skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It depends. Variable name length is mainly related to two things:

* Scope the variable resides over

* Generality of the variable

If the scope is large (the variable is global and exposed to a lot of code), the variable name has to be longer, so that far away readers can make sense of it. A variable that scopes over 2 lines is allowed to be much shorter, especially if its definition is as clear or clearer than an arbitrary name.

As for the generality, if you write a function addEmployeeSalaries, of course that is a better name than some arbitrary short name (e.g: "addEm").

But when writing (very very) general code, it is hard to avoid situations where the variable denotes only structure. It is just too general to find a useful long (and specific) name.

For example, consider:

flip f x y = f y x

sequence :: Monad m => [m a] -> m [a]

Single-letter variable (and type variable) names, but considered perfectly good practice.
Widespread instant communication is disruptive in a number of ways, that disruption is also a threat.

When I was in Boy Scouts and we visited a police station (which was trying to convince us that crime does not pay), they went to great lengths to explain how radio, and the ability for all of the officers to communicate, gave them a tremendous advantage over the criminal who was attempting to flee a crime scene.

Flash forward to Napster and complaints at how difficult it was for one law enforcement officer (or agency) to police a band of criminals with out-of-band communications infrastructure.

Then forward slightly further to Gulf War 1 where the key targets in the opening salvos were the communication hubs and infrastructure which enabled Iraqi forces to communicate both with headquarters and with each other. With communication out Iraqi units that were, on paper, 'stronger' than the coalition forces deployed against them in parts of the battlefield surrendering, in part because they weren't aware of supporting units nearby.

Finally Egypt, Libya, and Yemen are good examples of communication infrastructure favoring a disperse group in their efforts to overthrow an established presence.

It is no surprise that folks who have used communications superiority as an advantage against their adversaries are keenly aware of the disadvantage of not having the communication 'high ground.' Those folks will work tirelessly both in the open and underground to give themselves the advantage.
JQuery Input Range Slider
This is the most important star in the universe
IOS 5 will only run on the iPhone 4 and beyond - Rumor
>>Acquiring it through a credit instrument didn't pass the test, since you just moved the obligation forward in time, and if you couldn't come up with it now then why do you think you can come up with even more later?

What about stocks? I need three days for a sale of stocks to settle and take the money out. If I have an emergency I can use my credit card. (and pay it back at the end of the month).
It's a lot like a binary diff, where phenotype is the source code, natural selection the programmer, and the genome the binary. Natural selection works on the phenotype, and you are saying that at all times the binary diff is compact, or sensible to talk about. Untrue. In fact it's trivially untrue because the genome is too small.

Group altruism is stable and is a very strong attractor of population behavior. All that's required is that group members be able to recognize one another.
http://people.brynmawr.edu/twong/models/pseudoaltruism.html
Individuals born into such a group may learn this or it may be genetically inherited (instinctual), or both. Of course the distinction between learning and instinct is also a bit fuzzy.
I like the look of the landing page...it's clear, concise, and descriptive. And the design isn't overwhelming. From a UI standpoint, I approve.

One thing that might be helpful is labelling the games you do intend to support. That was the first question that I had. I see at the bottom you can view images of TF, Minecraft, Left 4 Dead, etc...but it would help if you were a little more explicit. It has those 3 listed under "Games, Games, Games", but I would love to know about the "many more". Overall it looks really nice!
I gotta agree with this. There's no darn way that "polishing up" your resume can possibly take a full week. That sounds way too much like procrastinating.
So the question becomes:

Are all Dr. Y's reviews positive because Dr. Y is a great doctor, or because Dr. Y removed the negative reviews?

With ownership of the commentary comes the power to remove it.
If you don't mess up, nobody will know that you did it anything at all.

They don't seem to publish statistics on these things very often, but my gut tells me more people get away with crimes than don't.
For future reference: If you think you're being set up in an interview, in many cases you can legally record the interview using a voice recorder app on your phone without telling the other party.

The only US states that require all-party notification of a conversation being recorded are:

California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

All other states allow you to record a conversation without notifying the other party provided you are party to the conversation. If the conversation crosses state lines, Federal law applies which only requires one party to know the call is being recorded.

http://www.rcfp.org/taping/
US CIO's proposal: FedSpace R.I.P., Data.gov Soldiers On but Spending Cut
Show HN: Crowdsourced OK Tornado Assistance Resources
I didn't make this, but a friend of mine did. Crowdsourced resources for tornado assistance resources. He's also done this for ice storms, wildfires, and other wide scale natural disasters

We're getting hammered with a pretty nasty line of supercells on a dryline, FYI

Why am I posting this: 1) It's pretty cool 2) You ought to set up the infrastructure do one for your area. The sooner the better.
Although it more get more spammy, it may help to allow anonymous feedback. For two reasons, really: many people don't like signing up for a service without seeing how it works, and many people won't want to have an account tied to feedback they leave for another person.

If usernames and identities were kept anonymous, that would fix the latter issue. And if you could at least show prospective users examples it could help with registration numbers.
I didn't make this, but a friend did. He's also done the same for ice storms, wildfires, and other natural disasters.

Why am I sharing: 1) It's pretty darned cool 2) If you're looking for an idea for a project -- build this infrastructure for your area. You might save lives.

Alright -- I'm off to the shelter now.

http://www.weather.com/weather/newscenter/alerts/nswxcategor...
Doat.com is the Future of the Mobile Browser
Good description of how the LA Times staffs its social media effort: reader engagement editor Martin Beck "has one assistant to help him monitor social media, as well as an ombudsman and a customer service staffer who pitch in. But he also has a team of 20 to 25 copy editors who take care of posting news to Twitter throughout the day and evening.

These “Twitter eds,” as they’re called, are a “self-selected volunteer group,” Beck said. It works out It works out to at least one or two people on duty to tweet at any given time."
At the very least, it's worth having dealings with multiple banks (eg your savings account with one and a credit card with another). It wouldn't take a financial collapse to make your money temporarily vanish -- I mean, how long was Playstation Network down for? It's entirely conceivable that one day a major bank will have a serious computer problem that'll shut them down for days.

Or failing that: heck, what happens if you lose your wallet? Yeah, a few hundred bucks (or quid) in a piggy bank isn't a bad idea.
Seems like Idea Guy, Developer Guy, Designer Guy, Business Guy MatchMaking Service is yet to be solved/filled.
As a newspaper journalist, I can say: You're simply wrong. That isn't standard practice, isn't taught in J-school, and will most likely get you fired on the spot from even a marginally reputable publication.
In London, the night bus route I tend to use (to Walthamstow from central London) runs at a slightly lower frequency overnight - just once every ten minutes. It's about as fast as the tube because of the more limited traffic.

And you use the same old Oyster card as during the day. I assume it's just as cheap - 80p or a pound per ride? Cheap enough that I don't even keep track.

I agree with the GP - the overnight services outside of limited routes in NYC aren't flash, and most of the rest of the US metro areas are appalling.
Isn't there a saying 'You can't excel by being the same as everyone else, you get ahead by being different than everyone else.'
Happened to me as well. Many years ago I used Itunes and it wiped my collection off, since I was using automatic syncing. I guess this fixed it now, but I have moved away from iTunes since then.
I currently have two copies (pointing to the same file) of most of my music collection in iTunes. No idea how to fix it. It happened when I tried to import some MP3s from an old laptop that had some overlap.
Announcing The End Of Blind Link Sharing
You do realize that everyone said this in support of IE6 taking over the market, right? Don't repeat the mistakes of the past.
Don't you people know why it is 2 fields ? One to send to the search engine provider and one to NOT send to the searchengine provider if you know exactly where you are going. That is why Mozilla didn't combine them and that is why Google did.
But is there anyone that has made money directly from the data? It seems like data is only valuable as part of a valuable service, not on its own.
Bill Gates Predicts Future in 1995
A copy of Bill Gate's 1995 internal memo to Microsoft executives, "The Internet Tidal Wave". Couldn't find this posted elsewhere so I thought I'd throw it up here. Pretty interesting how accurate his predictions were. Possibly more interesting that Microsoft failed to capitalize on almost all of them.
We Finally Know What Kohort Is...
Black Eyed Peas: El grupo hará una pausa musical
16 Javascript Libraries for Visualizations
Reuters has been caught faking photos.
I have a question for winCE geeks....

Why could this not have been winCE 6.5 several years back?

Seems MS wasted a lot of resources in buying Danger INC and than not listening to them..
This seems to be oddly favorable to apple. Think of the two scenarios.

1- samsung is a complete copycat (likely), and apple has plenty more ammo, which they would get during normal discovery anyway

2- samsung has some novel features, and apple gets advance access to these
Mathematically ranking ranking methods
Raising a child without disclosing its gender
How many marginally reputable publications are still around? I've seen NYT issue retractions before along these lines, no word on whether anyone was sacked for it.
It simply uses CSS3 properties according to the standard. As CSS3 is not fully supported yet, this hasn't been fully tested across browsers, and just needs whatever proprietary tags to work (-webkit-*, etc.).
Original Apple CEO talks about most creative use of Apple II
...I guess the best example was that we had a contest very early on at Apple where we awarded an extra Apple for the unusual use of the machine.

The winner, and what we never realized then, and what we don't think is still true now, is you don't realize how many different ways it can impact you.

The first use was the person that swore by it, a new father who had a new son that the colic, and took the original Apple II, did his own software, hooked up a washing machine motor, the tilt mechanism from a pinball machine, a microphone to the crib. So when the kid was getting restless, the machine would come on and rock the bed.

He actually had statistics to show how much more sleep he and his wife were getting because the kid would partly wake up, then go back to sleep. And that won first prize for a different use of the Apple, and I think that's still true today. People are still finding uses. You put it out in one area, and then it gets out into a lot of others...
Pretty interesting how accurate his predictions were, in everything from internet domination, the death of services like AOL, free ad-funded content, P2P, and search.

Possibly more interesting that Microsoft failed to really capitalize on almost all of them.
Refusing to sign it and taking your business elsewhere is one of the best ways to let them know that you won't stand for this type of thing.

Although this is probably the best way to let them know, unfortunately real world constraints often mean that there are a very small percentage of people who are in a position to truly have a choice between not renewing their lease (in this example) and renewing it. Therefore, a company who is only being affected by those people who don't like their policy and have a choice to follow through will likely receive very little feedback. This is why, I feel, although on paper it works, in real life unfortunately one must insist on other ways to get our point across, including the ones mentioned in replies to the OP.
HTC is not good for you? I think HTC beats Nokia. My latest Nokia phone was really a very crappy and bad one. HTC HD7 and HTC Mozart seems quite good for me.
Small World Experiment
Speaking of pompous, have a look at the list of the thousand-odd World Heritage sites: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list

I'd wager no-one on HN has heard of even 25% of them, let alone visited anywhere near that number.
Ashton Kutcher: Working on Two and a Half Men will give me more time for tech
Here's the graf in the VF piece that has Langner so upset:

“If I did not have the background that I had, I don’t think I would have had the guts to say what I said about Stuxnet,” Langner says now, finishing his second glass of wine during lunch at a Viennese restaurant in Hamburg. Langner studied psychology and artificial intelligence at the Free University of Berlin. He fell into control systems by accident and found that he loved the fiendishly painstaking work. Every control system is like a bespoke suit made from one-of-a-kind custom fabric—tailored precisely for the conditions of that industrial installation and no other. In a profession whose members have a reputation for being unable to wear matching socks, Langner is a bona fide dandy. “My preference is for Dolce & Gabbana shoes,” he says. “Did you notice, yesterday I wore ostrich?” Langner loves the attention that his theories have gotten. He is waiting, he says, for “an American chick,” preferably a blonde, and preferably from California, to notice his blog and ask him out.

This looks bad in isolation. But the piece is enormous; more than 60 grafs long. Langner's complaint makes it sound like a hit piece. It's not; it's simply using those (apparently misleading) details to add some color. The article is ostensibly not even about Langner, even though it quotes and discusses him warmly throughout.

I don't want to sound like I'm defending bad reporting, but the VF articles has substantive concerns about Langner as well --- for instance, his prevalence as a authoritative source for lots of other journalism about Stuxnet --- and one way to dodge that is to redirect attention to stupid stuff like what kinds of shoes he really prefers.
Actually, I know a heck of a lot of developers who don't have very many ideas. They come into work, do what they are told to do and then go back home to watch TV...
The fact that a newspaper doesn't habitually discuss its HR matters in print is not relevant to whether blatant falsehood is "standard practice" in journalism.

The fact that you saw the retraction should tell you that kind of writing does not meet the paper's standard. Editors don't enjoy writing notices to the effect of "Oops, I totally failed at my job there." They do it because the alternative is an even worse blow to the paper's integrity.
The answer is that you are looking for the wrong sort of person. You are looking for perfection and someone awesome.

You should be trying to find a good junior/graduate and spend your seed money on giving them a full time job.

They will make mistakes, not do it the best way or the right way, but if you work closely with them then SOMETHING will get built, enough to prove your concept in the market. When your concept succeeds then you will have the money to employ someone more expensive to do it right.

Change your expectation and you will then find the right person.
...we had a contest very early on at Apple where we awarded an extra Apple for the unusual use of the machine.

The winner, and what we never realized then, and what we don't think is still true now, is you don't realize how many different ways it can impact you.

The first use was the person that swore by it, a new father who had a new son that the colic, and took the original Apple II, did his own software, hooked up a washing machine motor, the tilt mechanism from a pinball machine, a microphone to the crib. So when the kid was getting restless, the machine would come on and rock the bed.

He actually had statistics to show how much more sleep he and his wife were getting because the kid would partly wake up, then go back to sleep. And that won first prize for a different use of the Apple, and I think that's still true today. People are still finding uses. You put it out in one area, and then it gets out into a lot of others.
I submitted this yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2576144

No comments, no upvotes.
Didn't know ? They are not film optimized, they are cost optimized.

It turns out if you slide the screen material in the way they do they can slide more screens from the same material.

You can still get other monitors but they are more expensive.

Atleast that is what I heared.
Please read the article.

"The advanced discovery is limited to "Outside Counsel Eyes Only," meaning that Apple's engineering staff and in-house legal team will not have access to the materials. Apple's legal team handling the suit will determine wether to file for an injunction blocking the devices from being sold."
Hmm. Not interested in getting into a debate about whether depression is an illness or whatever, so I'll just say "OK".
I disagree. It's neither code nor data, it's how you use the data and / or the code.
A significant problem with this argument is that the majority of LCD panels are actually used to watch film and video, and the majority of people want cheap monitors.

The death of 4:3 is a natural consequence of these facts.

(Now, you could turn it on its side and optimise for reading portrait text, but given the harsh viewing angles of your typical TN panel this needs either an IPS screen or retooling your factory to build portrait panels - which butts against the 'wants cheap monitors' criteria. Technology progresses but not always in the direction you'd like...)
Sounds like you didn't read the article, he specifically addressed encapsulation and an alternative way of doing it.
Sigh. Sounds like the next Firefox release will require yet another half hour's Googling and hacking to figure out how to restore yet another useful feature removed by the Mozilla team.
Manufactures like it because they get to put a bigger number (measured by inches diagonally) on widescreen monitors compared to a 4:3 monitor with the same area (measured by width*height).

But we're doing the disservice to ourselves when we buy it, so your point still stands.
Pardon the obvious software error, but could people please not downmod a well known fact? Microsift sells a windowing system.
Mono team releases first version post-Novell
[disclosure: i'm the author]

yes, and i should have included that in the piece as i was asked about it when i presented the material at OSBC.

examples include SpiceWorks (free IT management client, monetizes data / adverstising), to Google (monetizes location data, email, etc), to TomTom (location data).

there were also two separate open source vendors that spoke to me following the presentation that will be launching data oriented initiatives. one within a few weeks.
You'd do the study by finding out people's educational background and seeing what kind of projects they made. Popular vs large but unpopular projects for example. Popularity might not seem like a CS metric, but it's progress in another direction.

Literate programming and writing essays in English major is the connection. He appreciated Knuth's ideas enough to seriously use them.

Any large scale educational curriculum "brainwashes." It makes lots of people think the same, have the same ideas. How many CS grads make their own CMS early on?

And we're all generalizing here, these textwall discussions will go nowhere.

My point was after a certain amount of time and progress, after a certain number of people join a discipline, progress in it slows. It's a law of diminishing returns. When large numbers are attracted to an industry because of high salaries, it seems to hurt the discipline. Same idea as too many cooks in the kitchen, too many programmers on a single project, only on a different scale.

Maybe that's why CS and software hasn't made much progress this last decade. You need to add more disciplines after a certain point.
At the same time, I think it is fair to say that anyone (doctor or otherwise) should attempt to understand any legal agreement they enter into.

If doctors are asking patients to enter into a contract with them, they should have a good understanding of exactly what it says.
Google invests $55 million in Kern County wind farm
Wow, it's just as annoying when a woman has a giant picture of herself on every page of her blog as it is when a man does it.
A fair use of a copyright piece of material.
The problem is, Mozilla has moved steadily in the direction of making it harder, if not impossible, to re-enable features they've decided that we don't need.
A URL bar appears if you open a new tab, hover over a tab, or press Ctrl-L.
interesting. what are the software products that command high licensing fees launched in recent years that you'd point to?
Where all these grand proposals break down is when you actually have to deal with real, domain-specific problems. It's not too hard to clearly express what the split_string() function or the multiply() function do, so namespace collisions aren't a problem. But what about the function that "assigns" an "activity" to a "user?" All of a sudden, every single person is going to mean something different by those three words, and it suddenly requires a huge amount of context to find that function. Searching for something that assigns activities to users as some sort of global search is worthless; the only stuff you care about is the set of functions within your code base that deal with those concepts, or perhaps within some library that you understand and whose notions of users, activities, and assignment matches what you need to do. So you need some unit to pull in that's larger than just a bag of functions; you need a group of functions that collectively operate on the same sets of data in consistent ways. And that's just a fundamentally hard problem; finding the right split so that you have a set of functions that can be used together, that are reusable, that don't rely on or expose additional concepts or libraries, that's all very difficult. Just flattening the function namespace, killing modules, and doing global searches doesn't do anything for that problem. Again, as much as we all wish that the proper unit of reusability in programming is a single function, since it makes life easier, in most complicated cases that's simply not the case. That's why we have classes, or modules, or namespaces, or packages in the first place: they're all various attempts to group together functions that work together on the same kinds of data, that share the same understanding of that data and that work towards the same goal. Just punting on that encapsulation problem doesn't make it go away.