skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The organizational differences between the two sites:

1) http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/
2) https://developer.mozilla.org/en/xpath

pretty clearly show why W3Schools is capturing so much beginner mindshare.

From 1), it's trivially clear where to start: the link is labeled "Start Learning XPath Now!", and even if you skip that, below there's a linear list of topics. When and if I do click on the "start" link (or the first item in the ToC), I'm greeted with what is very clearly the first part of a walkthrough. Going through the sections, it's all pretty clearly marked, chunked up into easily digestible pieces, etc. Perfect for a first glance through the topic, even though I'll definitely admit that in general W3Schools content leaves something to be desired.

Conversely, from 2), the Mozilla.org page, it's pretty difficult to figure out where I want to be clicking, assuming I know nothing. After I discard the "tools" section as probably irrelevant to learning from scratch about this, I'm left with the "Documentation" column. So far, so good.

The first item in that list says "Introduction to using XPath in JavaScript", which still sounds pretty good, except wait! At the top of the page, it says that XPath is primarily used with XSLT, but this tutorial gives an intro to XPath without XSLT, so that can't be right...why would the special case that doesn't match what people usually use this for be the first item in the documentation list?

And yikes, those other links don't really look like introductions to XPath, either, they look like special topics about XPath. The last link (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/08/holman/) is probably the closest to what a beginner might want, but it's a lot of material, not the ~10 minute introduction to the topic that we'd really be looking for.

It's alright, though. If we poke around at the "Using XPath" link (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_XPath), we find that "Mozilla" (yeah, I'm aware that's a wiki, but you know what I mean...) has a suggestion as to where to go to learn more:

This article does not attempt teach XPath itself. If you're unfamiliar with this technology, please refer to W3Schools XPath tutorial.

Sigh.
And a clickable link: http://kwolla.com
I understand there are many successful ways to invest. However, in my life, I've only seen one strategy succeed: you make a profit when you buy, not when you sell. Some people call it value investing, but unless it looks like a stock is undervalued for whatever reason, it's not usually worth investing in. Chinese Yuan, while it may go up, does not seem to be undervalued.
I think IT often overestimates the actual extra burden that would be required to support more devices and the risks associated. At the last company I worked at there were calls for people to be publicly made "examples of" for running Firefox as it was deemed too much of a support burden to have to support both IE and Firefox and a security threat. Then they found out the CEO had installed it and their tone changed from calling for a witch hunt to a begrudged "you can run it but we won't support it".
I absolutely love Colour Lovers. It's amazing how much time you can waste looking at colo(u)rs and patterns.

And we definitely need more pink/violet company logos.
That's not how it's comes across in the interview (and transcript). From the transcript at: http://www.beyondthepedway.com/sole-search-iphone-interview#...

"...We made some mistakes. And it wasn’t perfect. We got done what were able to get done and did the jest of what we wanted to do. And then from there once we got some downloads, we got some money, we had an update done, which was done by some professionals. So yeah."

That seems to imply that they had replaced the original iPhone app that they built with one that a professional built. You might be right, but since it wasn't explored, it could most likely be what was implied above.
I wish there was a negative or way to report spam for mindless, onesided Gruber posts
In grade school I learned that the country I live in can be represented on a flat map. That doesn't mean there aren't any levels of knowledge above grade school.

w3schools does not portend to be the 'be all end all' of knowledge about the web or developing on the web. They're just another resource and they probably serve their intended purpose a very large number of the times.

Example code usually does not come with guarantees of correctness or even applicability to your problem. It just shows you the basics. It's the cut-and-paste mentality that causes such samples to be used in production code and that's a real problem, but that problem does not lie with the source of the information.

A MySQL lesson that shows you the basics is explicitly not going to go in to details like prepared statements, sql injection and prevention and so on.

Just like you don't teach physics to a kid that you're teaching to walk.

If you're using w3schools as a source for cut-and-paste examples or even best practices then you're doing it wrong, think of it as the 'grade school' of web development. Good enough to get your feet wet, not good enough to build an enterprise grade web application.
Does Guido van Rossum work on the new site for programmers?
Canned Soda
I actually do have one:

Double space sentence delimiters simplify sentence tokenization into an almost trivial exercise in most cases. Single space delimiters make sentence tokenization actually quite hard.
Keep your CEO away from prospects when closing a deal
Yes! Especially since SiO2 comes pre-rusted.
Right, the monthly cost is the same, so the only cost comparison consumers go through is the cost of the actual phones.

When they're standing in the store staring at two phones and the iphone is $200 and the android is $50 (or free) that seems like a big difference, all else being the same.
Of course they did, I was just asking about the rest of the world. The first settlement was in 2008, but the huge spike here http://www.google.com/trends?q=winklevoss&ctab=0&geo... coincides with the release of the movie.
$150 seems expensive, any selling points over http://lovdbyless.com ?
You can if every thing they want to buy is made in your country.

The US can't half the value of the dollar to boost exports because everything in Walmart that is made in China will double in price.

China can because everything it's people want to buy in GreatWall-Mart is already made in china. As long as the government steps in to subsidize imported fuel the people wouldn't notice as long as they didn't travel - and you don't want them to travel anyway.
That's an edge-case of the way that person's software preserves multiple spaces by force in browsers; it replaces the second of two spaces between sentences in the source with a similar, non-breaking space. Use the `diff` command (if you're on a real OS) to compare; you'll see the two spaces are not actually duplicates of the same character code in the font used on that page.
"But hasn't this already happened?"

It's certainly happened in the UK. The iPhone is available on all the major networks (for free on the higher end contracts) and is available unlocked and SIM free from Apple stores. It hasn't hampered Android's growth to any great extent.
I think there's room at higher price points too. There are a lot of people who prefer Android or care a lot about some specific feature that isn't available on the iPhone and isn't likely to be. I'm sure the Verizon iPhone will be very popular and cut in to Android sales, but that doesn't mean Android won't continue to grow. There are a lot of feature phone users out there.
Like $200 for an unlocked Android phone without a contract.
But when you're highlighting the code to copy, the line numbers get highlighted which doesn't inspire much confidence
Reading the title, I thought djb had implemented a build system and I was extremely excited. Still quite interested, but it doesn't have nearly as much allure.
Space Invaders - Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.
Can't we just wait and see in 6 months?
I think that, outside of journalism, very few people were "taught" single spacing. I suspect that mostly, non-journalists who use single spacing between sentences are people who learned by reading tweets, SMS messages, and Facebook pages.
This claim of wrongness is a pretty large claim. Care to back it up? (e.g. define wrong)
> It's bad enough that passing a small fn (1 line of code in a decent language), requires a separate class and 20 lines of code in Java.

No need to exaggerate, it's only a few extra lines

functionTakingCallback(new Callback() {
public void fn() {
...
}});

I agree it's verbose enough to be annoying, but hardly a deal-breaker imho.

EDIT: Just occurred to me that you might be looking at it from the other side, where you would have to define the callback class. Still, defining a static nested with a single function is only 3 lines of code.
These are made by RedPark
Creative Photography
Apple is looking to improve multi-touch with hover sensing on iphones and ipads
That pain in the ass 200 falvor coke machine
I have a relative who partly oversaw the development of this Coke product and I have "filed a complaint".

Does anyone else have any specific complaints about this machine?
While highly entertaining, this is also incredibly irrelevant. Plus, Bill Murray looks like hell.
It's not a huge selling point, but Kwolla also gives users some basic statistics and analytics on their profile. It also handles conversion of video itself without having to first upload it to Youtube.

Elgg would be the PHP version, it's free and open source. The code is very poor and it's hard to author on. Kwolla is very clearly written and easy to write modules for.

The two biggest paid competitors are Ning and SocialEngine. Both have more features, but are more expensive. Ning is hosted and not as customizable (since you don't have the source) and SocialEngine is more expensive (but it's an impressive product nonetheless).
If they are outraged that Mark executed the idea instead of them, they they are implying that they're capable of starting a website like facebook and making it super-popular, like facebook.

Why don't they just take the money they won and do that with some other idea? There is plenty of stuff to do, as we all know on this board. It would look much better to everyone if they showed what they are capable of. Eduardo Saverin is funding some pretty interesting ventures. Otherwise it looks like they're admitting this was their one and only big idea.
'Zombie-sat' rises like a phoenix
Yeah, but then you have to have an iPhone.
Yes that's where I originally got the idea. Then I made it also tweet the picture :)
Firefox 4 Beta 9
Risk/reward.

If you got into China 15 years ago, you had no idea how things were going to pan out (and you deserve compensation for holding that risk). If you get in now, there's a more likely chance (I'd argue) that you'll do well, so the risk, and therefore the compensation you deserve, is lower. And holding currency is a lot less risky than equities, anyway.

The people that would be interested in a Yuan bank account up to $20000 aren't really sophisticated investors anyway.
Both of my business partners are on Verizon and both just got Android phones (less than 3 months ago).

They are both planning on switching to iPhone pretty much immediately now.

Developers are not typical users; my business partners are much more the norm.
The above discussion makes little sense.

By maintaining USD peg China has no independent monetary policy - it's monetary policy is directly influenced by Federal Reserve.
Interesting that git and redo share the problem of providing POSIX utilities on Windows. Interesting also that nobody seems to have suggested a merge between the two. If redo is that small, would it not be feasible to package it as git-redo and not solve the same problem twice?
I have bad news for you: I'm a professional writer.

I just happen to be much better at it than that hack, even though he probably gets paid more. Of course, the reason he (probably) gets paid more is that he writes for Slate, while I write for TechRepublic. Since he's supposed to be a technology writer for Slate, and I'm basically any kind of writer for TR (specifically security, open source issues, and programming, but that's not relevant in this case), you can pretty much bet money that I know more about the subjects our writings have in common than him, despite the fact he probably gets paid more for his ignorance than I do for my knowledge.

So it goes.

In any case, I really appreciate the implicit compliment, despite the fact this comment at HN was very much off the cuff and not among my best recent writings. I agree it's better than the Slate piece, though perhaps primarily because the Slate writer didn't set the bar very high.

By the way, I scraped together a longer, more in-depth version of my HN comment that you liked for my personal devlog:

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

I think it's better written than my HN comment, too.

edit: Of course, I became a professional writer by making comments in discussions at TechRepublic that people liked, so maybe I don't qualify as the type of "professional writer" you meant to address.
I've been using my own Mac at work for the last 4 years, at 3 different companies (granted, one of them was my own startup). The caveat is you have to support yourself, which is fine by me. I get to use the environment I'm most comfortable in and I don't have to deal with crappy Windows updates, virus or Outlook headaches.
Google's Open Web Advocate Talks White House Web ID Plan
Medical Server Hacked by Call of Duty Gamers
I've found I take off languages from my resume as I get more experienced, because the bar to put one on grows. Instead, I add experience, and often mention what languages I used on a particular project with the project itself. Let them judge whether that means I actually know the language.

I've found that playing skill-bingo usually results in lower quality potential employers anyway...at this point in my career, I'm looking for people who want to hire me because I can ship finished projects, whatever the language, and not because I know Java or C++ or Django or JQuery.
The reason his assertion is false as the growth of Android is not tied to a single carrier or device. It has more to do with the OEMs adopting Android over Symbian or WP7. Motorola became cashflow positive by using Android. HTC can't keep up with demand.

Growth is not tied simply to the US market either. Android usage is exploding worldwide specifically with cheap handsets in huge countries such as those in SE Asia.

So Gruber, blinded by his own fanaticism, actually thinks Verizon's iPhone offering is going to compete with 50+ OEMs' adoption and usage of Android? I think not.
Very nicely done. Nice and fairly clean looking site. Your animations upon answering are nice.

I wasn't familiar with PollDaddy, so know nothing about this market, but on their homepage, they don't have a poll. They don't show me what it is like from a user perspective.

I think you've done a nice job with the social sharing aspect. The widget is key with many brands, as is either a good look, or the ability for them to style it. The easier it is for them to set-up a poll and stick it onto their site, the better.

I think you need to find a place that isn't using polls, yet where they would be a great fit.
Engadget is always doing these "how would you change" http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/31/how-would-you-change-webo... posts. The content fits into a poll, but they need the ability for their audience to suggest what the polling options should be.

I never read those posts because it is just going through a bunch of comments, and you don't get any idea of what the cons are of the device. That could be very valuable information to the manufacturer. Of course, they'd still need comments, so hooking up with the disqus api would be a good idea.

Just an idea.
Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising
Or you could just buy an Android phone supported directly by Google, like the Nexus One or Nexus S, get first dibs on OS upgrades, and not be locked into a carrier contract, not pay extra for tethering, and not pay a subsidy tax every month for two years...
Totally misleading title, given that the author doesn't even discuss dialog, and the post is about designing clocks (the actual building is done via an outsourced manufacturer).
love the analytics feature preview. The site rocks!
Getting Google Apps to 99.99%
The ultimate guide to Facebook scams & How to deal with it
Sort of.

In true TCO, you optimize not only tail calls to the same function, but also tail calls to other functions. (Think of coroutines as an application).

One way to think of a TCO is that you are turning a function call (machine code to save your spot in the function, then a jump) into a simple jump (you don't need to save your spot, because there is nothing left in the function anyway).

Clojure doesn't support this (because it would be too difficult[inefficient, i think kawa scheme and JRuby do implement it] on the JVM). I assume that the common lisps which do support TCO, have true TCO, as they are using assembly or interpreters.

Clojure's TCO can be seen as a special form of a loop (in fact, it is very easy to write a macro that takes a loop-recur form and transforms it into a common lisp style Do* loop).
As the “Winner-Take-All” in a Global Network Market, is Facebook worth $50B?
That's simply not true in graphic design, DTP, 3D modelling, etc.
Single page: http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1671...

Rest of the Series

ALGOL: http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1671636

Simula: http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1671637

Lisp: http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1671639
Its not just the US. A man in Australia once patented a "circular transportation facilitation device", yes a wheel!

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/07/02/austr...
"""The more you can express concisely in code via the type system, the more time you and your API clients save in both development and maintenance"""

That's not necessarily true ... the more complex the type-system, the more time you lose feeding it.

"""It's still up to you to track them down (at runtime) and figure out where you went wrong"""

A language with runtime-dispatching and/or where NULL is allowed will have the same problems. I mean, personally I had more null-pointer-exceptions than all the other kinds of errors combined and multiplied by a dozen.

We are talking about Python versus Java here ... Haskell's type system is smarter and can detect lots of errors for you, but then again we were also talking about beginner-friendliness.
I am a Software Engineer residing in India. I have never worked for Outsourcing shops, however most of my friends work there.
I have worked for Product based companies, and I can contrast the two.
Comment on Point 1: Quality: Software applications created by CS students generally are never meant to run for years and have new features added to them. So CS students never focus much on Scalable design, modularity and engineering discipline in general. The discipline in Design, Implementation, Source control and execution was taught to me when I was an intern. Every aspect was reviewed by peers until it met the standards. However, I observed that outsourced project based companies are more focused on delivery/schedule than on quality. I feel that the quality control must be done from outsourcer's end and that too when the code is being developed. This might help them avoid unpleasant surprises.

Point 2: Passion: There is a huge imbalance between number of graduates we produce and number of jobs available in India. This works in favor of students who take up CS studies not because they like it but because they thing they will be employable.

Point 3: People look down at design?? They equally consider System Administration, Document Writing, Escalation handling as inferior.
I was about to write: what's wrong with them, when Facebook and Groupon get 30 times as much in hard cold cash? Now I know.
Thanks for the comments. Great advice! Very much appreciated!
Why American Mothers are Superior
He's 60 years old and lived a life. You should be so lucky.
The second to last paragraph got a laugh:

"The Smalltalk family has lots of other members. Ruby, for example, was intended to marry Smalltalk semantics with Perl syntax. Why anyone thought this was a good idea is unclear."
Great tip, thanks!

If you're like me, and sometimes prefer to have some visual with your audio, Berkley also provides webcasts of these lectures. Here, for example, is Spring '08 of CS61A:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906...
Ah, miscommunication here. I was referring to a different part of the interview with my comment above. Sorry.
Duke Nukem Forever is available for preorder from Amazon[http://www.amazon.com/Duke-Nukem-Forever-Pc/dp/B002I0JAJ2/re...]

Which means you can catch Atlas Shrugged [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/] in a movie theater near you before you play the game.
You make some interesting points about design. It's always bothered me that in a country with so much talent (both programming and design - you just have to see all the beautiful artwork in good adverts and movie sets to know that there are people who care about aesthetics) pretty much every mainstream website has terrible design. It doesn't matter how well things are programmed if everything looks cheap on the front-end. I liken it to the Chinese products I see in trade shows - they may have the same technology as the American-designed products, but they have such shoddy design and poorly proof-read verbiage that it gives off an impression of low quality. I see Indian website products in the same phase of development - the technology is excellent, but the wrapping is poor.
Chicago transit goes 21st century with user-friendly online GPS tracking (Video)
It's true that relative to inflation many investments do quite poorly, and it's true that some investing is a scam. I don't think it's true that all investing is a scam.
With so many students, there is also a lack of inspiring and well qualified professors to take up the job of teaching them.
10 new ways that computer hackers can control your machines
The inlined emoticons kinda threw me off as I was reading it. Not sure why, maybe because of how they affect the line height?

Good to see MSFT engaging complaints publicly.
Sure, I use AdBlock, and OptimizeGoogle, and Ghostery, and a bunch of other things (e.g. disabling flash, silverlight, java, animations, etc., and occasional custom greasemonkey scripts) to live a life without distractions, except when I opt into them.
Well run? You've obviously never been to China.
CMoS and MLA are not identical.
"...or do anything else interesting with my life."

Except for this tiny competition they took part in one time. Nothing major. I think they call it the "Olympics" or something like that.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Winklevoss
He didn't implement it, but he designed it in quite some detail, as far as I understand.
Not necessarily. Having code that is easier to modify or has fewer errors is a competitive advantage. Given that all your competitors are trying to improve their codebases, you should be trying to improve yours as well.
Think about bittorrent. They are making money. Check it out
http://www.bittorrent.com/
Just because you are decentralized does not mean you cannot control the tunnel!
And if you change the word, there will be lots of job offers. Think about the founder of the internet, he certainly won't ever have to worry about unemployment.
Serve humanity and humanity will serve you.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.
Good speed, and do not listen to the naysayers.
I have set out on an amazing journey myself, and the more I depanded from the universe - by giving away what I had to give of my talent- the more I got back.
Not that you should go hungry.
You can manage in balance.