skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wikipedia[1] has a nice diagram showing how rapidly our visual acuity drops as the function of the angular distance of the fovea. This is a drastically different situation from a camera photosensor where the distribution of pixels is flat. Yes, our brains use saccades[2] to construct a synthetic image over a longer integration time, but still, our non-central acuity is so poor that we cannot even read regular-sized newspaper text except with the central couple of degrees of our vision. I don't think any "megapixel" calculation makes much sense given these facts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovea

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
I find that in vi the fastest method for me is usually a mechanical combination of visual mode/movement/yank/paste rather than figuring out in my head where the next "word" ends or how many times to repeat the command. I've never been good at that but I consider myself very fast in vim. It is rare that I have to repeat a command and then I usually use the macro recorder and repeat it a random amount of times until I get it right.
"There's only so many things one can usefully commit to memory"

That's similar to not learning English because the dictionary is too large to memorize.

As jvanenk says elsewhere in here, it's muscle memory, not memorization. You don't "remember" how to walk or use a pencil, you just think about the goal (move body over there, write sonnet) and muscle memory takes care of the details.

Most vimmers have had the experience of someone watching over their shoulder and they say "wait, how did you do that." And then you have to pause and think it through, because you yourself don't know anymore, it's just in you.

It would be ludicrous to try to learn all of vim, and it's absolutely unnecessary for using vim (or any other fine grained editor) effectively. You learn what's useful to you at the moment. If you do anything a lot that irritates you, there's almost certainly something in vim (or any other power editor) that will reduce it down to a keystroke or three.

I'm not saying you should learn and use vim, only that your objection (too much to learn) is misplaced.
Clay Shirky's Favorite Bug Report Ever
If I tag variables, it's usually as a suffix rather than a prefix. It just feels better to me that way. Two related variables can show up alphabetically near each other that way where the suffix tells them apart (often with a _ separating them: uname_clean).
Skype Snaps Up Group Messaging Service GroupMe
gevent has utilities to turn Python blocking calls into non-blocking ones.

In your case you could switch to a pure Python MySQL driver and gevent will turn all your mySQL calls into async.

Actually there're also gevent non-blocking MySQL drivers that are written in C.
"Best guess" Google's New Search Feature (AI?)
At scale yes. They're built to solve different problems and excel at each individually. Nginx can proxy, but HAProxy is more flexible. Nginx can cache, but Varnish is much more flexible and efficient. We use all three technologies and route the traffic to the service best suited for the traffic.
IOS 5 to Include Early Earthquake Warnings in Japan
Nobody Wants Kitler
Very interesting discussion here. I was just developing a free PT clone too. We are and were using PT already as paying members.

But I started developing a clone in my sparetime just for fun. I didn't really like the look&feel of PT and I tried to improve that. Also we were missing a good timetracking part in PT too. And what came out is Planthat (Planth.at).

I would love to see some screenshots of Fulcrum. Is there any resource out there?

If you feel interested in our tool you may want to take a look at some screenshots here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Planthat/187262291341546
It's quite common to need more precision than that. Interest is a good example.

Also 0.025 cents per widget. Perhaps in your world 1 cent is the minimum anything in the world can cost. The rest of us, alas, live in the real world.
The education system is falling behind the students
There is an cultural non-acceptance of pre-testing methodologies in some organizations.

People are angered at the number of tests relative to the size of the code base, especially if you go with something like strict 100% coverage of whitebox style tests, etc, where you're virtually guaranteed to have as many tests as function branches and then some.

Top down is an approach that has value outside the permanent test suite. You can make a more temporary suite that you use to then fill in the top down design as well, and then do not maintain.

(I am not sayings tests are bad. I'm just saying functional code is over-prioritized by some employers/customers, a well tested system is usually a good thing).
We use this method where I work :) It's true that if the thread hasn't finished by the end of the time limit, an exception will be raised and the thread will keep running. Part of our solution is that the thread is also aware of the time limit. It checks to see if it has timed out at regular intervals during its calculations, and quickly exits itself if it has expired. It's not the prettiest thing on earth, but it gets the job done for us
I've never had much trouble comparing two candidates. I wish I had the problem of finding two qualified candidates and having to only pick one. That beats the sea of unqualified and hilariously underprepared candidates I get now. Finding someone who's able to do the job is like finding a diamond in the rough.
HP EVP Todd Bradley looking to jump ship for CEO role elsewhere
I am but an egg, but . . .
- Knowledge of vi keystrokes allows integration of automated text editing with other shell commands, as those keystrokes are scriptable.
- Search and replace commands allows fine-grained specification of global texts. Tricks like "delete all lines from the start of this code block to the end" are no big deal.
- vi easily incorporates the output of shell commands into the text you're editing.
What are some tips for creating a secure password?
True that, but they are deleted really fast...
How GroupMe Sold For $85 Million Just 370 Days After Launch
Halfway there is syntastic...
What BuzzData will (and won't) be: some big-picture thinking
As siblings point out, how much work you have to do depends on your language and the available facilities. In Java, this might be a huge pain - Haskell, etc. less so. It's more likely that this is done as part of the framework or libraries generally - how many people are, to continue this example, writing their own web framework? In .NET for example, ASP.NET MVC includes an HtmlString class for similar purposes. Other languages can approach it in different ways. You may find as well that even with something like .NET, not the most expressive of type systems, you could still make life fairly easy by providing appropriate implicit type conversions in one direction.
That graphic only clearly states one thing, the smartphone patent situation is a mess. It does so by being a mess.

If it has to be a graphic, an informative arrangement would be all companies listed down the left side, and all companies listed again across the top, then draw the exact same set of colored arrows. You can see the same idea on the back of a gas station map, that lists distances between cities.

If space is an issue, tabular text would be great.
NextMedia ONLY took 2.5 hours to kick Conan’s ass ！
Conan O’Brien was right about one thing; the “Taiwanese Animation” team was quick on response. But how quick exactly? 48 hours was way off. The correct answer is 2.5 hours.
If you freeze up in social situations, try this...
press i, use the regular keys?
I wouldn't want SafeString is-a String, I would want a conversion from SafeString to String that removes whatever encoding or escaping was applied. Otherwise you end up re-encoding values that unbeknownst to you don't need it, which is why there are thousands of terrible PHP bulletin boards out there which won't let you use quotes without mangling them.
SEO issues aside, what we have found is that generic domain names are far easier for the average person to remember.

Quantifying the value of that, however, is another thing entirely.
As a designer myself, I agree.
Ugh... I just think camel case is so much prettier, but marks for being consistent.
Conan O’Brien was right about one thing; the “Taiwanese Animation” team was quick on response. But how quick exactly? 48 hours was way off. It's 2.5 hours.
If it turns out to be true, this guy deserves a Nobel Prize in medicine.
Yes, exactly, the meaning of 'safe string' depends on its context.

I personally believe that all code that is sensitive to escaping issues, should be escaped on output (or storage / sending to the database / whatever) by default unless you explicitly opt it out.

In our framework, we maintain 'already escaped' strings as a separate class, forcing the developer to acknowledge this fact. The HTML output layer escapes all strings unless they are instances of this safe class. Similarly for the SQL layer, all code gets quoted unless it was explicitly marked as 'safe'.
Does anyone have a cache of part 1 and 2? Seem like good reading material.
According to Spolsky, that was the original intention: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html

(EDIT: Oops, I answered you before seeing it's on the accepted answer on the article)
*lol
Or maybe their Kool-Aid :)
Ahh, the weighted average approach to decision making.

If you want to make a decision but don't want to trust your own intuition and judgment, and don't want to get embroiled in hard arguments where someone can get blamed later when things don't work out, then hey, I guess you need a mathematical model!

"But I only know basic arithmetic," you say.

That's okay! Because the arithmetic behind a weighted average is so easy to do and understand, anyone can do it!

Not only that, but you can take that underlying model and produce any number of pretty charts that make your entirely subjective decision seem like it has some mathematical rigor behind it!

The Weighted Average (tm): for when you absolutely have to make a completely subjective decision and don't want to be blamed for the results.
Up, down, left and right should get me around

This works fine in vim. It's not suggested practice since moving your hand over to the arrow keys is slow, but it works like any other editor.
What's with the name?
It is derived from Duck Duck Goose, but it's not a metaphor—really. If you're wondering how you would turn that into a verb...Duck it!

From the ddg faq page: http://duckduckgo.com/faq.html
Darpa shells out $21m for IBM cat brain chip
How is Amazon not a platform? Completely leaving aside AWS (which the author does mention):

a. it has zillions of stores selling through it
b. a whole generation of small businesses have been built by people selling used books, cds and dvds.
c. anyone can publish their own books, cds and dvds
d. anyone can use their fulfillment services and payment services
e. digital video and music
f. kindle
I use clang complete for vim. For me it is more precise than Visual Studio 2010 Intellisense (they use edg for code completion).
>There is something left to do? It takes five minutes? That means the story isn’t done? Yes? Story declined!

It's true, so many many times those 5 minutes expanded into hours...
Knowledge is a Sierpinski triangle
His direct links from part 3 to parts 1 and 2 are broken. However if you click on "More Articles" (http://20bits.com/category/articles/) on his homepage the links there work fine.

http://20bits.com/articles/graph-theory-part-i-introduction/

http://20bits.com/articles/graph-theory-part-ii-linear-algeb...
"At least for me, pitching a business as a platform when it really isn't tends to degrade what might be a really interesting vision and story in and of itself."

I suppose, but that's a pretty small downside. For others pitching yourself as a platform can lead to more buzz, more possibilities and of course...maybe a higher valuation. And, fact is you can't know where things are going so you might as well build & position yourself as a platform if it makes sense.
The article is simply a massive preachy FAQ with intricate advice that really boils down to common sense and good manners. And yeah, the people who lack the common sense to post good questions, are not going to ever read something like that.

I think that the atmosphere and characteristics of the forum determines the quality of the questions more than anything else and especially more than any list of "rules" in the FAQ or front matter of the forum.

There are so many crummy forums out there and only a small number of really good ones. Comparing the crappy ones with the good ones, I'd say that a forum can cultivate "good questions" by using some of the following techniques:

[1] A good number of non-anonymous posters. If you have your name in the game, you're less likely to behave badly.
[2] Active moderators who aren't afraid of yanking stuff or even requiring approval for each post.
[3] Crowd-sourced up/down votes
[4] A very specific topic.
Online Marketing Program: Website Foundations ~ 1.1.1 - Usablity Testing
I do some of this steps in random order (and loop until there are no more ideas):

5.Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.

3.Try to find an answer by reading the manual.

2.Try to find an answer by searching the Web.

7. Try to find an answer by reading the source code. (+ only source is almost never available so I use reverse engineering instead)

Rarely do i need to ask questions with this methodology, and the guy who should answer probably would have to do the same.
This is a nice find, boosting existing theories, but it's certainly not news that the early life probably thrived in a reducing, oxygen-free environment. Actually, the rise of photosynthetizing blue-green bacteria and the subsequent rapid climb of atmospheric molecular oxygen levels[1] may have caused a catastrophic extinction event, wiping out most of the contemporary life forms, undefended against the dangerously reactive chemical.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
It's really cool. There is no documentation or examples, and I wish it didn't require jQuery, but it appears the code is open source:

http://vintagejs.com/js/vintage.js
FYI Chrome and Flash have a bug with Action script 2. So if you're using AS2 for that game that's why his controls don't work. http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1265535 second paragraph.
Which distro is still using syslog? Even Red Hat, an outfit that is super-conservative, moved to rsyslog.

One of the first things I used to do was compile my own rsyslog and disable syslog. Haven't had to do that for a while.
Let's make a baseball analogy. Do you think a person with no hand-eye coordination can become a great hitter?

I have no doubt there are people who are math averse who have plenty of untapped math ability (e.g. most women with math ability have been taught to think they can't do math). There are plenty of psychological reasons why a person who is capable of doing something might think they have "zero talent", and it's perfectly plausible for a good mentor to help them unlock their ability. But that's a far cry from the argument that "anyone can be a great programmer".
Not a FB app developer, but my naive experience is that not all apps are hosted on a domain with SSL available. If it's not on an SSL domain, it brings up a box asking you if it's ok to disable HTTPS.
Interesting, as a web designer I did not understand I was supposed to be a web marketer as well. So, if I study up on the books mentioned in the comments does that mean I can now command two paychecks? If I spread out into copy writing as well does that now mean three paychecks?

I don't know about his world but in mine the marketer worries over conversions and ROI and WORKS WITH the web designer to achieve those goals. Somewhere in there a copywriter is involved. In my office we refer to this as a "web team". Is this a new concept? Can I patent it?
Here's the journal article in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...
Ask HN: A good slide-deck for HTML?
Hi,
I am a senior student in a tech institute and I will be organizing a small talk to introduce freshmen to HTML and CSS. Can someone please suggest me a good slide-deck that I can use/refer to?
That's hilarious. Thanks for that.

> be sure that encryption code is not visible at client’s browser.

Good luck with that
Do you plan to expand your tool to making video tutorials?
If the states get back what they contribute, why have the federal government collect it at all?
"Programming is hard, harder than anything else you could possibly do."

Good grief. You haven't done much.
Entrepreneurs Needed to Keep Web 3.0 From Fading
I'm scared enough to put an application in the cloud - by 2045 I'm going to feel comfortable putting me there? 2545, maybe. I'll get back to you then. Kurzweil's wrong on this one, and I say that as a convinced Singularitarian.
Coding in the Clink
Devis estimate renovation paris
I quite honestly had to read this over a couple of times to make sure this is not some kind of a parody. I don't understand why people are complimenting this. Let me count the ways:

1) Asking a client to produce a quantitative "job spec" like this is simply going to produce a bunch of random numbers. What basis is there for saying that "vision" counts for 15% and "financial mgmt expertise" for 25%? These are not comparable things and you can't throw numbers on them. At most you can say things like "financial mgmt is a must, and of all that have it, we want the ones with the best vision". You still have to define these...

2) How are you supposed to give such fine-grained numeric grades to candidates on things like "vision"?

3) What do you do with the chart once you have it? This is the part of the post that makes it look like a parody - he has these charts for two candidates and says "now it's easy as pie to choose", but neither chart looks hugely better than the other. Are you supposed to compare the areas with grid paper? That makes no sense and may leave you with a candidate that lacks something crucial.

4) This brings me to my final point - you may be looking for things in a candidate that are pass/fail, e.g. in his chart "dealing with government regulators" looks like a sine qua non thing. His method could well result in overlooking this.

I don't get why people are calling this insightful and so on. This is extremely similar to a ton of competencies matrix methods, but this way of presenting the results is particularly bad.
You sure he knew of top down development before I mentioned it?
While I tremendously respect Steve Blank, trying to reduce hiring to a simple quantitative graph seems like an absolutely terrible idea.

It reminds me of the Pritchard Scale in Dead Poets Society. That's not how you measure poetry or people.
服饰画册印刷
The fall of Tripoli
Which is a problem, why not just force all app developers to use SSL?

Additionally, the button disables SSL forever, rather than just while you're using the broken app.
The news animation idea is really cool. It's easier to "read" the news. Quick production is a challenge though... 2.5 hours is amazing work.
M&A acquisition trends and implications for startups
"with normal logging"...What is the normal logging in Rail? No fsync() is needed?
Off the topic of unclean code, but there are some great Spolsky articles that are more business-oriented on Inc's site: http://www.inc.com/author/joel-spolsky
Ask HN: A way to view the top rated posts/comments of all time?
I just thought that this would be a really useful feature. Or, is there a hidden way to do this already via hnsearch.com, for example?
Is the world ready for HP virtual connect?
I am a little puzzled by this project because:
a) there was a recent post on techcrunch about how webos runs twice as fast on a hacked ipad, how the hardware isn't that great at all and how this was a pretty widespread belief in the HP team
b) android hardware is evolving very very fast
These two observations would suggest that by the time android is ported to the touchpad it will be an obviously obsolete piece of unsupported hardware
This is CoffeeScript
The HASTOL scheme was originally proposed with an air-breathing Mach 10 (12?) hypersonic plane.
java is the most used language right now and using the jvm gets you access to all of that infrastructure. it also makes it really easy to port code to linux, macs, windows, phones, tablets, etc. practicality is one of the stated goals of clojure and the jvm adds a lot of it. aside from the lack of tail-call recursion, it doesn't really bring any real downsides.

on topic: theres no reason that only one can succeed. it's like asking whether linux will beat windows or whether hamburgers will beat hot dogs. they both bring different things to the table and target different people. scala has more common territory and thus more at stake with clojure than arc does. the only thread of commonality between arc and clojure is that they are both lisps and that is hardly the most important thing about either of them.
My mother died of ALS; this is encouraging news. Of course it's not a treatment, yet, but given that nothing else so far has really been effective, it's a promising discovery.
Also know as "How to put a second type system into your language". Personally, I prefer to have the language type system handle it.
New Approaches To Designing Log-In Forms
American VPN to tunnel all your traffic would work in this instance.
> cases where a significant rewrite was pretty much required because a crucial implementation constraint was not visible from the top.

That happens sometimes no matter which way you go. I've had the assumptions of what lower level libraries work off have to be completely rewritten as well because the top level system didn't make sense with the verbs and nouns given to it when you looked at it full on in the end.

The difference between redoing code gluing together lower level modules and redesigning a spacecraft make that anecdote perhaps a bit of an exaggeration on the details of work required when Top down fails.
EMIT
From what I've heard, getting the attributes right is hard.

You need stuff like:

- Honesty. Obvious, but I'd expect it gets quite hard to find at the CEO level.

- Frugality. Some great CEOs are legendary tightwads.

- Not penny-wise, pound foolish. Because even if you are a tightwad, you shouldn't kill moral or R&D. 90% of a CEO's job will be knowing what expenses to approve, and what expenses to knock back.

- Deep knowledge of the organization, its environment, and its processes. Otherwise, they will not be able to verify when their C-execs are screwing with them.

- Commitment to improving operational effectiveness. Low level engineers are great firefighters. It's the guys who can keep improving the small stuff that are really worth the big bucks.
There's nothing about this post that's OK. Horrifying! :)
This piece is entirely content-free.
> There is nothing intrinsically special about the hardware that deserves Android (except that it is cheap right now).

That's exactly what makes it special. And that's whats important to most of the buyers, I imagine.
Like a virus scanner. Or a virus.
? That's what the article is about. For reasons not explained om detail in this write-up, the authors believe that early life was thriving in that region of the world. The mass extinction(s) that followed are kinda irrelevant.
It does: Human -> Living -> Biology -> Natural Science -> Branch -> Knowledge -> Facts -> Truth -> Reality -> Philosophy
I will always applaud for those who say education system sucks.

I think school education keep us away from the real, real enjoyment of beauty, real work that creates real value for the people we love.
The MC 1.8 people were, but a LOT of people were also "what compiler is he using?" and other similar questions that showed the one asking had little to no knowledge of programming. I'd bet at LEAST 60% and probably more like 80 had minimal to no knowledge of how to write real code.