skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Halting Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem) talks about this. For individual algorithms, one can determine if it will halt or not. However, no general algorithm exists. The hard part is that the algorithm to cause the code to halt has to be specially crafted for every algorithm.
> Java isn't a scripting language, and it wasn't ever intended to be one.

One of my beliefs is that we shouldn't think about "scripting languages" versus "compiled languages" and just think in terms of what would make for the ideal programming language, period. By that standard, Java is inferior to Python (to pick just one example) because it is so much more verbose and formal when accomplishing the same desired task.
I was thinking about editing the "finally" out of the headline per HN style but I figured it wasn't that much editorial spin to be glad this thing is moribund.
There's an in-n-out, if that makes any difference.
Plus, you can bike to the caltrain station if need be.
Or with http://code.google.com/p/totallylazy/ (ignoring imports):

sequence(1,2,3,4).filter(even());
Angry Penguin Says Get Back to Work
Since when is paying attention to someone "a great social hack"? When people came to visit my grandfather and he stopped milking the cows to have a conversation with them, was that "a great social hack"?

Not everything is a "hack" of some modified variety. Sometimes we already have a word for it, in this case, "manners". It's like there's a competition to overuse the word "hack" and nobody told me about it.

/getoffmylawn
Macbook Pro with a SSD drive. I always buy refurbished ones at the Apple Store:

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac
I own 2 MacBook Pros (switched from Dells running WinXP and Win 7) and love them both. As you know, setting up printers and other connections are so easy. The machines are powerful to handle my development needs, including running Parallels with a Win 7 client to run SQL Server for dev. I recommend those machines.
I still can't understand why they added the "feature" in first place. Sure, automatic execution of setups and the like is very convenient, but even a small "are you sure you want to run this" dialog would have closed the security hole most times.
I don't follow your logic.

Windows 7 isn't much of a competitor. It had a smaller debut than Android and iPhone, by a large amount, and is being outsold by both so the gap is widening. If I were Nokia, I wouldn't be worrying about fellow also-rans in the industry, like Microsoft. I'd be worried about the products that were eating my lunch, and I'd let Microsoft figure out how to protect their own lunch.

If Nokia chooses Windows for their next generation, I'd wager they'll keep dropping like a rock. How could they generate any excitement over a Windows phone? Nobody likes Windows phones, even people who like Windows on the desktop.
Yes - refurb is a great idea. One of mine is refurb (over 1 year old now) and the other one was new (6 months) and both work great.
Spreadsheet functional programming
The thing this needs to take into account is the time value of money and of risk in a startup.

$10k/mo for the next 5 years is a lot less painful for a seed stage startup than $200k up-front, if you're going to be increasing in valuation as fast as a successful venture-funded startup.

Reducing risk also needs to be part of the psychological model; sometimes it is worth spending 5% to get to a milestone with less risk, because owning 10% of a $50mm exit is a lot more valuable than 15% of $10mm.

The biggest trick I've found with startups is to just delay and defer anything not on the path; it's a lot easier to say "we'll buy a nicer couch later" vs. "no, a nice couch isn't a reasonable thing to spend money on". The other thing is to find people with a much better time value of money than you, and use their money to pay for things -- landlords doing upgrades for you (cash upfront) in exchange for higher rent, deferring getting an office entirely, etc. Basically, converting potential capex into opex.
I don't know much about how the UI widgets are implemented on Android -

Is it such that Nokia/Intel could reimplement these and have Android apps look consistent with MeeGo UI, or will developer have to do some UI tweaking in order to look reasonable on the different OSes?

EDIT: I suppose this same question also applies to the similar Dalvik implementation on the BlackBerry Playbook that's been rumored.
Lead, follow or get out of the way. - Thomas Paine
egrep:

echo '1 2 3 4' | egrep -o '\<[0-9]*[02468]\>'
Great idea. Simple and elegant. Which are also usually the hallmarks of a great idea. :)
>>The small liberal arts college I attended in PA had a Carnegie library that was converted into an art museum.

Likewise, the small liberal arts school I attended in IN. At the time it was converted, it was structurally in better shape than the "new" library, but unfortunately, quite undersized.
Pity the poor students who are stuck taking the Java one due to scheduling or other administrative constraints.

Although hopefully a dept as engaged in taking CS pedagogy seriously will teach a top-notch course in both.
1Gbps Wi-Fi Coming Soon To a Billion Devices
Clear runs on the Sprint network. If you have the "on the go" plan, you can use both 4G networks (of which there are only a dozen, or so, cities) and 3G networks (Sprint EVDO), which I'm certain is available in San Diego, because I've used the Sprint network there. It's the more expensive plan, but at $45/month, it's practically free, as far as I'm concerned...it means I'm not tied to cities and I can choose my campsites based on how awesome they are (or how cheap they are, if I'm feeling poor because I spent too much on gas getting there).

In short, click the "3G" radio button on the coverage map...suddenly San Diego will be thoroughly covered.
F#

[1..4]
|> List.filter(fun x -> (x % 2) = 0)

C#

using System.Collections.Generic;
public static class Foo {
public static void Main(string[] args){
Enumerable.Range(1,4).Where(x => (x % 2) == 0);
}
}
I didn't know Autorun was removed (sort of) in Windows 7. I guess that's one less thing some of us can brag about.

It's hard to understand how Autorun survived Microsoft's big security push in the mid-2000s. I would have guessed it would be the first thing to go.

But they can't remove Autorun without severely breaking backward compatibility; you can't suddenly force users to locate SETUP.EXE in a sea of weird setup files in order to install Office. That's why it's still enabled for CDs and DVDs. As a result, Microsoft and its users continue to pay a price for what turned out to be a really terrible design decision.
Screen by screen comparison of deployment on AppHarbor (YC) vs Microsoft Azure
This guy did a great write-up.

tl;dr: Azure had many more steps and inferior client experience (Silverlight bugging out for example).

AppHarbor: http://jasonsirota.com/deploying-an-on-premise-app-to-the-cloud-a-pa

Azure: http://jasonsirota.com/part-2-deploying-an-on-premises-aspnet-mvc-ap
Complain if you must, but there is a serious point involved. People get invested in technology and they start to adopt certain patterns of argument that stem more from their own investment than anything else. I tried to highlight the pattern using humor. Nothing personal intended.

In real life I do dislike java and try hard to avoid having to use it, precisely for the reasons highlighted in the OP. I do like Haskell, and many other things. Note: all the real Haskellers are nice and would never be as snarky as I was.
What I want from a restaurant website
In my country, programmers work salary unless they're contractors and don't have any conception of overtime in their contracts.

Maybe things are different where you are.
Programming a Problem-Oriented-Language by Charles H. Moore
That #! urls are ugly.

I can understand the technical necessity for them but I have no idea why you would want to redirect from example.com/foo => example.com/#!/foo -- do it the other way around instead and then the #! becomes a implementation detail of your internal AJAX-based navigation of your site rather than a public URL change.

Actually, for a company whose mainstream success can be mainly attributed to citations in newspapers and the media at large, I find it surprising Twitter chose such an ugly URL scheme due to the obvious difficulties in typing URLs you've seen offline that include #!-like warts.
now we're talking, this is a really good response! I almost agree with all of your points, except for the performance, and only in thoroughness: a benchmark will be nice.

And for clarity: the other ones aren't function definitions, they also build a new list, like your example. The examples are meant to be run in a REPL and that's why they don't send to stdout, although it will be just another function application in most cases (but your example works in beanshell, the stand-alone java quasi-REPL, so we're ok). I think all of them can be considered a full-program in those languages: as a stand-alone chunk of code that can be compiled/interpreted and will produce an executable output, that is. And, yes, the autoboxing was the only reason I chose generics, but I tried for it to be concise, given my limited knowledge of java; the max-verbose mode would have used a Runnable or something evil to simulate a higher order function.
There are a lot of better-known tools to do this - you will face tough competition unless you can do something that they don't.

I recommend that you find a specific niche and become really good at that industry/niche. That will help you build out things that others don't have.
Clickable:

AppHarbor: http://jasonsirota.com/deploying-an-on-premise-app-to-the-cl...

Azure: http://jasonsirota.com/part-2-deploying-an-on-premises-aspne...
Non-Monetary Motivation Factors At Work - FinalExit this survey
as one of my good buddies said "Who buys a $20,000 couch? Do you know how many servers you could get for that price?"
In any case, once you've done the division, the remainder is practically free; the article is basically an illustration of how bad the compilers in question are at spotting this fact.

This is probably the rationale behind the standard div() function, that calculates division and modulus together - it should make it easier for less sophisticated compilers to take advantage of this.
I've always looked at this a little differently - There are only two sources of cash for a startup, customers and investors. Every dollar you spend has to come from one or the other. The more of your dollars that come from customers, the less of your company you have to sell off to investors. So, use the hard won dollars from your customers wisely, so you can minimize how much you have to take from investors (zero in the best case).
Actually I like this possible recent trend of uber-simplistic web UI designs. I'm a passionate believer that simple web designs are the best. They're the fastest and cheapest to create. They are the fastest to transmit over the intertubes and then to render. And they are the least burdensome on the enduser's eyes and brain. And they help focus on substance & functionality over flash/chrome/foshizzle/sparklies. Pretty is good. But doing something real, quickly, and then getting out of my way, is better.
UVic. I can't find find anything about it on the CS website [1], but this is what I've heard from speaking to faculty and grad students.

[1] http://www.csc.uvic.ca
On the other hand, I'd believe Microsoft would want Nokia to "catalyse" their ecosystem, because of the lacking success of WP7. The ecosystem of WP7 is now very weak, and not much of an asset for Nokia, except MS services like Bing. But, Nokia doesn't want to give up Qt apps and their own services.
The SSD drive is huge. I got my first one with my Cr-48, makes a world of difference. I would add 3g if possible.
That Top Grossing Rank chart is great! Check out the rectangles... Top 25? Easier to get into than the Top 10.
So, this is partially obviated, now, but FWIW:

Article ID: 967715 - Last Review: September 9, 2010 - Revision: 6.2
How to disable the Autorun functionality in Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715
I see two things to make me hope they might not go with WP7. The first is the ecosystem: he correctly points out that the ecosystem is what they're lacking; but WP7 doesn't yet have one to offer. The second is that MS apparently exercises strong control over the design of WP7 phones, which would leave Nokia little room to distinguish themselves.

An Android-based Nokia could come with improvements in the phone features that make it feel like a Nokia, so that existing Nokia customers who are considering jumping ship to the Android of the week will be more comfortable sticking with Nokia.
Actually judging a language by standards it was never designed to meet is not pointless. I judge languages by how well they solve problems I need to solve. I don't care if it was intended to solve that problem.

Generally, typing extra stuff to make my code work isn't one of the problems I have.

x86 assembly IS terrible because string concat takes many loc. I use x86 assembly to solve problems where speed is paramount, string concatenation generally isn't one of those problems. Like lets say you need to reformat a little endian RGB pixel into a big endian RGB pixel, then that's something I'd use assembly for.

Java as a language is horrible language because the only problem it solves well is how to inflate a consulting bill, or how to waste developers time figuring out what exceptions a method throws. Only exception a method needs to throw is JavaOutTheDoor.

Solving a problem in java is like winning a race where your legs are hobbled, yes, it's an accomplishment, but wouldn't it have just been smarter to untie your legs? Java was invented in 1994 or something like that, and the scary part is it hasn't changed. Perhaps I should still code my C K&R style?
Corey Haines and Dan North debate over Twitter - 'Is coding a craft?'
Absolutely. I'm certainly not trying to advocate being a penny-pincher. Growing a company requires spending money, intelligently.

This is just a quick brain hack that helps us place value on what seems like a small expense once it all becomes "numbers".
At the risk of sounding obvious, you have different sources of energy to spend: your own time/effort, cash, equity. Figuring out when to use which is the trick. You can't optimize everything, so you have to think about it and give it your best guess.
You were probably down voted for 1) it is assumed that she has already gone this route, 2) the departments in undergrad career placement (outside of top tier schools) are normally as effective (worthless) as Unemployment offices.
When Your Data Center Has Packed Its Bags
Thanks - I was about to e-mail you. So far, my feedback is that you would definitely benefit from some help with your copywriting. In addition to the previously mentioned errors, you need to think a little bit about what your benefit is to your customers. Consider telling a story instead of reciting bullet points - "Company X wondered if their customers liked the new search page design. 15 minutes later, they knew, thanks to Poplytics. 10 minutes after that, the old design was restored." I think you also need to do some research into what sort of needs your customers have, and position your benefit statements to address those needs. For example, you mention satisfying customers. That's probably a real need. But is it the most important one? What about "answering those pesky questions the guy in marketing always asks" or "gather visitor's ideas about how to improve any page on your site?"

Finally, at first blush this does seem similar to KISSinsights. And there may be some overlap with UserVoice and Get Satisfaction. You might want to think about what problems you solve better than those companies.

Best of luck!
10 years ago Apple had 5 billion in revenue. Now they're pushing 100 billion in revenue. They butting in on competitors who operate in the 5% margin range, and who are all desperately starting to claw back at Apple's gains.

No, it isn't sustainable. History will prove me out, and in 3 years I would bet that Apple has seen a significant margin haircut. Quote me on a 50% decline.

As a comparison, by the way, look at Sony (which was the Apple before Apple). Once a purveyor of high margin audio equipment, they saturated that market and started moving to high markup mobile audio equipment...and then TVs...and then lower markup mobile equipment, etc, and then everyone started fighting back.

Apple is exactly following the Sony curve.

EDIT: Arrowed down. This is one of those seminal moments that speak volumes about a community, and I think HN is done (just furthering an observation that has grown). Account and site abandoned.
> For some reason I can't reply to alexophile and steveklabnik here, so I'll just leave this:

If too many replies happen too fast, HN hides the reply link to try and slow down conversation. You can always get around this by clicking the 'link' link, but the idea is to encourage in-depth replies over chatty conversation, so use it wisely!

That said, while some people may have been running around saying "Negro" in a scientific manner, I'm sure many more were using it as a slur. Even then, they may not have intended it to be a slur, but that doesn't mean it's not exposing institutionalized racism; "he's not racist, he's just old."

I see this happening myself with 'gay' and 'faggot.' I have nothing against homosexuals, yet in anger I often use terms that are derogatory to them. It's something I'm working on.
Honestly, Jason, this is the only time I've found myself agreeing with you. Mahalo was a low SNR, spam-driven, visually abhorrent, search-result-polluting pile of useless self-referential scraped-off-wikipedia bullshit that I wanted to burn to the ground so badly that I wrote code to excise it from search results before its inchoate content managed to scream dimly from somewhere below two folds worth of weight loss ads, "help me."

I'll give you a good slow clap.
And it comes with a soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntgYJ9iz47c
The only way forward is to embrace WP7 and become the WP7 phone. Build apps and an ecosystem around that. Hell, get Microsoft to acquire Nokia and make WP7 exclusive. WP7 is a much better platform than Android anyway (in a couple of OS updates at least).

There is no way that Nokia will ever win using Symbian/MeeGo or Android.

If they stay the course then Nokia's dead and will never recover.
A good memo and he's certainly correct about the phone market. I hope that Trolltech/Qt makes out OK.
Keyboard kill for you. "Tell us how you really feel!"
How about 3 months of your salary on a small stone of no special rarity or particular utility, just because an international cartel succeeded in telling people they should? The entire industrialized world engages in this foolery.

This roundly shows the hypocrisy of those from the west making snide comments about Chinese engaging in signaling. It's a part of North American culture to engage in such signaling as a matter of course. The majority of all retail establishments would lose a big chunk of their profits without such tendencies. It's the same sort of thing as people criticizing ghetto kids for buying Nike shoes. I wonder how many of those critics save enough for their own retirement?
Emphatic agreement about NSDateFormatter. Be careful about instantiating too many of those.

I wrote an import class to map some JSON to Core Data entities, including a boatload of dates. NSDateFormatter instances were being created during several loops, at a cost of about 800ms, according to Time Profiler.

Refactored the code to use a single instance, shared across every object and method that needed to do date parsing or other date chores. Shaved that 800ms down to about 90.

Check your Cocoa codebase for NSDateFormatter abuse – really easy win.

Another win: Have your server vend binary Plist files instead of JSON or XML. Zero parsing needed, similar file sizes. Cut import times as much as 50%!
great record. Kaputt and Computer and Blues are my two favorites so far this year
that is what i said i was going to do in my post
Proposed Tax Cuts For Twitter Raise Questions Of "Corporate Blackmail"
Unfortunately for Elop, there's only one Steve Jobs.
Congrats to him! 10 cold-calls a day to relevant companies and specific hiring manager (jigsaw, spoke, linkedin) is highly effective at gaining 1st interviews. Linkedin just for "cold connection" or "cold email" contact works very well also. With recent grads / the younger work force tends to apply for jobs outside the realm of their abilities. Such as, 3-5 years of X and X. My own favorite (I was unemployed for 6 months post grad in 2009) was contacting companies / persons and stating something to the effect of "I know you are looking for someone with 3-5 years of experience. I am a recent graduate with 1-2 and wanted to know if you were considering more junior candidates. Could we setup a phone or 1st interview?" Or, volunteering for free.
i've been writing about this issue since i started the AVC blog in 2003. it really frustrates me that nothing has really changed in the music business
Could anyone share some good tutorials or guides on getting started with (preferably jQuery) AJAX and Rails 3?

I'm doing a little here and there in a current web app, but I could absolutely use some tips, pointers, and direction on better ways.
The problem is I would both clean the bathroom and continue looking for a job. Smile, pitch in, and quietly get the fuck out of there. Net cost me not much. Net cost to the company 10-30+k depending on how long I stay.

PS: Turnover at the 3-6 month period is the most expensive for a SW company. You just lost all that hiring momentum, wasted all that time getting someone up to speed, damage moral, and they leave before you get any real work out of them all at the same time.
I love Steve Blank, because he is a sincere, no bullshit and no hype guy. There is anybody like him?

I don't like the general entrepreneurship mantra, feel like lemmings jumping from the mountain.
You've probably seen a lot of other people's Java code. Does it typically look like what you wrote or the code on github?
What makes you think that the same Chinese who base their self-worth on Coach handbags don't also aspire to DeBeers diamonds? I stand by my comment, but doubly so because China is far from an industrialized nation. The people buying these things can't even drink their houses' tap water.
Savings represent capital, and naturally cause interest rates to decrease. Lower interest rates act as a signal that investors should go ahead and make investments. Saving represent deferred spending, not a persistence absence of spending.

However, in the government skewed markets of today where interest rates are forced artificially low these signals are not allowed to operate correctly and savers are penalized.

There is no "excessive incentive". People save when an incentive exists sure, but this represents future spending. At the moment there is little or no benefit to simple savings; why save when your money will be worth less over time? This is a result of not allowing interest rates to float with the market. Again, interest rates are manipulated by the government.

In the case where competition causes prices to decrease due to higher efficiency and quality, the money in your pocket becomes more valuable. What part of this is a negative consequence?

The difference is in fact that deflation is not always a negative result, which was my point in the first place.
I'm surprised he didn't look into the use of the div() function (it's a standard C function) that returns both the quotient and remainder, since he's using both results anyway.
If you look close enough you can almost figure out what it's doing between all the line noise.
I agree. The Press Release is somewhat effective, but is becoming very overused. You are better off building a good followers on Twitter and providing your information through that channel. They will generally be more interested in what you have to say.