas in Global Health -- anyone have ideas?
> I don't get why "talking politics" is something to so desperately avoid in the US.

It's because there isn't a single party where you can't find crazy people who have no contact with reality who also hate anyone who disagrees with them. Oh, and the blogs/online news comments are filled with paid political hacks during election season. During the election, I noticed things like how the same guy got first post with the same username to every news story with comments on every paper at the top of Google News. He vanished immediately after the election. I think someone even paid their supporters openly.

Worse, feelings and identity have become much more important than facts (you don't vote for your political party, you are a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green/Pirate/Socialist/Communist/Independent/I'm sorry if I left your party out) and it's simply not possible to discuss the issues in any depth without getting someone really mad.

Even if you can absolutely prove that X is untrue, you'll get a "But $other_party is just as bad! They did $bad_stuff (and that might even be true). Why did you fail to mention that? Why don't you hate them for that, too!? You're not one of us, you're one of them!"

In short, rational debate has become impossible because there are strong feelings everywhere and it's just not worth it to anyone but strong partisans to jump into the fray (most people don't like being hated), so moderate voices are excluded and the US vs. THEM dynamic gets intensified.

Alas, this is infecting more than just politics. I don't even want to touch the tech flamewars.
The Mac was an improved version of the Lisa, which was a copy of the Xerox Alto, which was inspired by Englebart's NLS.

You can see what it would have been had Raskin carried out his plans, because he did, to something called the Canon Cat: http://tinyurl.com/47hj7m

Raskin has a better claim to the iOS design, in that it is an "incredible morphing computer".
I agree with you, but Dijkstra would too. He never claimed that computer science or software engineering (remember that there was no clear distinction back then) were somehow superior to other disciplines. On the contrary, in many of his writings he is lamenting the state of our profession.

The quote on the blog is somewhat out of context, and it reminds me of this:

The major cause [of the software crisis] is... that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming had become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them, it has created the problem of using its products. To put it in another way: as the power of available machines grew by a factor of more than a thousand, society's ambition to apply these machines grew in proportion, and it was the poor programmer who found his job in this exploded field of tension between ends and means. The increased power of the hardware, together with the perhaps even more dramatic increase in its reliability, made solutions feasible that the programmer had not dared to dream about a few years before. And now, a few years later, he had to dream about them and, even worse, he had to transform such dreams into reality! Is it a wonder that we found ourselves in a software crisis? No, certainly not, and as you may guess, it was even predicted well in advance; but the trouble with minor prophets, of course, is that it is only five years later that you really know that they had been right. -- E. W. Dijkstra

http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD...
Even if you do happen to get two people in a conversation who disagree politically and are capable of thoughtfully and intelligently discussing political issues, it's so much effort to do so that it's usually not a fun conversation unless you're already good friends with the person in question. Discussing politics with people you've just met, or people with whom you're only vaguely acquainted, is a recipe for disaster.

Worst of all is when you're in a group of people who think they're all in political agreement, but you disagree with all of them. (As a right-of-centre academic, this happens surprisingly often.) They're saying something which you not only disagree with, but which is factually false in some detail. Do you speak up and risk alienating everybody, or bite your tongue and suffer through it? (Or do you pretend you need to go to the bathroom and hope the subject has changed when you come back? That's what I tend to do...)
It's fairly well hidden, but it's there: "I received an email from a young woman who pointed out that the logo is clearly a schematic diagram of fellatio, with the Olympic rings being the curly hair of one party."
I think a business plan is required almost immediately. It's just the size that differentiates. If it's for yourself, a single page or paragraph can do. It just helps founders focus on what they're trying to do. For me personally, it helps. If your looking for funding, then of coarse a larger business plan will be needed. I really think it just depends on the person or the situation. But like I said for me personally, I like to map my ideas on paper and have it easily read by others.
MyStart - Toolbar Widgets Library
Wait ... when did we start bashing MVC?
I'm going to guess it's the same as "cooks".
Better than being the executive who decided not to release the patch until 28 people were dead.
> I saw many things I now recognize as hallmarks of mismanagement.

Could you expand upon those? Maybe they're obvious, but I'm curious and I'm sure there are people here who would prefer to avoid learning to recognize such things from experience.
I take exception to your assertion that Olympic logos are typically bad. The Munich ’72 logo might evoke nothing more than a ‘meh’ if it’s all alone but its applications were absolutely stunning [1]. The takeaway might be that it’s best to design a solid logo that offends no one and put all the elaboration and quirkiness [2] into the rest of the identity.

[1] Poster: http://www.flickr.com/photos/insect54/2307407256/ – Tickets: http://www.flickr.com/photos/realnotreal/3509806052/

[2] ‘Waldi’ is the weird but funny mascot of the 1972 Olympics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcosdopico/575561156/
When he says this:

...the subculture of the compulsive programmer, whose ethics prescribe that one silly idea and a month of frantic coding should suffice to make him a life-long millionaire

I feel like he's describing many a startup today.
Yeah. You should see some of the other stuff that makes it into production code.

I said there was a process. I didn't say the result was good software. ;)
Also good to note is Andy Hertzfeld's account of "Black Wednesday" in February 1981 when Raskin was fired and Hertzfeld given his desk.

The book was published in 1986, which would probably mean that the interview was done after he was fired by Jobs. Certainly reinforces the warning to take Raskin's word, too, with a grain of salt.

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
The Larson and Recycle benchmarks are on github. You can read about them in the paper. Email me if you'd like to see an unpublished paper which has some more detail on the allocator's design.
I actually had dinner with a well-known hedge fund manager a few months ago and while talking about Blackberries and iPhones, he mentioned "that nobody has ever got rich betting against Steve Jobs"

Sums it up for me pretty well.
But it's not like boost-phase intercept is a magic bullet (ha!). Well, really, it generally takes a magic bullet. Launch sites are typically far away. Unless you have a interceptor several times faster (or interceptor site much closer to the launcher than the target), then it's very hard to actually reach the missile while it's in boost phase.

That airborne laser that's been in development for seemingly forever was pretty much determined to be the best way to intercept. You'll notice that it combines BOTH elements. That 747 is flying within LOS of the missile path while in boost phase, and it's also using the fastest projectile possible.

You'll also note that the Patriot's role is medium tactical air defense as well as theater anti-ballistic missile defense. The second role was basically tacked on, and then later massively expanded (once it became obvious that there aren't many air forces in the world that can actually fight the US).

In the end, I'm sure every general and admiral actually out to improve their warfighting abilities would want both systems. It's all about defense in depth. It's the reason why warships have three different sets of anti-air missiles, while we still have stingers when we have patriot missiles, and why US fighter aircraft still carrying short range missiles and guns.
Bill Gates rather puts the lie to that.
I have a great way of dealing with this that's simple, fun, and requires very little lead time: get drunk.

I head out around 10PM and drink beer or whisky repeatedly until I'm completely intoxicated. By 2AM or so all I want to do is go to sleep.
Well, nevermind. According to this, they were using 24bit fixed point, not floating:

http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html

Maybe a better moral is "avoid absolute clocks or counters, if at all possible".
If you want to make wild claims, you need to have some way to back them up beyond repeating the original claim. All of this "His ego destroyed Apple," "He humbled himself," "He had a feeling" is entirely your invention as far as I can tell. You appear to have made up some kind of hero-myth around Jobs. And, I mean, it's OK if you enjoy thinking that, but recounting it as though it's based in fact is (probably unintentionally) dishonest.
Corp Dev Execs Talk About Who They’d Buy And Why
Those were erected as tourist things by hotel chains.

There is Cleopatra's needle in the centre of London - but it wouldn't make sense to have the pyramids and Sphinx as the symbol for London 2012.
I'm so fucking tired of "opt-out" bullshit.

So-called "opt-out" must DIE DIE DIE!
On Communities and Content
Paul Krugman: 1938 in 2010
Things I learnt tracking a billion events in 24 hours
I think cards are essential to look professional, but I'm not against saving trees :)
...but of course Gates is an ubercritic too and only "appropriated" from the best (Zerox PARC), just like Jobs.
How Apple Plays the Pricing Game
It's what's known in graphic design as a GMST = Generic Meaningless Swoosh thing.
Summary being: study multiple times, spaced out, in different locations, and work on multiple related topics in a time period rather than finishing one before starting the next.

That multiple locations works better than a single one is pretty counter to everything people parrot, but makes sense in retrospect: everything in your mind is associated with everything else. If you teach it something in only one location, it's not as easy to recall it in another location. More locations break that location-centric quality.

And: hard tests teach better than easier ones. They make you examine your knowledge more thoroughly, meaning you're more likely to retain it (Duh, but it's nice to hear it scientifically supported). So why do we keep catering to the lowest common denominator?
An epic failure with not a word about the recent minimum wage increases, e.g. 10% last summer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Minimum_Wage_Act_of_2007). A very bad thing to do in a deflationary period.
I think this one misses...

Neil Perry: The business of food can be challenging and confusing, but at the end of the day it’s still all about food.

Isn't it about the diners?
I use caps when I am trying to stress or emphasize a point. Sometimes caps are easier to see on the eyes as well.
You also make a bad block affect potentially every file following it. When if you compress pre-tar you could find the next file boundary and recover the rest.
I find it interesting how "just reboot" has become something of a user expectation: often, users expect it to fix most anything. To be fair, it does seem to work fairly often.

It's a strong enough expectation that when I had some industrial machines running DOS (albeit on more modern hardware), I added my update, backup & diagnostic scripts to autoexec.bat so that rebooting would fix most of their problems.

It made my life a lot easier, though, because I could update the files and configurations via a master copy on the network, then tell them to reboot everything whenever it was convenient for them (usually between shifts) and the machines would all grab their updates and upload some log files for me to monitor.
Startup legal pitfalls you need to avoid
Interesting comment.
Penny Herscher, CEO of First Rain, on Successfully Sourcing Venture for Women
Some Zip applications show uncompressed files as being compressed with the "Store" algorithm instead of "Deflate".