skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this problem solved by using a symlink? Creating a symlink with the name Default.png and then dynamically generating the file it points to is basically on par with Apple's built in apps.

http://collison.ie/blog/2008/11/dynamic-defaultpng-files-on-...

The article is from 2008 and the SDK may have since disallowed this behavior. I've not tried it myself.
I may agree that for most types of online APIs currently made available by so many SaaS and web companies, there is probably little use for the WS-* stack. However, corporate America I think will keep relying on SOAP for a long time since it's the only way (that I know of) to get distributed transactions, federated security and other enterprise type features required using web services. The WS-* stack is there for a reason and it's because big business requires it.
Yeah, but I have the advantage of knowing all the forms of the questions. If you were to change one word then mine would break. Or misspell anything.
It's stone soup. I benefit from participating in Yelp because I like the community (or used to) -- writing reviews and getting feedback -- and because I read Yelp for reviews (or used to). The guys/girls who sent up the infrastructure to make that happen should get some soup, too, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I suppose if I were a pro user that created a disproportionate amount of content, I'd complain more. But I don't think that's the point of the above post. The article seems just to express fatigue with internet-related obligations, which I can relate to. But it's couched in this weird resentful language.
He said that there is difference between being really good (most mortals can get there given the effort) and being a genius (for that you need to be a god).
Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I think that we'll have an English-to-English translating algorithm as soon as we have a "classical-masterpiece"-writing algorithm or a "painting-so-beautiful-it-makes-you-cry"-creating algorithm; that is, probably never. I'm no expert writer, but I know a few, and it seems to me that excellent writing style is more than reading Strunk & White cover-to-cover while reciting mnemonics for choosing between "who" and "whom." It's also knowing when to break or bend the rules, how to break or bend the rules, and why to break or bend the rules. That's the kind of spontaneous creativity that I don't think computers are even close to emulating, much less learning.
تحميل ناروتو شيبودن185 | مترجم عربي | Naruto shippuuden 185
Blog post from Oracle's Henrik Ståhl, responsible for product strategy in the Java Platform Group, with a little more detail and comments.

http://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/2010/11/oracle_and_apple_anno...
The man who single handedly stopped a Wall Street coup to overthrow FDR. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
Who wants to play Frontierville with me?
Now that I've got your attention...

I watched a very interesting talk on the future of gaming [1] where the topic of games like Farmville and Mafia Wars comes up later in the discussion.

The speaker, who's also a notable game designer himself, makes an interesting observation. At a meta-level, Farmville is also a game where the developers/designers at Zynga are "farming" the players to attempt to get them to play more, be more sucked into the game, etc.

--

I'd like to learn more about game mechanics and see if I can use them in more productive ways as well. The traditional method appears to be books:

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-books-articles-and-or-blogposts-that-discuss-game-mechanics

I was interested in doing something more interactive, like a workshop or a discussion group or building a prototype. Suggestions? Ideas?

[1]
http://edtech.rice.edu/cms/?option=com_iwebcast&task=webcast&action=details&event=2349
Dear Entrepreneur, Are You Happy?
Why would you buy a physical stop-watch if there are any number of stopwatch web applications and desktop utils?

timer-applet for gnome seems more appropriate.
Obligatory: http://www.translationparty.com/
It's a big day for us at StatSheet!
I thought your idea was great and then I tried out NewsBlur and came to the same conclusion you did. It seems to be filtering based on title, author, publisher, and tag rather than doing any statistical filtering of the text. That's not very useful because I already know who produces great content consistently and I subscribe to their feeds. What I need is a way to filter out the good articles from inconsistent sources.
The Classic Art Of Composing Good Dissertation Titles
Once the dissertation is published, if anyone requires samples of dissertations, it is searched for with the title. Therefore, it is vital that a good dissertation title which provides the reader with information about the dissertation is given to the dissertation.
AirPrint Hacktivator
Shit, this article reminded me to get back to work!

This guy is on the right track. I'm doing something similar. I only work in 60 minute or 3 hour blocks of time. And during that time the email & phone is off - and the FOCUS is on ONE thing. One client. One project. Or one single objective.

It makes structuring your work week more efficient; as it allows you to schedule in advance the areas in your business life that require focus the most.
We track average click position for each query and use that as a measure of effectiveness. We evaluate any changes based on the impact to that metric.
Steve Jobs, a new mogul with old methods
If you're suggesting that Python is a 'good enough' functional language, and that's why the two steps can be consolidated, may I respectfully disagree. Python is either indifferent to functional concepts or actively hostile, depending on how much of a fanboy you are.

Most of the other scripting languages are much more close to functional than Python is.
Great advice; rings true.
On Statistical Significance and SEO Statistical "Studies"
I'm surprised no poker site has launched a site that specifically geared towards algorithmic players. Seems like the kind of thing that might have a niche.
I don't want to argue, but my point is that there surely will be specific TSA agents out there who will abuse their authority in perverted and illegal ways. It would be a shame if complaints against them were buried under complaints from people protesting the policy that the entire agency is operating under.
Are there any good examples out there of services that implement that last level? I have seen and used the others but not discoverability.
I don't want to code quickly, I want to code effectively.

Other than that, we already knew that the subconcious mind needs time to process problems..Now excuse me, I'm gonna go get some fun done.
Don't assume you're doing anything wrong. Just because this technique works for some people doesn't mean it works for you. Depending on the task, I work best with two or three hour chunks of time where I have a lot of time to ramp up, get immersed, then stay there for awhile (although this still requires removing the external distractions). Depending on what you're working on, 50 minutes isn't enough time to ramp up if you're working on a complicated problem and you have to fit the model back into your head.

This is going to be different for everyone, so these examples should only be taken as different ways to approach your work until you find what works. No single approach will work for everyone. I would go nuts if I had to stop every 50 minutes, personally.

If I'm doing cardio and "in the zone" and feel amazing when my time is up, I don't stop. I take the same approach with programming.
Very impressive! 4/5 for me.

Here's the only one that broke:

The 6th letter in "aviator" is?
A: FAILURE
I've done everythign in his list over the last 5 years. Today, I'm coding retro...Smalltalk ;) pharo feels nice.
Point of diminishing returns
Europe could run out of new Internet addresses in 2011: Google VP
Investing in a frenzied market
Experience and priceless mentorship
> There's nothing intrinsically elegant or better with scripting languages.

I would argue that dyanmically typed languages (or static languages with Hindley-Milner) are intrinsically more elegant than statically typed, since you don't have the type information cluttering up your code.

That says nothing about 'better,' of course. But certainly more elegant.
Ask HN: Does anyone else do what I do?
I don't particularly like the work I do at my job. Don't get me wrong, great people, smart people, and much to learn, but the work is not interesting at all.

So when I get home at night, I stay up and work on my own little projects here and there, just so I can remember that programming is a bunch of fun.

Anyone else doing/have done that?

-mohsen
> If I release an open source product, but then say you can only make modifications and sell it if you pass my tests (which I don't make freely available), it's not really open right?

I believe your restriction on making derived works conflicts with just about every free and open-source license out there. What Sun did and Oracle does prohibit you from doing is calling something that doesn't pass the non-freely-available TCK by the name Java or implying it's Java-compatible.

As for Dalvik, it's not derived from a project Oracle contributed the said patents. In this way, Dalvik is not protected agains Oracle's lawyers.
Just letting people know I dropped it from 10 questions down to 5 because right now it's a free google app and I'd rather not pay for CPU-time.
I used to do that at work with a software timer. Sprints of 20 to 40.
The thing is, you still need to pace yourself.
The real reason behind the fast version incrementing of Chrome
No they state right in the Mac App Store guidelines that you cannot.
I've often thought the same, and set out to build song writing software with ML principles. I ended up with iRhyme, an iPhone app that analyzed a huge corpus of existing song lyrics to make a good song writing oriented rhyming dictionary. That worked out well but improving general prose seems difficult. I think domain specific applications could be good stepping stones.
Where is ed?
http://gowalla.com/api/explorer

isn't bad

edit: Btw, any well designed website is at level 3.
Wow! a the Apple-1 is estimated to go for £100,000 - £150,000

I wonder if there are any artifacts from todays companies that we should be grabbing up
To code quickly you should just code quickly. To code difficult stuff lying on the sofa or talking a walk is an excellent way to "meditate" on a solution. If you think through a problem that way the ensuing coding will be quicker and better and save you some trial and error.

It's too bad that most workplaces arent conducive to that kind of workprocess (try lying in a sofa at work and not be called a slacker :)
Isn't this idea very similar to the grammar suggestions you can get from Word? The quality of those suggests it is a very hard problem.
Marketing Lesson from ESPN: Messaging "IN THE RIVER"
I think you'll find a pretty large majority of HNers do that, either just for fun, or in the hope of eventually building a business out of their little projects.

I work for a large game developer by day, and by night I go home and write my own open-source game engine, as it lets me learn what I need to learn. It's very hard to experiment with new techniques at work, but it's important to my skill development. Also the codebase at work is so horrible, that working with a nice, concise C codebase in the evenings is positively pleasant by comparison.
> sales books

Suggestions? There's a lot of stuff out there so I'm looking for HN recommendations.
Given that email is already free, and spammers can register free email accounts, is that really any authentication?

I expect they'll just drop the requirement, and offer you an @facebook.com email during signup.
Scientists calculate how high heels can go
If someone punches me without any provocation (or even a reasonable consequence) and I am pretty sure they'll do it again without provocation, the only reasonable thing to do is defend oneself by hitting back. That is actually most of the basis of martial arts (in almost all forms), so it's a pretty solid idea. I wouldn't do it if I knew they were in a gang and I'd likely end up dead, but that is a reasonable consideration of the situation.
Some classic works are very difficult to read in their native language. I've had Japanese friends say that Genji Motoganari - probably the most famous Japanese literature of all time - is basically unreadable in Japanese, and they didn't "get it" until they read it in English.

I feel the same about some older English works. For a long time, I've thought it'd be cool to have one talented author translate an older English book into modern Japanese, and a second author who hadn't read the original to translate it back to English. I bet it'd be more readable.
The second "I can't believe I wrote this code" (in amazement) is a red flag for me. I always like to look back at code that I wrote years ago and think "That's horrible", or "I can write a better/faster version in half the time!".

To me, it's a measuring device that tells me I have not been stagnant and that I'm improving and honing my skills. And since my code will never be perfect I should always be able to look back in disgust, otherwise, I'm not pushing myself hard enough.
To paraphrase Arthur C.Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Since most users _don't_ understand the technology they use, it is "magical" to them.

The real question: is it good magic or evil magic?

From a normal person's point of view, what Apple does is, usually, good magic.
I used to do that.

The difficulty with this state of affairs is that the work you do at your job begins to become a [time+motivation+energy] sink, and you often find yourself wishing that you could devote more of yourself to your pet projects.

This in turn affects your performance at work, giving you a perpetually negative loop that's broken when you shift jobs.

There are very few excuses, I think, to not find good work these days. Pay with personal circumstances is the only I can think of - if you have a family with enough children to make accepting lower pay for better an impossible decision, for example.

I beleive that you have just this life to live. Make the most of it.
This is one of the best (but simple) explanation of REST.
Good job on the code and kudos for not just releasing the code without giving the author some time.
> Apple deserves to be lauded for not using overly boring adjectives once in their boilerplate blurb.

Plaudits for using hyperbole? Oh laud, gag me with a spoon, please.
Xkcd - Illness
> This score is based on a composite of a variety of factors including the length of their sessions, the standard deviation of those lengths, times played, and consistency of play schedule

It seems that anyone able to write a poker bot is able to tell it to take breaks every now and then. This doesn't seem like a war the poker sites can win.
Try a scripting language; you might change your mind. There is a reason why they are so popular. It doesn't take too long to see why once you try. Things that used to take forever to get working just seem to work on the first or second try. Am I getting smarter? Maybe, but more likely the language really is intrinsically better (I tried Python).
Tesla Coils Down Under
One thing some people do is take an article on the net, use Google translate to translate it into some other language and then back to English, and put it as an article on their website to attract money from Google ads. This counts as better, for a suitably restricted definition of "better" -- it makes approximate sense and is different enough from the original that Google doesn't spot it.
You're using the wrong definition. "Open" in this context is the same as OpenVMS, Openstep, OpenLook, Openview, yadda yadda. Open standard, not open source.
Good point on concurrent programming. Programs aren't going to get twice as fast every 18 months on their own anymore. We are going to have to learn to make use of multiple cores. Google's go language is an obvious contender.
I wonder, then, if they'll ever enter into web search. It would make sense, given the seeming herd migration of engineers from Google (though I don't know how many were from Search).
It's totally hilarious to me that you had to protect your captcha breaker with a captcha.
People here understand what's possible. They are aware when something is sub-optimal. If I go and ask the majority of people on the street they won't even know they have a problem.
James Frey’s Fiction Factory
Tired of TSA body scans and groping?  Things you can do
Housewives of God: Profile on Gender Roles and Conservative Christians
depends on the guide I guess, I've been there about 4 times (used to live just down the road, and the ticket is for a whole year!) and took the tour twice, the code-breaking content wasn't highly technical, but it was covered in a decent amount of depth I felt.

Riddle from the tour: What must you add to nine to get six? (and no, it's not -3)
I do. However, not because I'm unhappy with what I do at work (I'm completely statisfied). It's just that I love to tinker, so I continue to do that even when I get home.
If you can't beat a bot then poker is not the right game for you.
Tumblr lands "very big and competitive" round from Sequoia
With links to incident report forms from EPIC and ACLU.
"This is one of the best written and slickest proposals I have ever read. Do NOT fund this work under any circumstances."- NSF grant reviewer

That's eminently quotable.

edit: "rant reviewer" => "grant reviewer"

edit2: proposal => proposals (even though it's proposal in the link, putting proposal[sic] just looks odd).
I think you should release your wonderful algorithm not directly as a way to hack text-captchas but in some other useful forms.
It's an absolutely acceptable use of the verb "define." There's nothing about it that requires an animate subject.
"He was looking for young writers to join him on a new publishing endeavor—a company that would produce mostly young-adult novels. Frey believed that Harry Potter and the Twilight series had awakened a ravenous market of readers and were leaving a substantial gap in their wake. He wanted to be the one to fill it."

"In exchange for delivering a finished book within a set number of months, the writer would receive $250 (some contracts allowed for another $250 upon completion), along with a percentage of all revenue generated by the project"
Most of the home pages for these writing tools are missing the most important thing: a full screenshot of the app! Why all the tiny crops, screencasts, and written descriptions?
What a beauty, That is true computer science
Diễn Đàn Máy Chủ Việt Nam - Trang Tin
These questions didn't work for me

Q: How many thousands is a million?

Q: How many millions is a billion?

Q: There is a dog, cat and a goat: First animal?

Q: There is a dog, cat and a goat: How many humans?

Q: Black, White: Which is dark?
Breakfast is Overrated
Where is console Vim?
See the notes http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/program.php?test=regex...
I dunno man, I play with my iPad quite a bit and it really does seem just about sufficiently advanced.
Can I ask what you're using to do the parsing? Or did you write your own?

This is definitely the kind of thing that I could see doing with REBOL's parse operator, but Python doesn't (seem to) come with such a tool built in.

Thanks!
Microsoft: Only 60 Percent Of Xbox 360 Owners Use It To Play Games
I think reversing a linked-list using recursion is a walk in the park compared to trying to understand patent/trademark law for software.
Now I see why - it comes with the optional cassette interface and BASIC on a tape :)

Seriously it is an exceptional artifact: original invoice (Salesperson: STEVEN) and a typed note from Steven Jobs explaining how to hook-up a TV and keyboard:
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ZoomImage.aspx?image=/lot...
Look at the source code of the other C regex-dna programs which don't use glib or Tcl libraries.
Vision blindness
It seems so. However, notice that the average poker bot programmer is a 20-something, highly intelligent hacker and that most of them don't have all that much money. Why do they write poker bots? (a) to make money. (b) to beat the system. (c) boredom.

(a) doesn't work when all the other players are also good poker bots. Botting lives from the simple fact that most poker players are shit. (b) also doesn't apply, for obvious reasons. So, now you are left with the (c)s. Those will leave when they find something more interesting.

Seemed to be a good idea. Well, it's probably not.

(PS: There are poker bot competitions. The bigger ones have university teams competing, the smaller ones (the ones I found via Google) usually don't get enough entrants.)
Palin e-mail snoop sentenced to year in prison
If a company wants to dazzle me with bombastic statements they can at least try to not be boring.

(I’m also not sure whether it’s hyperbole. I would guess that many people working at Apple actually believe the boilerplate. That might make them deluded but not hyperbolic.)
My idea: A shirt with a witty "security theater" slogan on the front, but also has a metallic thread woven into it so it spells "LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?" or "F YOU TSA" when viewed through the backscatter xray.
Tell & Ask HN: What you can do about the TSA
The atrocities committed (and being committed) by the TSA as of late are mind-numbing, irrational, and very un-American. Nearly to the man, HNers hate this kind of intrusion into freedoms. It's time something was done about it.

Latest example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896896
HN has been full of stories, it won't take much digging to find them.

Here's what you can do (if you're a citizen, or possibly if you aren't.):

1. Contact your Congressperson. (Find contact information here: http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/)
2. Contact your senator: http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/
3. Contact the president: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
4. Contact the TSA directly: http://www.tsa.gov/contact/index.shtm
5. Contact the Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/xutil/contactus.shtm

What do you say to your representatives & the government agencies?

0.5. Be respectful, always.
1. Inform them of the situation. They probably know; they might not.
2. Tell them you despise what the TSA is doing.
3. Ask (or demand) them to make this their first order of business next session of congress.
4. Request a response.

Most of the representatives have phone numbers, fax numbers, emails, online contact forms, and mailing addresses. Contact them in as many ways as possible.

Here's what you can do wherever you are:

1. Contact your local, state, and national news agencies and papers. Inform them. Coerce them. Get them to run stories.
2. Tell friends and family. (Please don't use one of those bold, color font emails though.)
3. Write about it.

This is still the government for the people, by the people, and of the people. We just need to remind them alot of what the people believe.

I'm sure I'm missing some ways to communicate. If you have any further suggestions, comment!
Why is that idea disgusting? When people know what they say will get translated, they tend to think in terms of the end result. This would promote the use of proper English, because that's how it would be read and written. When I code in a programming language, I am constantly thinking about what the language constructs mean, not what they literally say. The disjointed net-speak would just become a form of shorthand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand).