skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
yes, online training is one part of what I do. This itself is quite big market with lots of potential. I have a set of excel templates for project management that I sell thru my site. These are my main products.
Ask HN: If you had to name your child after a programming function ...
... which function would it be?

Give the function, the language, and your rationale for choosing it.
I don't typically think of myself as someone with ADD or anything, but I find that on the occasion that I have a few pints while coding I get a lot more done - I'm not so easily distracted with the new random goings on of the internet.

So, I'll drink every once and a while when I really want to get something done.
It might have helped the article to have, you know, included an image of the mark. Just a thought.
defmacro, probably (lisp and variants). Because he would have all the power of the language at his/her hands
Between this and isolating graphene sheets, I think Scotch tape deserves the next nobel prize in physics.
Except that it appears the language was so obscure that Googling it did not pull back any references. Not entirely surprising given that there wasn't even a website for the language at the time.
According to (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/electrical-wiring/part1/section-20....) and to the wiki article on wire gauges, 40A requires 8-gauge wire, which is 3.264mm in diameter, while 20A is 12-gauge, which is 2.054mm. The ratio of their cross-sectional area is 2.53; this justifies that the 40A wire conducts twice as much as the 20A but has 2.53 as much area, thus being more costly.

I'm not sure why. Is the skin effect sufficient to explain this?
Earlier this year I was going to hold out for the Windows Phone 7 devices prior to learning of the features of the iPhone 4.

After Apple blew me away with the 640x960 LCD, I was pretty much sold on that point.

Until someone comes out with a display that looks as good as Apple's, I certainly won't even consider switching.

The other key point that people seem to forget is the touch keyboard. The iPhone's touch just "works", and works extremely well. In fact, it works exactly as you expect it to. And it worked exactly as I expected it to when I walked out of the mall Apple store in 2008 with my iPhone 3G.

This isn't the case with any android phone I've used. They all had various quirks that you had to "learn". Whether it be the Motorola Droid, or the HTC Evo. There were just little things about the UI that didn't work very well.

I've said it before and I say it again. Any android phone I've used feels like a "me too" phone. The touch screen feels like it's bolted on to this interface, whereas the iPhone feels like it's a true touch device.
Creative Commons should never have considered the notion of 'Non Commercial' licenses, for this very reason. They should have learned from the software world that non-commercial means non-free. [Edit: the CBC response is of course misinformeed, and they could simply have filtered out non-commercial licensed CC material]
> The only real time it's a slight issue/pain is when you go on a plane and the cables take up a bit of space.

I prefer the UK plug too. But you missed one other very important point of pain: the pain of standing on one. As the flex on a UK plug leaves from the bottom, it has the unique property of tending to lay down on the floor with pins facing upwards.
Don't think of it as a blanket ban. Think of it this way: They paid a service a flat fee to give the producers access to a big library that is 100% cleared. If you are a producer, and you surf that official library, you can use anything you hear. No danger of mistake. No danger of misinterpretation. It's effortless and guaranteed. Economy of scale, baby.

Creative Commons? Not so much. There's nobody to pay a flat fee to. [1] So you have to look at the license of every piece of music, and you have to make sure you've correctly matched the music up with the license. ("Oops, I thought that I was using the music from this webpage, but...").

And then, if we believe the public statement, the majority of the CC music will have some kind of "noncommercial" restriction. At which point you can just forget about it. Sure, a lot of the music will have a cheap sticker price, but just as with patents (where trolls with prima facie frivolous claims can nonetheless extort money from you) you've got to deal with the overhead. At minimum, you need to get some of the legal department's time, and they need to identify the correct rightsholder, and fax them the paperwork, and get the signature back. But maybe you also need to offer money. Maybe you need multiple rounds of back-and-forth. You are a public radio station. You are not awash in money for staff lawyers. You are going to beg your boss for permission to go through this process, and your boss is going to tell you to use the music library that you've already licensed with the flat fee.

---

[1] Actually, I don't know how the music industry works, but presumably you can license your music under multiple licenses, just as with software. So you can have a CC noncommercial license and license your music for commercial use via a music service. Of course, when someone uses the music service they don't need to mention the CC license, and they don't.
> Tanenbaum was right

Citation needed. Where do you get that? Performance-wise the biggest problem of OS X is still that part that is based on the "many servers are the OS" idea.

That's the reason why this exists:

http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/darbat/

Also, NT wanted to try moving in that direction but the critical parts are not "many servers."

Also, there's a reason why L4 was developed (note: post Tanenbaum): the "real" microkernels were very problematic performance-wise and it's actually harder to produce them (example: Gnu Hurd)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd
Given their extensive patent portfolio IBM would have had some hope in fighting a fight like that. I don't know that there are many others that have an interest and enough to fight with.
Plan9 is not microkernel.
Gmail. Everything's so small and needs so many clicks. Nothing optimizes for my typical workflow - read an email, archive it. Sometimes reply to one. Sometimes mark it for later.
From that list I collected some javascript-based game and physics engines used in those games.

Akhihabara - http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Diggy - http://github.com/lostdecade/diggy

Three.js - http://github.com/mrdoob/three.js
Very impressive. Congratulations on the growth.

I'd also like to add that chandoo.org loads very quickly. Nice work.
I'm sure the keyboard shortcuts would be awesome if I'd ever had a browser / OS combination that they worked on.
I like it but those icons on the toolbar need a change and fast. They look awful at the mo am afraid: http://stash.zee.me/Picture%20112.png
Those are all minor inconveniences compared with:

* trip up a cable, and the plug falls out of the wall
(Pulling a UK plug out required force. It will not pull out)
Plus the cable exits a plug pointing downward, which
means it will not pull out via the cable.
* Sparks when you put a plug in or out.
* Bent pins that look like they're about to drop off
* No shielding on pins
* Often no mechanism to stop things being put in sockets
(All UK sockets only open once an earth pin has gone in

I wonder what the incidence of electrocution is in the UK vs US. I'm probably biased, but I certainly feel far safer here, especially having kids.
Ask HN: Would Microsoft have been better targing the enterprise or gaming niche?
I was reading CNET's Q&A with Steve Ballmer today (http://bit.ly/dCu3Y9) and wondering about Michael's Porters 3 generic strateges of cost leadership, differentiation and niche.

From Steve's comments and the Microsoft AD's (http://bit.ly/aa5Wqd) it seems like they are pursing a differentiation strategy based on convincing people that they should not use their phone....? Ok maybe that their phone should be simpler to use and take less of their busy time.

Considering there are at 4 dominant players in the smart phone market (Apple, Google, Nokia and RIM) would they have been more profitable if they went for a Niche strategy targeting the Enterprise (e.g. Office app, sharepoint, AD, Exchange / Outook integration) or Gamers (mobile gaming is very fast growing, good synergy with XBOX).

Is attempting to do both a recipe for low market share and more importantly low profitability for the phone?
Oops, sorry, good point.
"I think the market where I operate (Microsoft Excel users) will change drastically in the next 10 years." . . . "What I am doing for living will be obsolete by then."

Who is going to train all your customers in these new technologies they're going to move away to? Grow your business as much as you can before Excel becomes obsolete but that point doesn't need to coincide with your business becoming obsolete.
I've been using Android solely for the past 2 months and I'm going to start developing for it soon. The one thing that I genuinely hate about it is the menu button. So many great features in so many great apps go undiscovered because the user is expected to have the idea to press the menu button in the right activity. And even when you have discovered the feature, pressing the menu button is just that bit of cognitive overhead which subtracts from a delightful experience. The most powerful features that Android's architecture(intents, etc) enables are stuck behind hidden menus. I would guess that most users use their phones just like an iPhone- with the exception of widgets on homescreens. I love this OS, but this madness has to stop.

Edit: Add to this the long press of a list item, and between them, most actions are stuck behind an undiscoverable layer of UI.
True, but OTOH, if you stand on a US one, the pins will often get bent. Best thing is to avoid standing on plugs :)
Yeah, I'm aware of this. Unfortunately, I'm not a designer, and there are hundreds of icons. As of now, the process is automated: favicons of sites are grabbed and enlarged. Revamping the icons into nice "iPhone"-ish icons is definitely on the list of things to do.
Most excellent! Already found the answers to two (rather minor but esoteric) issues I've been trying to resolve. Love that Stack Exchange.
There doesn't seem to be a link to excel school on this page.
"These multiple implementations of the languages are creating innovation on their respective platforms."

He also criticized the JVM.

"not resulting in as healthy an ecosystem"

No ecosystem? Clojure, Lucene/Solr, Cassandra, Groovy, Hadoop to name a few are all part of this excellent ecosystem.

Edit: There's some serious group think in HN. It seems any kind of alternate opinion gets immediately down modded. You may disagree with my opinion, but it is a valid and relevant opinion: Is all this lawsuit crap between the MegaCorps relevant to the average developer using Java for services?
segfault, C, it was an accident :P

(I don't have a child, just thought it would be funny)
(its also not really a function, but oh well)
I remember programming on Acorn A3000 or similar, nearly 20 years back. I used to program on display models in computer shops, as my family couldn't afford to buy one. I seem to recall hitting a function key to get a command prompt at the bottom of the screen, and further dialog with the command line caused the rest of the GUI to scroll off screen with each new line printed.

I programmed in its dialect of BASIC, which was - I recall - like a Commodore 64 on steroids. I was impressed, in a way which I wasn't by QBasic on PCs, because I had yet to learn the benefits of structured programming, and missed the line numbers on the PC.

Thinking back, I think it auto-numbered lines as you hit return, like this:

10 PRINT "Hello"<press Return here>
20 |

I remember that in particular being major improvement over the C64; I had seen so little, and had very few resources to learn from.
> the problem is that Sun/Oracles patent license only covers implementations that passed TCK.

Can they do that, being the OpenJDK GPL-licensed? IIRC, it shields the OpenJDK, as well as GPL-licensed derivatives, from patent lawsuits.

It doesn't protect Apache/MIT/BSD-licensed implementations, but who cares, if there is a GPL-licensed implementation available?
Did you create this comment exclusively for the love of creating a comment?
How to integrate OmniAuth with Rails
I actually think that text has a fairly high information density rate compared to iconography. The perfect example of this is the command line. Power users tend to prefer a terminal because it is more concise than clicking around in a gui. I think that the problem lies in the fact that we have very few universal icons, especially for something like a phone interface. This means that while an icon for 'unread mail' would be smaller than the text describing it, no one would know what it meant without a description. Since there is no real limit to the actions we want our phones or computers to perform, text seems to be the way to go. Of course, some actions (e.g. save, cut, paste) have icons that have been in use for so long that it might be fair to call them universal. You can see an example of what I mean in most mac os x applications, where the buttons generally have icons with labels.

Disclaimer: I work for microsoft, but nowhere related to the phone team.

Edit: My point is more about interfaces than design. I know nothing about typography.
I believe the GCJ is vulnerable because, like Dalvik, it's not derived from the OpenJDK.
> OpenJDK does have access to the TCK

Of course it does, access to the TCK was always at Sun's discretion to give.

OpenJDK doesn't matter, Java is not free to be implemented by open-source projects (even though JSR 270 explicitly says so) because the TCK licensing prohibits it.

It is also irrelevant if GCJ is old, patents don't have a "use it or you'll lose it" clause as trademarks do.
Just leave them plugged in, UK sockets have on/off switches.
The Expression tree part is powerful (you can inspect it with code, pull property names out, etc), but it's not needed in most cases. Your example in C# is:

Func<int, int> f = x => x + 1;
int b = f(42);

This is shorter than the JavaScript. The C# is more verbose where has to specify a type for f because it cannot work it out from context (in fact the left side of the '=' supplies type information to the right side), but the actual expression on the right is less verbose than the JavaScript with its "function" and "return" keywords.

If you want, the second line can be

var b = f(42);

But it's the same number of chars. I don't think that you gain anything from letting the compiler work out that b is an int.
Different plugs will have different fuses appropriate to the type of device. I have no idea how much of a benefit this is but you couldn't do that if the fuses were in the socket.
Keep in mind that the author of the post is Apple fanboy/Android troll MG Siegler
eval(); But I already called it.
My little side project works great for this:

http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/...
It's not that "less text is better", actually, depending on your page and what you're trying to sell more text is often better. If you can write a long, engaging sales pitch it's much more likely to convert users than a short one, because those that read it all have will have already invested time and effort in your site or product and want to get something out of that investment. The key is in finding the right balance - don't overwhelm the user with a giant wall of text, give the already "pre-sold", impatient users an easy way to convert and let the more cautious users keep reading and scrolling down. Typography plays it's part in establishing the content hierarchy, but to say it's the most important part of the design is pretty silly - it's one of many important parts. The actual physical arrangement of page elements is far more critical. (Of course, awful typography can ruin a site, but so can many many other factors)
Didn't Stallman write an update to his original?

It's really hard to miss, right under the title, in big bold type:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
> Will you be able to install IE9 on XP?

No.
Ah: yes, very good point. That's another option rebase gives you that you pretty much can't do with merges. (Throwaway merges plus rerere will give you some of the benefit, but it's not as good as incrementally bringing your branch up to date.)
Another data point for Singapore, values in Singapore Dollar:

My Monthly Expenses will run average S$1.5k

Rent: S$600 (one room in 3-room apartment)

Broadband: Around S$40 - 70

Mobile + 12GB data plan: S$50 (depends on usage on mobile)

Beer: S$2.50 for Tiger beer 323ml can (expensive!!)

Food: S$250 - 300. For lunch, I go for the so called 'economical rice' or 'mixed rice' which will cost you S$2.50 - 3.00 per plate. Dinner I usually cook at home. Average restaurants will cost you S$30 per pax per meal. Posh ones S$90++ and above.

Transportation: S$20 (I live within walking distance to my office)

Movie: S$10 a pop

Big-Mac meal: S$6.50

A mug of Coffee at local store (we call it kopi-tiam): S$0.80 - 1.00
I've used TurboTax for my return for the last five (?) years; I have a full-time job (W-2), but I also do a fair amount of freelancing (1099).

I doubt that I would be able to do my return on my own without TurboTax; it walks you through all of the deductions you can take if you have contracting income - the portion of your mortgage that applies to your home office, any whole-house improvements you made to your home (heating/roofing/etc.), any improvements you made directly to your home office, depreciation of assets used solely for your job, etc. I'm sure that the ~$50 I spend on TurboTax each year is more than offset by the money it saves me.
I think that you must register as being present at an institution, but I am not sure how strongly they check that information. Maybe they take your subs off if you are caught lying, but what are the chances of being caught?
The presentation creates a clear differentiation between Phone 7 and its most obvious competitor with the message "Phone 7 will not turn you in to one of those people." iPhone and Android marketing suggest that the purchase will allow the consumer to assert technical superiority. Microsoft's ad suggests that Phone 7 is the mature choice – Microsoft is on message. The purchase of phone 7 reflects the consumer's character.

The ad is targeted not so much at smartphone users but at smartphone adopters - the same market segment the iPhone capitalizes on. It more or less assumes that everyone who wants an iPhone already has one. More importantly, it sets expectations low (i.e. Phone 7 won't be fun or engaging), and allows Phone 7 to exceed customer expectations quickly during presale.

It's an ad for people who believe "It's a phone, not my life."
This article is Ok, in an introductory sort of way, but these are not "optimizations" in the sense that they will make your code run faster. They're syntactic sugar as heresy says.

They're also not very hidden either.
Come on now, http://www.dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dijit-a11y-statem... . I am doing a project that is using Javascript for a huge public tech company, who gets sued all the time for accessibility for the specific reason that JavaScript can be used to increase accessibility.
I guess I thought this was obvious. I have a hard time believing that most people trying to do a startup don't understand this.

How can you sell something to someone if they don't need it? If they need it, they have a problem they are trying to solve. It's so simple.
Who is suing who in the mobile business - October 2010
spawn, for self-evident reasons
I would imagine fork() in C would be the most obvious.
PC Audiophile and Gaming Headset Round-up: The best cans for your lobes
Twitter wins: Gap Bows to Outcry, Nixes New Logo and Crowdsourcing
What is not clear in the article is that languages and platforms are almost completely orthogonal in most cases.
If we are speaking about the Java platform lock-in, languages are irrelevant, because I can use this platform from multiple languages. Even if I use Python, I can be locked into the Java platform because I call existing Java classes (using Jython). Also, for example whether Java the language is good or bad is irrelevant, because I can use Scala to compile to the Java platform, which is the best programming language I have ever seen (for my taste at least). I can also choose to target the .NET platform from Scala.

So Java platform lock-in can be a problem, I understand. But this seems to be totally orthogonal to the topic of from wich programming languages to which platforms you can compile. These different issues are somehow mixed in the article I think.
If the average developer would prefer to develop for Android rather than Java ME, I think it is indeed relevant.
How is "M$" juvenile? It is a nickname I have seen from many adults but never from children. Do you mean "immature; childish; infantile?" as the dictionary suggests? I don't see hows. It implies to me that the person using the nickname claims that Microsoft is motivated entirely or largely by making money at the expense of all other considerations. It's cut from the same cloth as "MSFT," which implies they value their stock price above all else (this would appear to be wrong, based on the stock's performance, but there you go).

You or I may not agree wit the characterization, but I hardly see this as immature. Informal, perhaps, in comparison to writing "Microsoft (who worship at the Temple of Mammon)..." But I don't see it as childish and juvenile.

There is another possibility. If "M$" has been regularly used by people who are juvenile in other ways, perhaps using "M$" in trollish flamewars and ad hominem diatribes, it can become guilty through association with juvenile rants. Is that the problem here? That the nickname has been used so often by people acting in a juvenile way that it has unpleasant overtones you perceive that are invisible to someone like myself who doesn't share your life experience?
http://www.glendix.org/ is going in that kind of direction, albeit without explicitly doing the bit about porting existing packages. Instead it looks like they're building enough support in Linux to run Plan 9 binaries, and then bringing over the Plan 9 equivalents.

The other existing option would be Plan 9 from User Space (http://swtch.com/plan9port/) which includes Rob Pike's innovative editors, sam and acme.

Of course, the biggest problem these days is sourcing a true three-button mouse to really get the feel of the user interface. Mouse chords in acme don't really feel right with a mouse wheel.
At Spreedly we rarely do any phone pre-sales or support, and that's a very intentional choice. As noted above, good phone support is expensive to provide, and one of the ways we've decided to keep costs down (at least for now) is by sticking to email. For those who want phone pre-sales and support, Chargify's offering looks like it could be a good option.
Wow, thats the nicest designed StackExchange site I've ever seen.

I hope Ubuntu.com picks up on it (or sponsors it directly) so it gets a lot of Google exposure.
int (x86 ASM) - because the little kid will need to call their mother and father sometimes.
(first)
(second)
(third)
(nth )

any Lisp
Gap Bows to Outcry, Nixes New Logo and Crowdsourcing
Yeah, nothings more infuriating than trying to find an answer and you get a blog post about Feisty Fawn.
Ask HN: What tools/frameworks do you use with Python?
Python for web applications. What other tools frameworks do you use on a daily basis for your startup ?
True, but C's past the critical mass where googling for just "C" is likely to get you info about the programming language. 3 of the top 10 results (including #2) are about C programming. Most of the rest are about Citigroup, which has the stock symbol 'C'. (Oddly, Cookie Monster is missing.)
(I think this would be more appropriate on Reddit. I don't mean it in a belittling way, just that there would be more answers and better ranking on Reddit than on HN for this kind of questions.)