skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually, they're called "power engineers", and the maturity of the U.S. grid has largely shut down American university production of such engineers.
I keep rotation locked. Can't stand it. I was very happy to see the rotation lock with ios 4, it was very difficult reading in bed before.
Standard practice at my company: interviewees pair with a developer for a week before being offered a job. Preferably, over the week, you'd switch pairs at least once or twice.

If we don't hire you, we pay you as a contractor for your time. If we do hire you, we pay you either as an employee or contractor for your time (depending on what our accountant says).

We'll bend the rules depending on circumstances, but basically you're not getting in unless you spend 30 hours pairing with our devs. Anything else, I propose, can be hazardous to the culture and effectiveness of your company.
Good information to know. Are there more current tests that are pushing the current generation browsers to implement new functionality?

Also, that site is beautiful.
Krugman doesn't realize that the economic success of America (and other countries) has all depended on producting more output with less labor input - i.e., increasing productivity.

That is what has enabled us to move beyond an economy where 97% of the workers worked on the farm raising food. That's down to something like 2% now. The rest of us can now do other things like make cars, computers, and software.
I mentioned above, but I'll briefly mention it again: this problem is not limited to GPL. Proprietary code being distributed in a BSD app is just as likely. It's not an issue with licenses. The code might not even have a license, in which case it can't be distributed.

> They were using some GPL code in your project. We've found at least 50 instances of it.

You can replace GPL with any license out there, and it could apply. Heck, you can even violate BSD code by putting it into a GPL app and have the exact same problem.
Direct link - http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/state_web_wint...
I think it's somewhat relevant since the article discusses incoming mail handling in MobileMail.app. And obviously it's not a hardware issue or 'faulty unit' as you say. It's a well documented issue.
> What data structure has a more efficient access pattern?

The depends on what kind of access you will need.

For example, if you are going to be doing a lot of searching to determine whether a value is an element of a set, an array will take O(n) in the number of elements to do a linear search, while various self-balancing tree structures will be O(logn), and a hash table with a good choice of hash function will be even better. Unless you are working with very small data sets, arrays will rapidly lose out here.

If we're talking about a data structure that gets modified over time, then suppose you need to store a sequence of values in order, and you will often insert or remove elements in the middle of the sequence. A linked list or similar structure can perform these operations for O(1) cost, but an array is O(n) in the number of elements.

Of course, all data structures are ultimately kept in one big array of memory/drive, so you could argue that the array can be just as good as the other data structures in the examples above. However, I think that is a circular argument: you're just reinventing the alternative data structures.

> People default to arrays because 95% of the time they are either the best option or good enough that it's not worth worrying about.

Perhaps. Then again, perhaps this attitude of declaring the default, easy tool "good enough" instead of learning to use the right tool for the job is why in 2011 it still takes nearly a minute for my PC to boot in the morning and sometimes I still type faster than my state-of-the-art DTP software can manage to draw the letters on the screen.
I agree. 2000$ is a _very_ cheap 1 BDR in manhattan, more likely an "alcove" studio. You really have to go 2500$+ to have anything decent.
Which people seem to forget. Copy paste BSD code into your GPL app and you run into the same problems if you include GPL code into a BSD app.
we use it around the office, i've used it with clients, and clients have used it with me. perhaps its regional. on the research i did, it seems to be a brittishism that migrated across some time ago.
I just want to point out that immersion is not really a good criteria of good cinema. It can be used effectively, but many of the greatest films take strides to be as non-immersive as possible, using things like distancing techniques. Many films want you to be aware that you're watching a film. Immersion is not obviously or inherently a good thing.
Hmm, Ballmer's particular style seems to be less conducive to cooperation and than Cook's, so I feel like Cook would still work well with the team at Apple like he has in the past, but I could be wrong!
Nothing is being 'learned' here, the only thing being produced is a rote repetition of an article after it's been passed through a mediocre TTS engine.
What kinds of benefits does it offer?
Fantastic tear down on one of my favorite things about Chrome. I love that I can middle-click tabs away rapidly and they stay the same size.
This link goes to the article instead of a registration page: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/opinion/24krugman.html?par...
Ask HN: How to grow as a Software Engineer?
Hello HN,

I have been working as a Software Engineer for a few years and have worked at a variety of companies (big, medium, small) and it was fun working as a Software Engineer writing code and building systems. However, lately, I have started thinking about where to go next. Writing code is fun, however, as the technology changes, I feel that anybody could just learn a new programming language/ technology of the year.

How could one grow as a Software Engineer and continue to differentiate oneself from the rest of the pack ?

What has your career progression been ? What could be a logical next step for a Software Engineer with a few years of experience ?
Entrepreneur to Lead New York City's Digital Efforts
Their users are not their customers, their advertisers are.
Considering the low conversion rates of Facebook traffic, that seems just right.
What's consumer friendly about waiting for a reader to slowly meander its way through the entire text of an article?

When's the last time you read a wikipedia article from start to finish, without even first checking that it contained the tidbit you were looking for?

Text is skimmable, dialog isn't.
Facebook Messages: Not Quite There
What does this (potentially rare [0]) bug have to do with the article? Why should the author of the article be able to know the reason for this bug? Why are you asking that question here?

[0] I personally never encountered it.
I'm with msredmond - this seems very dubious legally. You might think it is not much different to a browser cache but inserting a third party in a distribution process in fact makes a huge difference legally. Flipboard got into trouble and they were less problematic than what you are doing, unless I misunderstand exactly what is going on.
IIRC, this is how AOL used to work. Everyone started in the call center. After 6 months, you could start working your way up, and many people went into QA and programming from there.
"it's just defrag, install, show 'em how to use Synaptic, and they're out."

I think it would be really interesting to see some statistics from this, for example the % of computers on which the default install works without additional configuration, the % of users who encounter problems a week later, the % of users who give up and reinstall windows within a month, the technical saviness of the users, etc. It seems like there's a lot of interesting data we could learn from an install-fest.

"The basic things have been mostly ironed out by now (wireless is still a bit iffy), but the more advanced things, sure, they'll take some time and swearing."

This seems to confirm my objection to the original point, no? I wouldn't consider wireless advanced. If my wireless connection, my printer, and my touchpad don't work out of the box (nevermind my entire graphics subsystem in 10.04) that's a show-stopper in my opinion.
Android 3.0 Preview
Guidelines for Successful Communication With Clients
http://html5test.com/ has a good breakdown for each browser and a score that's actually explained

http://html5readiness.com/ has a great feature comparison chart with a unique presentation
Ask HN: What are some resources for creating project pages?
I'm an engineer, but not a designer, working on an open-source javascript library. I'm envious of everybody's beautiful project pages. What are some resources and tips for people like me that want to cobble together a simple, but stylish project page?
I'm guessing that film or DV shot at a higher frame rate simply can't be shown at most theaters due to equipment limitations. And if you shoot at a higher FPS and reduce it for those theaters, the FPS don't divide evenly so you get horrible artifacts. So it's not just up to the director.
How about a photo app that lets them put half-eaten sticks of ice cream into pictures? Or one that lets them use ice cream on a stick to scribble melty graffiti onto pictures?

I know I'm stretching here, but...!
HTML5 Demos and Examples
Copying code is never an accident. It is always on purpose, whether done in ignorance or not.
If someone say honestly that they receive the photons coming from the moon, then they must get a number of photons that is bigger than the error margin, preferably a few times bigger than the error margin. If it is smaller they can't be sure that it is not some noise.

The data about these measures is hard to find. But after some googling the best data I could find are in http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/highlights.html .
It it possible to make some estimations from the graphs.

There are three sets of three graphs. They are very similar, so let's see only the first one.

In the first graph there is a dark line in the center that shows that there are more photons coming at the expected time, than before or after that time. The signal is easy to see, but it is difficult to get any numerical values from this graph.

From the second graph it is possible to read some numerical values. Each bar shows the number of photons that arrive in a 100 ps interval. They have probably a Poisson distribution, but for simplicity let's approximate that by a Normal distribution.

Before the peak, there are approximately 10 +/- 10 photons coming every 100 ps. (These values are estimated from the graph with a lot of zoom, I can't be very sure about them. The values seem to be scattered between 0 an 20, so I assume that the average is ~10 and the standard deviation is ~10.) These are the photons that come from others sources. So if no mirror is present in the moon, or the laser dos not have enough power, then this is the expected value during all the experiment.

At the peak, there are approximately 400 photons in the same time interval. The difference between this value and the average of the first values is like 40 times the standard deviation. So it is almost impossible that they get these peaks by a random chance. For example, the probability to get a value that is bigger than 5 standard deviation is less than 1E-6, for 10 standard deviation it is less than 1E-23, and for 40 standard deviation it is almost almost 0. And they get not only one, but 8 intervals with more than 100 photons.

After the peak, they get more photons than before the peak for technical problems. I see something like 20 +/- 20. Whit these numbers, the chance of a 400 photons peak is bigger, but still almost 0, but I think that the correct way to do the estimations is using the first values.

The third graph is an auxiliary measure with an earth based mirror to get the dispersion caused by the system.

The analysis in the web page is more elaborated. They estimate the shape of the mirror and use the data from the third graph to explain the shape of the peak.
...or spin money in circles.
Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
It looks like a great app, but I don't think the example video added anything. Why couldn't that be done with the normal photo/video app?
The article throws numbers, it explains nothing about the Dawes number, which it explicitly describes as being discovered "A long time ago".

Asking if things discovered "a long time ago" have changed in light of modern development isn't un-called for. Especially given the vague statements.

>And, it would only be just visible as a small dot, it would not "look" like a flag at all.

Is similarly vague, and probably part of the reason for the question. We can build optical hardware with resolutions far in excess of our eyes per square unit. What we can see by looking through the scope directly has little to do with how we use more powerful modern telescopes, which appears to be how this is calculated. 20 years ago it would've been hard to predict high-density CCDs, how much more unlikely is it that something "A long time ago" took such things into account?

Lets ask another:

>The only method that could be used to (in theory) see something as small as the Flag on the Moon would be to use two optical telescopes set (for example) 1000 miles apart. This would easily provide the required resolution...

How does this help? Are they talking two Hubbles? Two 1.75 mile wide telescopes? There's zero explanation, despite such an absolute claim.
Banking and health care data, for example, cannot for the most part live on AWS or some other generic cloud provider. There are financial and legal penalties for leaking a database full of medical histories and Social Security numbers that preclude storing hospital records on slicehost or something. For the time being, and, given the conservative bent of these industries, probably well into the future, there will still be local sysadmins in the classic sense managing physical hardware under physical security.

That said, there's a screaming business opportunity for a group of enterprising sysadmins who want to set up HIPAA-compliant PaaS offerings for medical information shops, or something similar for banks that won't make the SEC or FDIC freak out.
>"Any developer on your staff could look at something on line and derive some code from it, and drop it into your codebase"

Well that's what's so crucial about having solid Best Practices and hiring good developers. If you hire people who break the rules (deliberately or accidentally, with your knowledge or without), then there's your problem. The GPL has nothing to do with that scenario, it's you hiring people who can't toe the line.
Cool idea, but it took me a while to figure it out since this blog post is a little unclear. My simplification: let's say you know an interesting event is going to happen, but you don't know if it's going to happen in 5 seconds or 500. Using precorder, you can "pretend" to be recording it (you're still pointing the camera at it, but nothing is being permanently saved yet), and then press the "record" button when the interesting event occurs. It will start recording like a normal video recording app, and prepend the previous N seconds of video (where N is a user-selected value from 0-10).
The infinite universe needs not repeat itself.

Some infinities are bigger than others.
Right, but those extra cycles tend to be a one-time thing. In a program that runs in a short amount of time, then the amount of time it takes to compile this might negate any speed gains. In a longer-lived application (like a web app), this can make a bigger difference.
"Copyright (c) <year>, <copyright holder>
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the <organization> nor the
names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
"

--

Provided you properly credit the authors of the code you use, which you should be doing anyway, how do you run into problems by using BSD'd code in GPL'd code?
Will.i.am Invents The 360-Degree Music Video for iDevices
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman isn't aware of the relationship between America's economic success and productivity increases?

You may disagree with his thesis, but let's not pretend he's a naïve bumpkin when it comes to economics.
1. I'm not in MobileMail.app, get a notification that an email arrives, but when I enter the app, nothing is there. When I manually hit the refresh mail button, the new message downloads and appears.

Your iPhone is connected to a push server; the server sends your phone a few bytes that indicate a new message is available to be downloaded, but it does not begin downloading the message itself until you enter MobileMail.app. (Messages.app is different since your carrier pushes messages in their entirety).
IE9 version: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/acid3/default.h...
> Also, would this situation change given the fact that they're switching to LLVM?

LLVM can both use a JIT and compile to native code. From what I've seen, ghc doesn't seem to be doing much different, so I'd assume they're compiling to native code still.
The title is a bit misleading. It's actually two ways to make people get things done (which aren't very profound) and one way to help a small minority become excellent (somewhat interesting).

How about, "Provide a cooperative environment and a few people may excel."

To address his points directly, if we scope the discussion down to managing knowledge workers:

1. I agree that yelling or harassing is almost never beneficial in the long run.

2. Competition in a group is always present as long as you are doling out the biggest bonuses and raises to the "best" employees. What Seth doesn't consider is that competition against an outside foe, be it another company or industry, can help motivate. X PRIZEs are a great example of this.

3. I agree on his third point, though it gets a little hand-wavy here. I suppose we're expected to buy one of Seth's books to get more details.
It would make sense that at least one article per day by TechCrunch would make the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NBC, etc. write about them.
".... but if you do run into a skeptic this is pretty good evidence that we made it there eventually, or at least requires the conspiracy to be much more involved =) ..."

There is another conspiracy buster.

Get the skeptic to explain why the CDSCC [0] - the prime receiving station for the moon landing dish in Parkes, NSW, AUS, received the signal directly from the moon via the 3m S-band antenna during the Apollo 11 EVA? [1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_Deep_Space_Communicati...

[1] http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/the_pla...
This is why there's a sentence on page 41 of the User Experience book I'm reading which reads "Apple, Apple, Apple, iPod, iPod, iPod, iPhone, iPhone, iPhone[1]."

Any good UX culture should catch these kinds of details and implement them right, the problem is the lack of good UX cultures beyond a couple prominent examples.

[1]Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs
What Is Quora’s Biggest Challenge?
Python is not a systems programming language.
Children Are Learning to Use Technology at an Early Age
>"But developers don't always protect the best interests of the company."

Then you should either hire better developers, manage them better, or get some sort of "my employees are shit" insurance (which I doubt exists).
I think my iPhone's rotation algorithm is this:

When I want it to not rotate, it rotates anyway. I must then fuddle with the multitasking bar to hit the Lock Orientation button.

When I want it to rotate, it seems to take ages before it rotates. Or, I forget that I have rotation lock on, and then have to turn it off first.
Speculation on the future. They have more data on you than anyone has had, ever. And, they are attracting the smartest people on earth. With those two things combined, they are going to be able to do a lot more than display Ads based on your listed interests and relationship status.

Think: modeling a marketing scheme against FB's data because they understand the idiosyncratic specifics of the demographic you are trying to hit, thus telling you with p<.01 whether or not it will be profitable.

That, and government contracts are profitable.
Founders Den has gotten some press recently:

http://www.foundersden.com/
NYT: Apple's Years With and Without Steve Jobs (Interactive)
Maybe South Park.
> In placing the close button on the right, Google have assumed that in the majority of cases, users are going to be wanting to close the most recently opened tabs first (likely to be the ones to the far right of the tab group) and have accordingly placed the close button on the right.

Really? Doesn't it make more sense that Chrome is primarily a Windows/Linux program where the close-window buttons are at the top-right, and Safari is primarily Mac where the buttons are at the top-left.
i did this in the chat view for messageparty :)
if (!isScrolledUp)
> which all else being equal

All else is not equal. The economy, and especially the tech sector, will grow.
This seems to be some kind of language specific response. I'm talking about arrays in general.
Something awesome in InnoDB -- the insert buffer
High quality sysadmins are evolving into what is called the devops role. Trouble shooting, scaling, architecting, and automating production systems are just a few areas where devops people shine. The cloud just provides them another set of tools to work with. It also frees them from dealing with the annoying/repetitive tasks (spinning a CD to install the OS, plugging in the network cables, etc) and allows them to focus on improving the application. A number of devops people I know can easily transition into developer roles when required. Summary: a great sysadmin should know how to code and does so in order to improve the app.
Sysadmins will not disappear, however, their role will change. The old hardware lugger/patchjockey role is on the way out. However, managing the sensitive data of the organization will be a role forever: data has to be transported, converted, stored, retrieved, archived, etc.

Especially in organisations which handle data of a sensitive nature the sys-admin (or whatever his/her role will be called) will have an important role in the organisation (think especially of organisations which have to conform to HIPAA, PCI, or other data protection regulations).

The success of an organization will in these Internet times be determined by the value of the (customer) data it holds and the ability to extract business value from that data.
A data admin is therefore an essential task in any organisation. The future role of Sysadmins will therefore move in that direction in my opionion.

Disclaimer: the writer is an IT Architect at a large DataCenter Services Provider.
There are few things that irk me more than judging a legal appointee based on the clients they've represented.