skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's assume I accept your premise.

What does that say the state governments of NY and California should do? If the Federal government is subjecting them to an unfair transfer payment burden to the interior states, well, that's just a "cost of doing business in the US". There are, after all, precious few people out there who pay their taxes with a song in their heart and a spring in their step.

I.e. on an imaginary balance sheet for the states' budgets, it's a single line item in the liability section. Given that, it's still the responsibility of the state governments to manage their finances.

For better or worse, these states have to live within their means. Putative exploitation by the rest of the country does not absolve them of that responsibility.
I've probably fallen for these more often than I'd like to admit. Yet sometimes a naïve "how hard could it be" is exactly the right approach that leads to unexpectedly simple solutions.
This may be the explanation you are referring to:

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=67346...
JRockit was already a premium JVM.

OpenJDK was already free.

This isn't really an announcement, per se, but what I like about it is that it means they're going to continue working on JRockit (that they got from BEA's acquisition).

I've seen gains of over 100% using JRockit with Weblogic, which I also worried might fall by the wayside with Oracle's acquisition.

I'm still not 100% sure on which way Webcenter is headed, and what exactly it's based on (as I'm not in that particular business anymore) -- but hopefully it scrapped all the aging AquaLogic code that BEA was still peddling as 'cutting edge'.
Bookmarks: Add-ons for Firefox
Oddly, c# isn't hated at all...
I read the lack of mentioning source control this way: it is just assumed that they use some sort of version control system, and for many of them, they are content to use whatever is used in their working environment.
Robert Love (of Linux Kernel Fame) Uses This
I know what you're talking about pretty well (I used a macro to generate those things). I always figured it was a trace of a more rigorous documentary scheme used for automatically generating scripting documentation or something. Like once you get used to seeing them, you want them between every function, or if you start writing a function you always start with the hedgerows. Not sure.

I hadn't seen those specifically at other developers, but I had seen a row of slashes between functions at a couple of other PC developers. I don't recall seeing them with console folks, though.
Because more important than the market share is the stock market, and a lot of those people still think like this author that the market share is the number they should focus on. Talking about the iOS market share is more a way to keep this people's confidence than a reflection of Apple's strategy. Apple's current market share is just a by-product of their profit machine.
Ruby ORMs like DataMapper and ActiveRecord are datastore-independent and provide similar functionality. I'm sure similar ORMs exist for other languages.
Presuming the CPU takes it into account in addressing modes (so that e.g. [EAX + EDX * 4 + 13], like you might see when accessing a field of an element in an array, still returns 0 if EAX is 0), you'd stil have problems similar to non-signalling NaNs vs signalling NaNs: you want the problems associated with a bug to be localized to where the bug is, and not leak out. When the bad value escapes into other code and causes problems down the line, it can be hard to figure out where the value came from.
"yummy vegan treats."

Oxymoron, fellow weekend warrior. Butter must be included. However, it is not an element in the periodic table of deliciousness--because it is so fundamental it is the up-quark of baking.
i'm half way through it. it's quite interesting, but i seriously wish it were 25% as long.
i read these articles because i honestly hope to get something life changing out of them, not for the pleasure of illustrative anecdotes.

I have no idea why you think that this expectation is shared by any of the other readers or writers of the New Yorker. It sounds completely backwards to me. I have zero interest in getting anything life-changing out of a magazine article, and a great deal of interest in anecdotes.

If you don't like it, flag it, but don't tell other people to brainstorm how to make things we like more like the things you like.
Foley Artist
At the risk of being pedantic: quicksort has a worst-case runtime of O(n^2).
Um, no, K&R braces after function declaration are in the next line, because they are special.

Braces after if, for, while, switch, etc. are on the same line, and yes, it was to save space on the 80x24 screen.

Get a copy of "The C Programming Language, Second Edition". It's right in there. It's the only technical computer book I know that is still accurate after more than twenty years.

I also recommend reading the Linux kernel style guide http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle . It's fun to read and has some good points. Sticks quite close to K&R.
Ha! I don't want it, but techimps.com is hilarious. Oh geez, textmama.com.
Are you sure you're spelling it right? The top Google hit for [tryptomine] suggests it might be an oral tryptophan -- an amino acid. But, the second hit suggests 'tryptomine' is a no longer-issued drug, and there aren't the wide range of hits typical for the standard name of a currently-prescribed drug.

The amino acid tryptophan is available as an over-the-counter supplement in the US. It's often popularly blamed for post-Thanksgiving-dinner drowsiness, as it naturally occurs in turkey meat, but I recall seeing a debunking that the levels there are probably meaningless compared to other tiring rituals/portions of that traditional dinner.

In the US, prescriptions come with a long insert with tiny print with tons of drug information, and usually a smaller single-page larger-print insert mentioning the key dosage, side-effect, and counter-indications/incompatibility considerations.

It's also common for the prescribing doctor, and the separate pharmacist who usually 'fills' prescriptions, to add oral warnings about major considerations. These quite commonly include a "don't drive after taking" clause, or something to the effect of: "this makes many people drowsy, get used to its effects for a few days before doing anything risky".

Your point is well taken -- anyone given a new drug should learn as much about it as practical before taking it, from the person delivering it and other independent sources in print or via the web.
- Taking either path won't guarantee you a good life in 10 years. Smart choices along the way AND hard work will.
- There is no "one path" to follow. Make your own path.
- You are very young still, you can finish your studies and do startups later.
- Finish your studies and enjoy university while you are young. you will be glad you did later.
- Study something that will be useful in your startups later. Let your school subsidy pay to start your training in being an expert.

Good luck.
But a more specific library would be better able to cope with the unique features of a particular database. Why send commands via 'prompt' when a more specialised library will have functions to do that job?

I think there's definitely a place for libraries that add things like validation to models. But the more functionality you include, the more specific your library needs to be.
Mother Madness
I don't agree with the space in the users given example. If those were each 4-5 lines of distinct functionality it makes sense but if every line gets called "distinct" and you have almost as much white space as text that's silly.

I definitely think it improves readability to break up these chunks of functionality. The problem, though, is I can't think of a good example that I don't think will have someone tell me to put them in two different methods...
I think great products tend to have a lot of complexity, but most of the complexity is hidden away from the user. This picture sums up this thought (and it mimics Gabriel's iceberg metaphor quite well): http://amix.dk/blog/post/19555#The-essence-of-minimal-produc...
This one is awesome, I just used it to buy a domain! Good job!
Google would have nixed Hadoop if they were playing the same game. Instead they gave them a BigTable patent license.

There are many shades of evil, but theirs is far less dark than Oracle's.
Yep. GitHub has an API so that could be useful. I'm sure people will want to discuss projects and ask questions, especially with the admin or creator.

Also, I was thinking that a widget would be good, so existing sites could let its users know it's looking for development help. These sites would build up a record of people that have contributed code.
Cross-browser chat script
I'll use blank lines if there is nothing else, but I tend to find that when you need to use blank lines to delineate function that a refactoring is in order.

The example

for (int i; i < 10; ++i)
{
if (i % 3 == 0) continue;

array[i] += 2;
}

Could be rewritten as:

for (int i; i < 10; ++i)
{
if (i % 3 != 0){
array[i] += 2;
}
}
Or you would convince yourself that the widget is pretty awesome since, to be honest you paid a hefty price tag - which a sane person wouldn't do for a sub-par product?
Ask HN: Are you an entrepreneur or just like to build things?
During the last years I've been developing web sites as a hobby, I really enjoy doing the development, improving performance, and always looking for new ideas to build. But I don't feel like an entrepreneur, I'm still working for a company and basically don't want to leave as I prefer to build sites as a hobby without the pressure to making them profitable.

Is any of you in the same situation?
Qualities of Productive Creatives
>Just set a few values in Xorg.conf and nowdays it even works without this sometimes.

you make it sound like it was an advantage.
Televite
Please rate my project. I've been working on this for few days now and really wanted to get some feedback on it before I go ahead and launch with tons more features. Do you think this is a viable idea to pursue?

http://televite.totalengage.com
Ask HN: Must programmers be fast?
How fast do employers expect me to program?

I'm fond of programming in general, however, when I'm being stressed and have to meet deadlines here at my university I get uncomfortable. And I feel like a code generating machine, where I cant afford enjoy the activity by honing my assignment. Will this change when (if) I become a working programmer?
Again this topic brings out the "Always use relational databases" folks.

You show that strawman who's boss!

I don't get why people steadfastly assume everything fits the paradigm they're most comfy with.

Indeed.
I should have known people would focus on that one phrase.

If you must know, yes, I feel contempt for someone who acts like this, and I was unsuccessful in hiding that. I think the collective response of males and/or geeks to this story is pretty revolting. Over on Reddit, the crudest and most hostile comments are being upvoted. On HN, we avoid crudeness, but neither can we escape from the black hole of geek discussions, libertarianism and related fantasies of complete self-reliance. Way to go, internet.

I also understand that sometimes people who aren't neurotypical really do need things explained to them in extremely literal terms. In the past, I might have been as clueless, probably more clueless. So I tried to focus on being constructive, although I did fail.
It only sounds. But for complicated algorithms (I wrote a lot computer vision algorithms), there are just too much inter-dependence between two blocks of code making the ideal case of refactoring to serveral small functions impossible. It is OK to write a function with more than 100 LOC.
> which still isn't insignificant

An extra second of page load isn't as noticable as 8 extra seconds of page load. Especially on older systems where you might be used to some amount of delay (but not 8 seconds of delay on internal apps).
The book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less" http://www.amazon.com/Hare-Brain-Tortoise-Mind-Intelligence/... goes into detail about how intuition works, where it comes from, what it's good at and what it's not good at. IMO, Gladwell's "Blink" was heavily based on "Hare Brain".

tldr: Intuition has a larger short-term memory space. It can process more complex systems than verbalized thinking. However, because it is not verbalized, it is difficult to componentize, communicate or reapply. It also does not work well on-demand or under pressure.
I had the same thought, Stack Overflow is the canonical iceberg in this context. I hope this will pull the blinders from some peoples eyes.
And then they have to read someone else's code that did the exact same thing, and they gripe about the code not being able to be understood.
Strangely, I like the Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart sites better...how did this happen?

http://www.barnesandnoble.com

http://www.walmart.com
Is 'vi' mature? Or are you talking about Vim? vi has been around a long time, but the functionality is rather limited compared to Vim. When was the last development on vanilla vi (not Vim in compatibility mode)?

[ keep in mind that 'mature' != 'old' ]
What does that say the state governments of NY and California should do?

Practically speaking, they should do what they're doing now: work to get their budgets in order. What do you think the alternative is?

But it would be more equitable for states like NY and CA to break into several smaller states. After all, the reason underpopulated and economically underperforming states in the middle of the US get so much cash from the federal government is that they get extra representation in the Senate. Breaking CA and NY into a bunch of small states each with its own pair of Senators would allow them to establish a much more equitable distribution of federal resources, which would in turn dramatically improve their long term budgets.

Putative exploitation by the rest of the country does not absolve them of that responsibility.

Given that I supplied data, there is nothing putative about it.

What exactly do you think that NY/CA will do instead of "live within their means"? Do you think they'll just start printing money? Launch a war of aggression against NJ or OR to seize assets? What?
I disagree. I'd rather see one million people inconvenienced by taking off their shoes than see one person killed by a bomb. I think the terrorists are the other way around.
I code like this. It is easier to identify code structure.

for (int i; i < 10; ++i) {
if (i % 3 == 0) {
continue;
}
array[i] += 2;
}

I use blank lines to separate declaration and other codes, and logical block within a function, and also between functions.

It is no use for me to put blank lines between statements. It would better to view structure in one screen. Scrolling between pages make me tired too.
The fate of the Microsoft Kinect
Is the tech bubble about to burst?
Mac OS X 10.6.6 Beta released ahead of 10.6.5
As you go further into the path of becoming a master in some subject of your choice, knowledge becomes part of you, and is therefore more intuitive than rational. You don't rationalize how to walk. You just do it.
Now, if we're talking of a beginner in something, rationalization is a must. He can't relay on intuition, because there's none, or perhaps some but innaplicable to the subject, because it comes from previous unrelated experiences. The walking seems to be a bad example here, but if you think about it, a baby learns also by trial and error. He can't truly rationalize, but he wants it so bad (and is also very much encouraged to it) that he learns and grows intuition without thinking about it.
Decisions are made based on whether you can decide using your guts or your brain. And that depends on your previous experience with similar decisions, either learnt from others or on your own.
Steve jobs is right because as he's said numerous times, he doesn't give a shit about market share, what he gives a crap about are profit share and making great products, I suspect the latter is primarily to ensure the former.

The low end of Apple's products are last year's model. With 3 generations going they don't need to make 'low-end' hardware, Moore's law takes care of that for them.
Do you keep a record of messages sent between accounts? Do you keep a record of the actual message content? If so, how long do you keep it for, and why?
This is my general take on it as well.
For what it's worth, she goes on in the comments to point out that some significant number of those 50 were not men. Seeing that she consciously chose the inclusive '50 people' rather than '50 men', I think you may be reading something into the essay that was not intended.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning[1] is a great read for anybody interested in understanding how the features of our mind affect our work as programmers.

The leading thought of the book is that we should put more attention to the R-mode of thinking, traditionally associated with the right brain, which is responsible for creativity, pattern matching and intuition.

Moreover there is a fragment which states that depending on intuition works only when you reach a certain level of competence and gather enough experience to "feed" the unconsciousness processing.

http://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-lear...
Would it be that impossible to keep a counter of what iteration of function X the user is on? Or, does tail recursion also count things like:

int A() { return 1 + B(); }

int B() { return 1 + A(); }

(with necessary ending conditions)
Perhaps because they're simpler. You'd expect that to work better if the test is how nice a site looks rather than how well it converts.
Previous submissions on this topic:

http://searchyc.com/submissions/reprap?sort=by_date
A cool site that could maybe give you some publicity is MakeUseOf.com. I've seen similar services announced on there, and that could at least get bump in the number of users.
Book critic reads rap on paper, then listens
I'd say that sucky features don't lose you customers, they lose you time. My users have never (to my knowledge) quit in disgust over a poorly implemented feature, but they complain a lot about them and send me support requests if they're confused. This means I'm often re-explaining the same things or dealing with the same problems over and over. You spend your time either supporting or fixing it.
Fair enough, but I wouldn't consider any of those to be "won" as if nobody's ever going to hack them.

BD+ in particular, I thought some commercial program was already able to emulate. And I haven't heard of any movies where there are no pirated versions available, but I don't watch them at all, so I might be out of the loop.

And mere Blu-Ray (for those disks without BD+), is pretty well cracked at this point if one is to believe the hexadecimal numbers going around the internet.
At the risk of sounding humourless, this a joke right?
How Facebook Checkin Deals Work
It'll be a lot less than 10 years. We can already play Quake2 running on JavaScript in the browser.

http://tatari.se:8080/GwtQuake.html
For right now, I find Ruby's datamapper to be state of the art for providing a uniform interface to many back end data stores. Definitely take a very good look at datamapper to collect ideas for a Clojure library.
Zed Shaw, LPTHW, & Learn You An Ruby
Yes, that is the intuitive way to think about it -- connect the fan to the wheels and gear it to blow air backwards faster than the wheels are moving forwards.

You are harnessing the speed difference between the ground and the air and gearing it up to move yourself faster than the difference.
I'm a hacker who has a small hope that maybe something I do will help others and make me a little money on the side.

Short Answer: Yes.
You could probably build such a propeller to a boat as well, having the wind drive the underwater propulsion (only with worse efficiency than with rolling wheels, though).

You could build a similar device that travels upwind as well, albeit slower, right? The energy extracted from headwind by the propeller needs to be greater than the energy needed to keep the vehicle stationary against the headwind.

Using a Darrieus or Savonius turbine on the vehicle or boat would allow for more flexible headings without having to point the propeller to headwind direction.
Also, according to http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/tryptophan-serotonin-aging... rats fed a diet without tryptophan lived almost twice as long.

When rats were fed a diet completely lacking tryptophan for a short period, or a diet containing only one fourth of the “normal” amount for a more prolonged period, the results were surprising: They kept the ability to reproduce up to the age of 36 months (versus 17 months for the rats on the usual diet), and both their average longevity and their maximum longevity increased significantly. They looked and acted like younger rats. (A methionine-poor diet also has dramatic longevity-increasing effects.)

It has nothing to do with your post but I found it interesting.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't that the purpose of the adapter implementations to also hold the different dialect and/or datastore specific optimizations?

[edit] OT to this thread: didn't clojure-dbm have some similar ideas to Clojurize? I remember forking it from your github repository early last year some time and doing some cool stuff with it.
> AddType application/octet-stream .pdf

Please don't do this. I would rather have my browser's default behavior for application/pdf than have your web site force it to treat your PDF files as opaque binary blobs.
Code iceberg is in the eye of the beholder. Recently started bizdev-people consistently underestimate the time requirements for certain well-exercised tasks.

Some of the most common icebergs are:

-form validation (seriously -one of the most highly exercised user-interaction paths; it's all over the place, and scales semi-exponentially with the number of fields)

-search ("how hard could it be? you just put an input form there, then figure out what the user thought, then display it" -exact quote)

-anything that has to process natural language. I mean everything. Wanna split up a text into sentences? How do you differentiate between dr. mr., 2004. jun. , and valid sentence-enders? Generating a definite article ("a", "an") before a noun? Keep in mind that 1,2,@,$,=, and other characters might also be valid noun first-letters :)
etc.

In my experience, the best anti-iceberg pattern is to follow a portfolio approach, and for each requirements which smells like iceberg, have a fallback plan in place -ie. after N hours of sunken investment, execution shifts to plan B. Usually works out much better, than banging away on the same problem for days.
RubyHulk.com is available! :O
JetMan
Last week I bought a top-of-the-range camera from Nikon. Excellent camera in every way : Great purchase.

This week, Nikon has discontinued the camera, and has announced that there's going to be a new range, even better, coming along soon.

Do I now love my camera as much as I used to?

Rationally, my opinion shouldn't have changed. But I sure wish that I had known that my investment in the previous product was a dead-end.
Except that Foxconn is a manufacturing company that builds to spec. HTC designs the hardware and does white labeling. That is a VERY important distinction.
Kinect vs. PlayStation Move vs. Wii: Motion-Control Showdown
Internal Email on Why a Software Company Migrates Away from MySQL
it isn't that toy will win. It is that the things evolve into the "toys", ie. much better UX.