skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
?? is the null coalescing operator and it's neither new nor is it hidden.

It is damned handy though.
ATNTFTP
Sure, I actually share this annoyance, at the very least I wish the menu item would be kept consistent between activities.

But the point remains, I also have a lot of annoyances with i-devices at the same time, compared to the two I prefer my HTC Desire, it would be nice to not be regarded as some type of idiot for possibly thinking that i-whatever arent the pinnacle of design that all things aspire to.
I think if I knew I had to name my child after a programming function I wouldn't have kids.
I keep stabbing myself to death on that fir tree by the start >.<
Comments on a website are quite different from web companies and screenplays.
You have to write code at some point, but you also have to think about what you are doing. Especially in time-constraints environments, there is a big risk doing a lot of code which ends up totally useless because it was not well thought, and did not do what was intended, etc...

More important than unit test and all that trivial stuff, what matters a lot in my experience is the ability to write for changes. That's really what's difficult about most programming tasks: how to deal with changing specs, change of deployment environments, etc...
Find Thesis within a Topic
The thesis is an important element of any academic document. In order to write an outstanding paper, students need to ensure that they find a good thesis. A good thesis can only be found with a good topic. Therefore, in order to come up with a good thesis, ensure a good topic.
On Windows, if the user installs Chrome, it's installed into the user's home directory (local application data or something). This means the user does not need admin rights to either install or upgrade Chrome.
Every language?

Java, as far as I know, does not allow if (someObject) where someObject is a class type. AFIAK, java only allows that if someObject is a bool, or possibly an int as well.

In strongly typed languages in general, null is not the same thing as false and not-null is not the same thing as true.
Which is why we have pages like "List of recurring characters from Sonic the Hedgehog", naturally - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recurring_characters_fr... .

At best, wikipedia editors may collect evidence for notability, but neither presence nor absence of a wikipedia page alone makes a strong case.
>Google go the extra mile with Gingerbread to really sweeten up the UI a bit

I've never understood what exactly people mean when they say that. The one area Google needs to fix is the settings menu, with a much more logical organisation which they failed to do properly even in Froyo. Other than that, the worst flaws in Android are not things that Google can just wave a wand and fix without breaking backward compatibility.

Agree with you about the widgets, though. Can't live without them.
While I understand that the diversity of the hardware is a strength, I feel that the Androids problem is the large variety of hardware it is on which makes it harder to develop for than the iPhone, does anyone think that these problems will be a major issue for Windows Phone 7?
I think he meant an ecosystem of differing implementation. When .NET actually looks more open than your platform, I think you need to rethink what you are doing. What people here are asking for is something similar to Mono, a complete reimplementation of the platform and language that is legally available.

And I agree that java has a large ecosystem built on top of it, making it even more important that the underlying stuff doesn't get controlled by one person.
For having 60 points and being on the home page still, it doesn't have a lot of positive feedback in the comments.

I for one am enjoying it, but had not seen linerider and co before. Cheers to the developer.
To you it is very relevant. I'm just saying let's clarify who has a dog in this fight.

Believe it or not, I'm using Solr, Groovy and Clojure and in my eyes the (approved || sanctioned || blessed) JVM has never a better platform.
The Virginia Business One Stop (https://apps.cao.virginia.gov/IDC/index.html). It's not something I have to use very often, but it's on the top of my mind because I just formed an LLC. Its primary purpose is to help new companies get formed in the state by providing a "wizard" to help you gather in one place all the information and forms required by the state and Fed. When I finally found it through word of mouth (it's Flash-based and doesn't show up in my Google search results), I had already formed my LLC but was wondering if there were any important forms I had missed in my manual dredging of the State Corporation Commission's site. I could go on about the poor user experience, but suffice it to say it makes incorrect assumptions, forces repeated data entry, sends you to sites (the IRS) that have an even worse UX and hang without saving, and makes you pay $20 for the privilege.

On the plus side, I've now gotten my first bad business decision out of the way.
My Mother-in-law likes Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Mark Bolan. She doesn't speak any English and comes from a culture where proto-punk never made any impact.

I think the parent commenter has a valid point.
All people who create things, whether it's a website or a screenplay, do it for the love of creating that thing.

How do you know this? Is there some research to back this up or have you talked to everyone who creates things? Motivation (and conversely demotivation) comes from all sorts personal factors. "Love of creating" is just one of many factors that drive people to do what they do.
It would NOT be this:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/cumtrapz.html
But the first version of it still matches or outperforms the Android and iPhone web browsers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgvphQx9MY8
malloc() (C) sounds good. Almost like Luke. Great name for a baby boy.
The legacy mode is exactly the problem. They have an IE7 legacy mode in IE9, so upgrading once you are on IE7 or up is generally not that big of a deal. I still fail to recognize any other reason than corporate decision making for why IE8 didn't have an IE6 legacy mode. I can understand they didn't understand the issues when they released IE7, but by the time IE8 got shipped they should have known better.
http://xkcd.com/327/ comes to mind.

But, to answer the question: If I absolutely had to, I'd find a language which has a function which also happens to be an acceptable name. Or, if no such thing exists, I'd quickly hack up my own >;]

Thinking about it, Max is a good name, and exists in multiple languages.
To supplement the comment I left regarding TurboTax (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1783200), I thought I'd lay out exactly how and when I interact with the IRS. About 50% of my income comes from freelancing; the other 50% from a full-time job.

January 15: Send the IRS a check for 28% of the gross freelance income you made between September 1 and December 31 of the previous year along with a 1040-ES (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040es.pdf) Also send an estimated payment to your state of about 5-7%, based on your state's income tax bracket for your income. (My state, Minnesota, has easy online payments, so there's no paperwork required.)

Between March 1 and April 15: Do your taxes. Use TurboTax; it will simplify your life. Take appropriate deductions for everything that TurboTax asks, but make sure to have documentation.

April 15: Repeat what you did on January 15, but for income received between January 1 and March 31.

June 15: Repeat January's step again, but for income from between April 1 and May 31.

September 15: Repeat January again, but for income from between June 1 and August 31.

Note that you only really need to make estimated payments if you expect to owe more than $1,000 on tax day if you were to not make estimated payments. If you owe more than $1,000 when tax day comes, you may be charged a penalty if you didn't make estimated payments. (I'm not an accountant, so your mileage may vary.)
e^(i*pi) = -1
This article raises a good point: Will companies be able to spot the difference between a bad design and people complaining simply because they hate change?

Awhile back, a nearby college (Michigan State) redesigned their Spartan logo (http://www.promotionalitemsbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/...) and the exact same thing happened with them. They ended up pulling the new logo.

Thing is, in the context of the broader rebranding, these logos may have actually turned out to be very cool. Clearly a move like this has millions behind it in new commercials, print advertising, etc. It's not just a new logo.

It actually makes me sad that Gap didn't have the confidence in their redesign and the courage to move forward with it anyways.
Sorry, physics noob here, need more instructions on how to put this together.

Is there a bill of materials and a schematic on how the setup looks from above?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780375
I fail to see how that's relevant. There's quite a marked difference between:

1.) Creating a website which uses JavaScript to increase accessibility

And:

2.) Creating a website which requires JavaScript in order to function

I only have a problem with number 2.
I know I had to do some voodoo to make a website we setup work right for a client because all of their internal windows computers were still running IE6
The game has great physics and fun game play, but it fails socially. It really needs a few learner slopes to start with that introduce the concepts.

Crowd-sourcing of track design is a great idea, but the game needs a better way to filter out the crud. Most of the designs are personal experiments, and even the better ones could really use a few checkpoints.
Either Len or Isatty (Python)

I would hope he calls me Pop.
Feedback For Privte Beta
We recently launched a private beta of Blogcastr (http://blogcastr.com). Blogcastr is a free, easy-to-use live blogging service for sharing cool stuff as it happens. We wanted to try to start getting feedback and I would love to hear what people think about it. The current design was meant to simply get something up, everything is in the process of being redesigned. If anyone would like to sign up "hackernews" can be used as the invite token. Thanks!
-Matt
I agree - HN is not the place for M$. I stopped reading after that.
10 points and climbing for a reply that essentially says, "Bah, it's Microsoft, there must be something wrong with it"? That's really disappointing, HN.

I foresee some serious cognitive dissonance playing out as Microsoft manages to do a whole lot better than hive-mind "HA HA too little too late / M$ sucks" sentiments have been allowing for. And frankly, Microsoft deserves the success they've got coming to them here. Somehow, the teams responsible for WP7 have been able to overcome the bureaucratic, backstabbing inertia that Microsoft is famous for, and they've produced something pretty damned good for a 1.0. Shame that so few people bother to actually examine the platform in any detail before pontificating about it, predicting its doom, etc.
Funny you mentioned 2 projects under the stewardship of the Apache Foundation, the same organization whom Sun proper fucked by first not releasing the TCK under reasonable terms, and second by releasing OpenJDK under a license incompatible with Harmony and too restrictive to be of any use to mobile phone manufacturers, but not restrictive enough to protect derivate works (GPLv3 was already released and the Apache license has a much stronger patents clause).

Here's some context: http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html

Also, all these language implementations are symptoms of a larger problem, can you guess which?
No.

The article describes wealth accumulation. Not wealth creation. Wealth creation is what pays for their income.
The article’s argument is this: If you write your code in Python targeting Jython and the JVM, and the Java platform becomes unusable, there’s still a lot of your code that can be easily ported to run in CPython or IronPython or PyPy or something. If you write your code in Java and the platform becomes unusable and Oracle decides to squish alternative Java platforms, then you’re stuffed.
i still think gap is on the positive side for 2010 after their tie-in with groupon. wasn't it the most popular deal to date?
How Mark Babbitt Learned To Increase Revenues At 8 Years Old
See also Rob Pike's talk "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" (http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf).

BeOS was pretty interesting, too, but its story is too far off topic.
Please don't think that I was siding with MG Siegler. I would choose my ancient G1 over an iPhone any day, but then I've been told that I'm a philistine.
Cybercriminals Change up Their Weapons
Ask HN: Lyrics website startup?
Over on reddit this weekend there were a few threads about how awful lyrics websites are, and talked about a bunch of their problems.

Naturally, being in this community for so long I see something like this as an opportunity. I started a thread over asking what people would like to see in a new Lyrics site (on reddit). That received minimal attention but I got a bit of feedback:

-No annoying adds (playing sound, irrelevant, covering the text)

-Easy searching that works

-Simple design

-Categorization

-Stop messing with my browser behaviour (selecting, right-clicks)

Now, I have some half-way decent ideas about how to set up the thing, such as letting it be a community run site similar to how sites such as stack-overflow are moderated. I also have some long-goals, such as attempting to get lyrics data direct from labels and link directly to their preferred supplier for that music (however, I don't think this is revolutionary).

The biggest thing in my mind would be a lyrics site that doesn't take hours to load, get out the bloat of junk, and let it be a community run thing with tagging and moderation.

I'm the sort of person who thinks things too far into the future and too broadly on the horizon, so my main concern with this is that I've made my target so large I don't have a project that I can complete in short order with minimal complications.

My key theory is that people will use my site because it will be an open community, and not bloated with junk. I'm planning on something like google ads onto the page as the primary form of monetization.

Have I gone too far, or missed something critical that I should stop and look at, or should I put fist to the keyboard and bang this thing out over the next few weekends?
I've found the long press in Android one of the most instinctive and consistent pieces of the UI language; I love it. I don't know about the menu button, I certainly wouldn't cry if it went away, but the distinction between a short press (go, activate) and long press (configure, customise) is great.

Long press is the right-click of smartphones.
How Instapaper Was Created & its Plan to Add Social Features
@cdavid agree with you on forward thinking.

Don't agree on Unit test being trivial. Infact, it is one of the things that aid you with changing specs and code. It helps you change your code with confidence. That really matters.

I appreciate your overall point, had just one correction. thanks.
At the multinational I work at, we recently upgraded to Java 1.5. By the time we have to upgrade to Java 1.7, I expect this little storm-in-a-teacup to be well and truly forgotten.
All good advice but my experience with agents has been slightly different. Sure a lot of them are hollow shells, but I give them my rate, some of them are successful in negotiating their fees on top of the client and I have gotten a fair amount of work from agencies.

I would not discount them entirely just don't spend a lot of time chasing their lead and doing prep work for them to represent you and stay firm on your rate. A good deal will fall through but you can find some gems this way. A lot of large corps use agents to find freelancers and have exclusive contracting arraignments with the agency.
Amazon Launches ‘Kindle Singles,’ A E-Book Format For Short Works
Publishing free software manuals
Maybe someone working with Creative Commons Canada can make a similar catalog available to them? Artist could sign up online with their music and right there provide the rights to their song and a link where to find them.

Just an idea but it might solve their main issue with the music.
The First Marty McFly
Facebook, Zynga Impose Pre-IPO Share Fees
Since everyone sees the value and you are unincorporated, an alternative to breakup might be to incorporate with renegotiated equity and vesting.

The first step is simply explaining that the current situation isn't working for you and figuring out what everyone thinks is fair.

Breakup may still be the end result, but the less bitter it is for each of you, the better it is for everyone.
I figured numbers don't lie. Instead of picking bands that I thought represent me to put into Facebook ... I just linked my last.fm profile. What I actually listen to is tallied instead of what I'd prefer you to think I listen to.

EDIT: Hah! Turns out Facebook no longer allows this. I just checked my FB profile and it does not list my last.fm profile. It also does not allow me to add it back.
I really wish more effort was put into D... I think that's really the best path to freedom vs Java and .Net... I wish Nokia would would adopt D because nobody wants to use C++ and Python is slow...

I just saw this on twitter...

http://twitter.com/casperbang/status/27134952930

"Java has an official open source reference implementation, but is not free. C# has only unofficial open source implementations, but is free!"

http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#Java

"Java isn't platform independent; it is a platform. Like Windows, it is a proprietary commercial platform. That is, you can write programs for Windows/Intel or Java/JVM, and in each case you are writing code for a platform owned by a single corporation and tweaked for the commercial benefit of that corporation."
Great points. I even wrote a little script that blocks sites I commonly visit that prevent me from getting work done. It's called get-shit-done: http://github.com/leftnode/get-shit-done
I was attempting a light joke about how horrible it sounds. I'm much more of an 80s hardcore kind of guy anyway...
but ganging up unfused plugs like that spells 'fire'

Nah, it'll be fine. Actually this sort of thinking is probably because of the "dangerous plugs" pictures we are always shown as children. A stuffed up socket just looks automatically dangerous to us.

I guess you're coming from the perspective of overloading the socket. This is surprisingly hard to do - but you can do it equally well across multiple sockets (basically, if your fuse breaker is going to let it burn it doesn't care much where the devices are plugged in :)) so it is something of a misconception to consider a crowded socket particularly dangerous. People happily use an 8 gang extension cable without batting an eyelid.

More importantly having fuses in the plugs is unlikely to help all that much, the crucial fuse is the one in your circuit breaker. The current will divide across the sockets (my circuit theory is rusty so I won't try any figures :)) and it is the socket taking the brunt. While you would likely eventually see a spike that trips one of the plugs I'm betting the socket catching fire is more likely.

And, finally, I suspect these would be rated (well, if they weren't vapour-ware) for devices with internal fusing or low power draws. I'd also suspect that the plug "holder" would be fused.

BTW it is somewhat moot anyway because I believe those red tabs are a fuse holder :)
To be honest it was a pretty vacuous comment, and was mostly about iphone / android than windows mobile.

But I didnt say it sucks, or that there must be something wrong with it, I said I couldnt trust them (with a lot or money) not to suck, and my opinion isnt formed from some hivemend, its formed from the last 10 years of my experience with microsoft products.
'secret' space shuttle X-37B goes missing again
Using M$ is pretty much a defacto ad hominem - it means you're leading your position by saying 'Microsoft only care about money', and then using that to argue that there must be a problem with their products, without backing up or clarifying that assertion.

Imagine if people started their posts with 'Facebook, who hate privacy, have just...', or 'Apple, who hate freedom, have now...', or 'Google, who are spying on you, are about to...'

That would be pretty pathetic.
Yes, a ring circuit you run a single wire around the room and back to the fuseboard. With a spur circuit you run a single wire to the furthest plug.
In a typical room going back to the fuseboard isn't much further so it's not twice as much wire - more like 10% more
Canonical partnered with Stack Overflow on AskUbuntu.com: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/ubuntu-stack-exchange-...
"Smallish UI centric code"--no. Virtually all of that OS is written in Java.
Are you sure? If you have time, re-read the article.
Which D, 1 or 2? I have used D for several years and know a few people that also used D for a longer period of time. Consensus is that D is dead for all practical purposes (especially D2).
I don't think so - too much risk for it to be deliberate strategy. More likely is that it was an executive thought bubble that went wrong.
Just like the side by side search engine tests without branding it would be interesting to test peoples perceptions not knowing it's Microsoft, although it would only work on people outside tech who haven't used either interface.
Java has been on life support for a while now. The majority of the "innovation" over the last few major(!) releases has been playing catchup with other languages, other virtual machines, and other bytecodes. If C# hadn't played the Firefox to Java's IE, I'm not convinced that many of Java's linguistic advances would have ever seen the light of day.

Perhaps the single greatest contribution of Java has been limiting the impact of poorly-written Visual Basic applications on the business software landscape, though the alternative it provides is poorly-written Java applications, which in addition to being slow, unmaintainable spaghetti code look visually distinct enough from each platform's native widget set to be jarring.

I have little experience with mobile development so perhaps this is a monumentally bad idea, but a set of well-defined APIs, a clean windowing and widget layer with its own APIs, and native bindings for a handful of the more popular languages (Python, Ruby, C++) plus perhaps one or two more specialized languages the platform developers want to support (Clojure/Scheme/CL, Go) would provide enough flexibility to let developers do what they want.

(Although come to think about it this seems to be the approach that Maemo used, and that platform never saw the uptake I thought it deserved. So I'm probably relying on wishful thinking rather than actual reality.)
XMLHttpRequest. Because it has a nice ring to it. "Jack" for short.
Facebook should tap into those kind of sources then.
What's "wrong" with stereotypes is that the political correctness mindset denies there's the truth underneath these stereotypes. But obviously is.

My country has an healthy measure against correctness. We have lots of terrible jokes exploiting stereotypes off all nations. We still delightfully tell jokes about Nazis (well we were the first they attacked during WWII and also a most deserted country afterwards), though the war ended so long ago. We have jokes on Russians (hundreds of years of conflicts with those people), Jews (yeah even on how Germans killed them in out land), Americans, Muslims and so on.

And you know what.. it turns out to be extremely healthy. The foreigners (esp Americans!) are frightened on how terrible and rude these jokes are, but in fact such jokes dissolve many tensions instead of accumulating them.

The trick is: we also laugh of ourselves. Intensively.
Why You Don’t Need Dependency Injection In Ruby
Does School Choice "Work"?