skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I've been doing some android programming recently, and working with Java without IoC is simply unbearable.

Can't you use Guice with Android? I'd be surprised if you can't.
Thanks for that. Yea, basically looks like "Quora meets Foursquare". Hmm, pretty hard to maintain stealth when the back door is wide open on one city...
Since you and goldenthunder completely missed this, allow me to clarify that OP could have been critiquing the project's choice of variable names and I would have said the exact same thing.

My statement wasn't about tests in the slightest.
You can only beat an opponent if you're playing the same game.
Grats donohoe, well done. What is of particular interest to me here is the use of the Levenshtein distance algorithm. The reason this works well here is because you are comparing your supplied key against a constrained set. Applying the Levenshtein distance algorithm (or its variants) against a constrained set of small size in this fashion has virtually no performance impact as the time to complete is entirely based on the size of the set you are matching against. On the other hand, matching against a set of millions of records does get costly.
With great power comes great responsibility. No, really! That's not just a cliche.

Macros are like guns. See gun ownership debates...
BTW, on this note.. the book In Search of Stupidity makes an interesting argument about marketing high-tech products... the idea being that the race goes to the entity that avoids making the stupid, crippling mistake. In other words, you don't have to be faster, smarter, stronger, etc. than the competition; you just have to be patient and avoid that one big f%!#-up that takes them down.

Ok, that's paraphrased slightly, but that's the gist of it. For more:

http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/
Using the Twitter Streaming API for Real-time Analysis in .NET
I don't see much benefit to support HTML5 in webm or theora. One of the benefits of html5 over flash was the prospect of better resource handling and smooth play, but now as systems get faster, and flash better, there is less and less reason to go down this path. h264 is smooth enough in flash now, and it's about to get even better in the new flash release.

There are no real hardware/product reasons for websites to support webm right now.

h264 on the other hand gets the benefit of working with all the iphone and more recently apple tv.
Promised new update this year will even allow HTML5 video to be streamed to apple TV directly from the browser of iphones, ipads, and i imagine safari. This is one of these technologies that will really increase the use of h264.

I run the larges cycling site and we handle 100s of niche video uploads per day so I follow this closely, and as much as I'd like to jump on webm, I'm going to definitely hold of.
Currently we convert videos to 3 formats to try handle all cases, and having to now multiply that by 2 with another codec is a lot of extra resources.

2.5 mbit h264 web HD/appletv h264
1 mbit h264 for web SD/iphone
300 kbit mobile

- webm makes no sense in the short term.
- you need apple support to make webm happen faster

Think about all the extra resources, time, effort that you are asking from companies in the world to support the 2 formats. If you want to be efficient with society, keep the support of h264 while webm development happens, transition once all the big players support the new format. Alternatively take all the money/time/efforts and get apple to transition. If apple does not jump on the wagon, it's going to be years and years of wasted resources in society.
Fb is unlike anything else we've seen recently. Their goal is to dominate, completely dominate every second that you are online (and if they execute well on places then even when you are offline). And they will figure out a way to make money off you. The more they know about you, your friends, your likes/dislikes it will tailor advertising/service offerings that match your taste. And like someone else mentioned games is another huge revenue stream..

As much as I am not a fan of their biz model, its inevitable that they stand to make huge $$ going forward..
Really? "Disruptive Technology" don't happen?

Google drove the cost of smartphone OSes down to as near to zero as patent law will allow.

I'd say that is a game changer.

How much does WebM cost?
I don't think that is a counterexample.

"" + 5

is defined by translation to

new StringBuilder("").append(5)

which statically resolves to the method StringBuilder.append(int), whose implementation explicitly converts 5 to a string.

Java does offer a counterexample to "strong typing means no implicit conversion", though:

String s = "foo";
Object o = s;

I just implicitly converted a String to an Object, which the GP's definition disallows.

Of course you can fix up the definition for Java by adding the proviso "except upcasting a derived type to a superclass of that type", but the fact that you have to add a language-specific proviso indicates why there's no accepted common definition.

But at least with that proviso our definition works for all object-oriented languages, right? Well, actually it still doesn't even work for Java, because since Java 1.5 you can say:

int i = 2;
Integer i2 = i;

So Java needs an exception for upcasting, and for autoboxing, and we probably should worry about exactly what type we think 'null' has...
> My experience, in practice, is that when people say "strong" and "weak", I do indeed find that as cdsmith says, "strong" mostly corresponds to "it makes me comfortable".

But even people who are very comfortable in C, do not say that C is strongly-typed.

In my experience, people agree on which languages are strongly- or weakly-typed, and that can be used to reverse-engineer the definition, based on the properties those languages differ on. Assembly, C, and PHP are all weakly-typed, at the very least, and their proponents agree with this. They don't agree on why they are weakly-typed, simply that they are.

The original definition I ever heard for weak-typing, back when C and Assembler were the only things that had it, was "a weakly-typed language allows you to take the raw, in-memory representation of data of type A, and perform operations on it as if it were data of type B that had an equal raw, in-memory representation." The most famous example of this is Quake's fast invsqrt(), where the bytes making up a float have int operations applied to them, as if they were bytes making up an int.

Of course, PHP doesn't have this capability, but we still call it weakly-typed. So the definition must have moved on from its previous strict form. What does PHP allow you to do, that gets it called weakly-typed? This:

echo "(" + 5 + ")"; # prints "5"!

PHP, here, is taking the Strings "(" and ")" and interpreting them as numbers for the purposes of the addition operator. However, the strings "(" and ")" are not valid numbers—but PHP is fine with this, and uses the default numeric value of 0 to represent this invalidity.

The similarity with the original definition, is that the data is transformed from one type to another, not implicitly, and not that the raw representation of the data is used, but rather without a guarantee that the datatypes have the same capacity for informational entropy. In other words, casting "(" to a number silently loses data, just as storing an int in a char variable in C silently loses data. This fact seems to be universal to all languages that get called "weakly-typed", and non-existent in any language that has never had that epithet applied to it.

It has nothing to do, notice, with whether a language will implicitly cast values—as long as all implicit conversions happen upward to types that have "room" for all the information in the original representation (char -> int, int -> String, int -> float) the language is still strongly-typed. And notice that the datatype itself being lost in a typecast (String -> Object) cannot be a reason to call a language weakly-typed because, in an interface-like cast like this, all the data is still retained, and its original form can be reclaimed simply by casting it back (Object -> String).
Killing H.264, a popular format, in a growing browser is much more of a headscratcher.

H.264 is not open. WebM is. WebM also has the technical quality to rival H.264 (which Theora does not) Certainly there are downsides to this decision but doesn't seem like a total headscratcher to me.

And history has shown that in the end, users were at the very center of those decisions, even if the consequences were initially unfamiliar.

You realize you could say the exact same thing about Google's decision now?
Heh! I wrote out four paragraphs responding to your comment, but then I realized that since I like the saying so much, I ought to take its advice. Carry on without me.
Hardly. The attitude you're demonstrating is the real anathema. You're just confusing people recoiling from your abrasive disposition with disagreement over the importance of tests (as others have done in this thread).

> Enterprise JS is 400 lines of code... 0 lines of tests. Kudos, NYT.

See how your comment carries across a real difficulty working with other people? This would have said the same thing, albeit without the slam to the author:

> This project has no tests. Maybe I'll fork it and add some, in order to make it more robust.

Another example from your history:

> adding position:relative without knowing what it does... great advice

Someone made a good point here which is actually grounded in reality, and you responded with a smartass remark which might have discouraged him from contributing in the future. One of the guidelines for Hacker News is that you shouldn't write a comment that you wouldn't say to someone's face. If you go around quipping like that to peoples' faces, I pity your acquaintances.

You could have worded it this way:

> That isn't what position: relative is meant for. There is another way to accomplish that: <blah>

Just be positive to your fellow human being. It's not fucking difficult. That's why you're getting downvoted.
Understanding Postcard Sizes: How to Choose The Right One for You
Size matters when it comes to using postcards as marketing tools. Likewise, you need to understand the different sizes available if you want to print postcards for personal purposes too. Jumbo postcards with attractive designs can easily stand out in people's mailbox. Small printed cards, on the other hand, cost less for both printing and mailing.
That reminds me of http://www.tynt.com/
Hey, not a sidetrack at all, and I appreciate the link.

At the risk of putting this back on discussion though, from the outside EBS looks like a separate, but complimentary product for EC2, which will further muddy the waters for someone not familiar with Amazon's platform, which leaves room for a someone like PHPFog to swoop in as a middleman to provide a turnkey solution to the problem of getting PHP developers and Drupal/Wordpress site owners up and running in a scalable cloud environment. It's not that this is hard for someone to solves on their own, it's that for a lot of developers in the PHP Ecosystem there's too much inertia to get around to it.
Three things:

1) I really feel for those guys. Technology is like that: one day you're on top and the next day you're on the street

2) Work as hard as you can at something and never regret it. The only person that can make you feel tricked into working 20-hour days is yourself. Don't do that to yourself.

3) Bitterness isn't going to make it any better. Sucks to hear that, yes, but what you need now most of all is a positive attitude and motivation to go out and kick ass. Might take some time to get that back, but work on that instead of chewing on what some C-level jerk is planning on doing or has done to a company you're no longer with.

Thinking about my comments some, there's probably a very good reason I never had a job as a counselor. Sometimes what folks really need is a beer and somebody to complain to. Sadly, I'm probably not that guy.
Silver is also has anti-bacterial properties if I recall.

NASA supposedly uses silver elements in ISS crew clothes to kill bacteria and eliminate odors

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2009-07-30-astron...

It would be perfect for fillings.
Hmm true. I wonder how different the hardware decoding is...
I don't remember reading it any dialogue, just stumbled upon it on the web. Quite frankly I'm not 100% sure it's a genuine quote, but it's a good one nonetheless ;)
Maybe, but this is in stark contrast to the courage of Pixar's bosses in saving their employees that recently was on the front page. Easy to be cynical about life in BigCorp and the vicissitudes of your bosses, but doesn't make it any less wrong to treat people who trust you this way.
I care because I like Chrome and was enjoying using it to play H.264 video. I may switch to Safari.

I also care because I was very excited about the near ubiquity a video codec had finally reached in 2010. I don't want to go back to encoding for multiple formats (I hate you 3GP). I won't encode multiple formats until I have to, but the transition to a new standard is always painful and time consuming. If WebM "wins" I get to re-encode thousands of videos and since we now outsource that to Zencoder that means thousands of dollars to do so.
> They're a trade body promoting CDMA -- what would you do in their shoes?

I would either tell the truth or quit the job. I take my professional code very seriously.
Yes, I think I get that, but if everything was done to HIG all apps would look the same (much like all writing conforming to Formal English reads the same). I think what I'm asking is this, what can they do to conform to good GUI guidelines (HIG compliance doesn't necessarily answer that mail) and still maintain a unique looking interface?

Also, in many cases, the developer may not know what's wrong with their interface or why it doesn't comply with HIG.

Non-constructive criticism like this (while funny on some level) isn't exactly pushing humanity forward, it's just bitching.
I'm guessing he was replying to patrickaljord but the reply button wasn't there yet.
[spanish] Apple and News corp to release iPad only magazine
What he's saying has nothing to do with science. Most new ideas are absolutely, completely, useless.

Now, the fact that someone else has thought of the same thing you are, has put a lot of time into developing it, spent their hard earned money to market and sell it and just perhaps is making a profit from it, means that your idea is probably valid. You're more likely to make money by doing what someone else has profitably done before and adding your twist to it than coming up with something completely unique.

There are many car manufacturers, brands and types of candy, clothing, tools, computers etc. Pick just about any product and you can find a dozen people making different versions of it and they're all making money.

People are suspicious of the unfamiliar. Sell them something they've seen before.
Not according to National Geographic. Sorry, I can't find any links, but I have the magazine with me:

... "We're going to see rising tensions over shared water resources, including political disputes between farmers, between farmers and cities, and between human and ecological demands for water," says Peter Gleick, a water expert and president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. "And I believe more of these tensions will lead to violence"

In India:
"We wake up every morning fighting over water," says Kamal Bhate, a local astrologer. In a nearby slum, a teenage boy was recently beaten to death for cutting in line.

"Peace between Pakistan and India may hinge as much on water as on Nuclear weapons for the counties must share the glacier-dependent Indus"

"The biggest question mark hangs over China, which controls the sources of the regions major rivers. It's damming of the Mekong has sparked anger downstream in Indochina. If Beijing follows through on tentative places to divert the Brahmaputra, it could provoke its rival, India, in the very region where the two countries fought a war in 1962."

Back to what you said, Desalination leaves behind a concentrated brine, which can technically harm the environment and the water supply itself. "Brine discharges are especially tricky to dispose of and they're also raising the sanity parts of the Persian Gulf. The saltier the water becomes, the more expensive it becomes to desalinate."

Desalination may be a billion dollars cheaper, but in the long term - it's not. (for now anyway). People who don't have a load of money will not be able to afford this water. What happens then?

Quotes from April 2010 National Geographic.
Babble fish translation:

The next week could come to the light “The Daily”, the newspaper with paid subscription, realised especially for iPad (of Apple). The creator of this newspaper is News Corp., social founder of means infinity and networks, like MySpace. According to sources mentioned by Forbes, “The Daily” will be presented/displayed by Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News Corp) and Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) between 17 and 19 of January. The launching event will be the Museum of San Francisco de Modern Arte. The expectation grows Murdoch and Jobs has worked in this project for a pair of months, without revealing details of if it could have a printed edition or Web, for the users who do not have iPad. It is speculated on that the unloading of this newspaper could cost 99 cents of dollar to the week and that in one first stage, will only be available in the United States. Also, one calculates that those are 100 journalists that will feed with contents this newspaper, like columnistas of New Yorker, The Daily Beast, Forbes and AOL. The interested ones already can accesar to the page Web of the newspaper in www.thedaily.com and reserve to their subscription, leaving their email.
It's because you are adding nothing to the discussion.
As a consumer I'm glad that Apple would not let Verizon pre-load their crapware on the iPhone. If only other manufacturers could do the same. Unfortunately they are not in the same position with Apple. As a matter of fact, Apple will not Verizon the iPhone if they do not agree to that.

I love using the Nexus One with its pure Google-Android experience. I have yet to upgrade to Nexus S.
...yes... but they didn't do that. In fact, they scrapped the whole straight-to-video story line 9 months before the release date, and started from scratch.
There's lots of ways YouTube could marginalize H.264 without turning it into a full fledged game of chicken. They could make HD content exclusively WebM but still serve H.264 SD. They could prioritize WebM encoding so that there would be a delay before H.264 content was available (imagine getting told "this video is not yet available on your device" once every 6 months or so). They could make the most popular stuff in both formats but only offer WebM for stuff at the end of the long tail. They could offer a more favorable cut of ad revenue to content providers who opt out of H.264 (ostensibly because it saved on licensing fees).
Steve Wozniak Is Buying a Verizon iPhone
Not disagreeing with Apple's case against Flash, but at the same time Google also has pretty strong reasons to actively try to bring H.264 down, both as a browser maker and a video site operator.
Chess grandmasters use twice the brain
I like Gruber, but he's almost insufferable on issues like these. These questions are "simple" in the least flattering sense. Let's dispatch them:

If H.264 support is being removed to “enable open innovation”, will Flash Player support be dropped as well? If not, why?

The premise is that openness is all or nothing. But Google can support Flash and work towards openness, just as Apple can prefer open web standards in lieu of Flash while supporting proprietary systems. There's no hypocrisy or conflict.

Android currently supports H.264. Will this support be removed from Android?

Maybe in the future. WebM support is new in Android, hardware decoders are really just coming to market, and there are enough existing and in-production phones that rely on H.264. The constraints placed on Google by the handful of Chrome users leveraging H.264 HTML5 video is completely unlike the realities of dealing in the handset market.

YouTube uses H.264 to encode video. Presumably, YouTube will be re-encoding its entire library using WebM. When this happens, will YouTube’s support for H.264 be dropped, to “enable open innovation”?

YouTube continues to support other proprietary formats. As with Sorenson, they're not going to drop H.264 until they don't care about the market share of H.264-only devices. In the meantime, they will try to drive people towards WebM in support of "open innovation". This is not inconsistent or even new.

Do you expect companies like Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Major League Baseball, and anyone else who currently streams H.264 to dual-encode all of their video using WebM?

It should be obvious that Google's hope is anyone using HTML5 video will eventually move to WebM exclusively.

If not, how will Chrome users watch this content other than by resorting to Flash Player’s support for H.264 playback?

Content producers won't care if Chrome users end up in Flash, since the content's still available and very few non-mobile users are getting HTML5 video anyway. Flash is still the norm outside of mobile devices.

Who is happy about this?

Were people ecstatic that Chrome supported H.264? Most people simply don't care about this kind of stuff and for good reason.
I think he means that no one at Google is going to take the time to answer Gruber's questions.

If not, why not?
بسكوت اللوز
I like that quote a lot. It demonstrates the creative challenge behind making anything from scratch.
Can anyone logically refute this article against Net Neutrality regulation?
Incredibly relevant: Daeken's Hardware Hacker Manifesto: http://daeken.com/the-hardware-hacker-manifesto

Sony probably has the upper hand legally here. The DMCA seems to be pretty explicit about these kind of this, at least from my non-lawyerly reading of it. Even so, this is quite unprecedented. Apple and Nintendo have both had devices hacked, often by these same people (there's at least two iPhone Dev-Team members there, four members of Team Twiizers, and, of course, geohot), but they never took any kind of legal action.

(Somewhat unrelated, but funny: even Nintendo found out "bushing"'s real name and phone number. I wonder why Sony didn't go through that trouble and referred to him pseudonymously.)
Agreed. The biggest issue I have with a V-powered iPhone is the inability to simultaneously engage in voice and data activities due to CDMA's limitations. That I also routinely average around 3 Mbit/sec on AT&T 3G and peak at 5-6 Mbit/sec gives me no desire to switch. Also like the fact that I can use the GSM iPhone internationally.
trying to imagine what a different post this would be if Apple (instead of Google) had dropped H.264 for similar reasons.
Let's run with the cow shit metaphor a bit. A large component of taste is smell, and I can tell without taking a bite that the smell of cow shit would foul any pleasant flavor.

Likewise with UI, a large component of its quality is visual. There is plenty we can gather about an application design just by looking at it. That isn't unfair, it's just plain observation.
> If I'm not mistaken they're not general purpose computers. If they were what would be the point? Why not use a math coprocessor?

They are not general-purpose, but that doesn't mean they're not easily re-programmable either. Consider the example of GPUs.

I want to say some SNES games used a DSP chip, there are several known to emulator authors, including two versions that used the exact same hardware with different microcode (and therefore different abilities). So it's been done before at least.
Or: Scala compareTo Java ? :)
Switching away from a browser is realistically the most powerful way you can influence a browser maker's decisions these days. Do it if you feel strongly about the situation.

(As an aside, price for outsourced video encoding is on order of magnitude close to dollars per video? I did not know that.)