skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I have trouble with this assertion: as far as I can tell, nothing would stop a language (especially a statically typed one) from optimizing a tuple return/unpack into a cheaper parallel assignment, and still provide a full-blown tuple type. I might be wrong, but is tuples unpacking not a strict superset of Go/Lua's restricted multiple return values?"

Well, it depends on how you implement polymorphic code, but generally yes. This is why we use tuples instead of multiple return values in Rust. In fact, if you return a struct by value in LLVM, LLVM will allocate a virtual register for each element.
I've worked in Shoreditch for over 6 years. The startup people here don't dress like they do in Silicon Valley. And people in the UK use the word Awesome all the time. It might be an Americanisation but it's not on account of people trying to be like Twitter, it's because of the A Team and Knight Rider.

If people are asking whether they should spell it colour or color, that's probably the reason they are not doing well! What a ridiculously pointless thing to worry about.

For me there is an elephant in the room regarding UK startups not achieving the same sort of success as they do in the US. It's quite simple. People in the UK are far more risk averse than people in the US. It's a completely cultural thing, and it's not going to change any time soon.
While on the face of it such a study is closer to social science than anything else, the maths and stats involved in studying connections between people, computers and other man-made nodes, and even the communication of materials & information around the natural world, have massive overlaps.

It is one of those areas where the same maths is applicable to seeming disconnected practical/physical areas, like how psychologists are starting to use the maths of quantum probability to model certain human behaviours (apparently it seems to much more accurately model the fuzziness of our thought processes than any "traditional" statistics methods).

The applicability of the same maths to seemingly disconnected areas is one of the things that convinces many that a "grand theory of everything" may one day be possible rather than there being disparate base laws at different scales and locations (or the third possibility of course: turtles all the way down).
I'm so glad you mention it! I'm in the process of reading it right now. (Somewhere around 300 pages in; it's a bit heftier than Fire, but so far, well worth the read. I'm thoroughly impressed.)
Any chance we can get it to work with things like Texty or DeskSMS? It seems that these apps grab the MMS messages and the app never receives the page, I think.
They switched the code requiring high performance to Scala a couple of years ago.
The culmination of the high quantity and frequency of the trades makes the relatively simple individual operations chaotic when considered in aggregate. Much like the weather.
Python Erlang Concurrency Smackdown
Last night at Chicago Python Users group (chipy.org) - we had the best talk ever! Two simplest servers written in Python and Erlang battled (individually) against thousands of Apachebenchmark requests. Nobody was sure about what the results would be ... it was a nail-biting death match. Who won?
https://github.com/gar1t/pyerl-concurrency-smackdown/blob/master/results/chipy-2011-09-08.org
SaaS Math: Why “I” love SaaS
Spanischer Webhoster
The solution is to have consistent ways of measuring work output, so you don't have to worry about irrelevancies such as what time in the morning people are arriving or how much vacation time they take.

Meet all your milestones for the year while taking four months of vacation? You get a commendation for efficiently doing in eight months what your colleagues needed eleven for.
Can you offer some examples? I was surprised by this statement.
Safeguarding Privacy With Deception
Ah. I wasn't aware of that part of the spec. In that case, then, the code would work.

It's an interesting language, and one that I'm not convinced is so entirely without practical application as is commonly stated.
I'm very interested in this idea; I don't think I've ever heard it before. Can you explain further?
Not surprised to see that "Quantum Thief" isn't on the list - it's probably too new:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief

Highly praised by Charlie Stross (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross), and recommended by me. Be warned, though, bloody hard work - the criticism mentioned in the "Reception" section of the WikiPedia page is accurate. I think it adds to the experience.
Prof. Astrachan has written a lot of the material for the high-school Advanced Placement computer science course (which I teach), and I agree that he has a rare gift and we (in the APCS community) are blessed to have his involvement.
Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)
I would have called bullshit on this until America imported reality shows.

But even then, everything imported is bastardized in some way. For example, Japanese reality shows are about cooperating to achieve a difficult goal (and sometimes failing in that task). The sympathetic emotional content as you vicariously experience their trials and challenges is the appeal.

American reality shows are about fucking each other over in order to be king of the hill. The drama of intrigue, revenge, and defeating enemies to reign supreme is the appeal.
It might sound like I'm quibbling, but while it is clear there are more algorithmic trades, the article does not provide any evidence that there are fewer human trades.
28 days is the minimum in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo...
Free Hadoop, SQL, and DB2 video courses
Yes, there are regional variants of Modern Standard Mandarin, but the ways in which these deviate from the proscribed standard are predictable and in fact generally internally consistent. Note, this is a separate matter from the dialects themselves, which are usually not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, although they influence the regional character of the Mandarin itself spoken there.

The thing is, subtitles are everywhere in China (Watch any movie or newscast), because it is difficult if not impossible to understand dialect speakers, and beyond that, to understand the non-standard mandarin that has been influenced by the these dialects.

The problem with the sentiment "I can get by just fine without tones"(obvious paraphrase) is that "get by just fine" and "without tones" are both statements that need further qualification.

I maintain my central point: Tones are obviously important in a tonal language, and the extent you can be understood without using them is determined almost entirely by the skill of the listener, as well as their acquaintance with other non-standard speakers and/or foreigners.

The reason for my tone in these posts is that I think this sort of attitude speaks badly for all foreigners studying Chinese. It betrays a sort of borderline arrogant exceptionalism that says "I can learn Your language, but on my terms. And in English, there are no tones". The reality is that Chinese speakers have come to expect very little from foreigners who are studying their language...and ironically this just continues the cycle, and these cocksure foreigners receive affirmation for simple, atonal phrases that native speakers must work hard to understand.
Scientists say dolphins 'talk' like humans
IIRC earlier versions of FF re-request the page when you do a view source, rather than displaying a rendering of the current (potentially changed) document state. You could still spoof the source view in this case by somehow recognising the second request (though how you'd distinguish "view source" from "f5" I don't know) and sending different content back.
I clicked around, but could not work the demo. Will try again later.

Also, just FYI: http://www.clicktale.com
Can you generate low-resolution intermediate images and only create the full-resolution image in the end? What if you changed your UI to display some kind of thumbnail timeline? Another operation, another generated thumbnail (taking, let's say, 5k) is added to the list. This adds some interesting benefits, like letting your users compare and revert changes easily. When the user is done, you can upload the finished product to S3, and maybe ask unregistered users to create a free account before you return the link.
Make It Tso
I usually get coffee instead of staring at the laptop.

But I wonder how big a difference a smarter disk-elevator algorithm would make.

Or something that logged file-accesses, made a list of disk-block-no of that, sorted the list, and early at next boot read of blocks from that list. This is to avoid boot-time being spent waiting for random disk-accesses.
Once a friend snapped hotNail.com.<Our country code> . The amount of email he got was amazing and that was 8 years ago.
I'm not usually the meetup type, but a HN meetup I'd consider.

I'd be up for a Chicago one if anyone else is.
Is there an actual presentation version of it?

I've tried reading through those slides, but I lose concentration after about the 3rd one because it's too disjointed.
I've actually heard this question asked a lot in a bunch of different forms, and (to me) it basically comes down to:
How do I use virtualization to provide additional security to processes?

The advantage of virtualization is that it provides a very strong statement of security (if a lesser statement of performance). On the other hand Jails/Containers (see LXC) have a strong statement of performance and a lesser statment of security.

For you, I'd recommend checking out Linux Containers, because it does provide more protection than just a process, but is faster and uses less resources than a whole VM.
What I was saying is that most people wouldn't consider Atwood as a SF writer, like most of the others on that list. From Wikipedia

"Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to The Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen."

Later she retracted from this position, but this shows that her understanding of SF is (or was) quite limited.
I like the sound of this, but I'm stuck on:
"Are we OK with serving noscript desktop users what is essentially the mobile version of our site, small images and all?"
Wow - tigertails were the shit. What happened to 'em?
Thanks for mentioning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMEFROM

A joke in 1973 -- kind of a reality with the exceptions. As early as FORTRAN IV, IO operations errors were handled in higher level programming languages:

WRITE( 6, 30, ERR=390 )

specified that error handling for that given write operation was behind the label 390.

The march of progress, just like even the first FORTRAN circa 1956 did

WRITE (6, 150) X
150 FORMAT (F10.2)

But C++ since 1988 improved it with

cout << setw(10) << setprecision(2) << showpoint << x;

or Java 1996 with:

java.text.NumberFormat formatter =
java.text.NumberFormat.getNumberInstance();
formatter.setMinimumFractionDigits(2);
formatter.setMaximumFractionDigits(2);
String s = formatter.format(x);
for (int i = s.length(); i < 10; i++)
System.out.print(' ');
System.out.print(s);

The march of progress.
"intercepted" isn't any better.
hotmail.cm would be a very good one, seems like someone has turned it into a ad/survey site along time ago though.
>The Brits aren't faking it, they've adopted that language because they've heard it so often. //

I'd probably go so far as to say they've [we've] adopted that language becuase that's the culture we're living in. I live more in a culture that approximates US American culture, heavily skewed that way, by virtue of the internet, than I do in British culture.

Like you seem to intimate so long as we've been the poorer cousin WRT receiving media money this has been the case. We get a version of USA culture via movies and games and TV shows and books and the internet. If they amount to any substantial part of your life then you're living in that culture to some extent.

/ramble
Anvil of Stars is my favorite Greg Bear book. It's the sequel to Forge of God which is also a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Anvil-of-Stars-ebook/dp/B003XRERB0
3.5 weeks? Sheesh, I only get 2 weeks at my current job. One week gets used up throughout the year for random errands, kids school stuff, that sort of thing. That leaves one week to actually take a vacation, and this year we just skipped it all together because about the time the kids were out of school my work got really busy.
New Documents Detail How Feds Downplayed Toxic Air Data at Ground Zero
The only guide you'll ever need (also courtesy of reddit!):

http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/brm9y/have_you_seen_t...
Sometimes I get mail intended for the house at 65 rather than 85. I'm pretty sure I didn't "intercept" it.
In his profile, rimantas mentions he's in Vilnius.

Lithuania is impressive. Not only are there the 13 public holidays, workers with a child under 14 get an extra week. Now that's how you prevent population decline! So that's five weeks plus two-and-a-half work weeks in holidays.

Well played, Lithuania. I wonder what worldwide correlations there are with minimum vacation days. Gapminder unfortunately doesn't include that dataset.
Personal favorite: The Space Merchants, by Pohl & Kornbluth.
College Tuitions Rising at a 60 percent Rate
Don't worry, that already happened a long time ago.
Why does this point ot the "Linkedin" wrapped version of the businessinsider article?

http://www.businessinsider.com/yes-microsoft-did-change-the-...
While they may be old, and show their age, I would have thought that the Lensmen series, by E.E. Doc Smith would/should have made the list.
When I worked for a bank there was some old law that forced bank employees to take one whole week of vacation at the same time (something about having enough time to audit them if needed, from back in the day when it would take that long to audit an employee). It was actually kind of nice, because you knew that you were going to be off for a week, so you planned your summer vacation around that.
Green silver line jasper beads, green silver line gemstone beads
Online wholesale natural gemstone bead store, supplying green silver line jasper beads, green silver line gemstone beads, natural green jasper beads, faceted green silver line gemstone beads, loose green jasper beads, round green silver line jasper beads strand, cheap green silver line jasper beads, discount green silver line jasper gemstone beads, natural gemstone beads for jewelry making.
It's about the size of the company and quality of the communication between the management and team.

If your dialogue was better with the CEO then you wouldn't feel that way or just ask him/her easily.
Beautiful 3D Girls Desktop Wallpapers, Photos & Images Free Download
Every one know that girls are very beautiful and gorgeous. We have the best selection of beautiful 3D girls desktop wallpapers available for free download. These are very simple 3D types wallpapers and are only use for desktop background or mobiles. The beautiful Images are looking colorful but color balanced, bright or dark, simple but efficient, curly and lovely and I'm sure it will liven up your desktop.
To beat the old drum: Email isn't intended to be secure anyway. Relying on email addresses to maintain privacy and authenticity is like relying on Caller ID to verify callers' identities. (See spoofcard.com.)

Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt. Or, encrypt.
Martinez Real Estate For Sale
Slightly OT but interesting. This was true a year ago, unsure if it is still in effect today.

In Gmail, if I send an email to Alice and Bob, but modify Alice's name to "Anne" (or anything else) in the email's "To:" field, and Bob replies all, Gmail saves the change to Alice's contact information in Bob's user list. Alice will now show up as Anne in his google talk and in his contact list.
I was going to reply the same
How do you know you're ready?
how "up to read" should you be to start your own startup / searching for investors.
Sometimes it feels like it's an endless ocean out there of knowledge you need to acquire, in order to be a successful entreprenuer and getting investments.

what essentials do you actually need?
and how much is enough?
That is not entirely true. GoF patterns have tons of examples in Smalltalk, which is as dynamic as Ruby/Python.

But they are more verbose and awkward to use in statically type languages, languages without first class functions (unlike Smalltalk, Ruby and Python), and methods like doesNotUnderstand, method_missing or __getattr__.

And languages with mixins/metaprogramming support can do pretty much all patterns in a much better way (this is easy to see on the paper[1] where Gregor Kiczales implements the patterns in AspectJ and see how much simpler they become when you have mixins).

The biggest problem with patterns is that people start with them, instead of refactoring to them when needed [2], which leads to a lot of over engineering (which is a form of premature optimization, and we all know what Knuth said about that).

Uncle Bob (creator of Selenium, author of Clean Code) talked about it recently: http://cleancoder.posterous.com/patterns-of-reality

[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=582436

[2] http://www.industriallogic.com/xp/refactoring/
At my local supermarket they sell 32oz cups of Chobani (in vanilla and plain). Because of the bulk, price per oz is only slightly more expensive than the cheapest stuff they have. And it's really nutritious: 16grams of protein and only 13 grams of sugar per 6 oz serving! Significantly more protein than sugar. The lack of fat doesn't bother me. There was an article in the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/health/19brody.html?_r=1) about strong new research that found that yogurt was the food "most strongly linked to weight loss". It also found that the fat content of yogurt (or other dairy) consumed didn't affect weight change.

Based on this article and the research suggesting a weight-loss effect of yogurt I'm thinking about getting into the yogurt business.
The day Apple won the Flash fight
So I think the fundamentalist christian thing is pretty self explanatory if you've been paying attention. In terms of Jewish culture, it's not really a secret that most of Hollywood, the media, and much of progressivism and culture in general is organized around liberal jewish values.

I'm not really an expert on why this is, but from what I can see protestantism sort of hit its high water mark shortly after WWII. Around this time we had an enormous rise in summer camps, spiritual retreats, folk music, sort of a pre-environmental movement, etc. that was all basically a reaction to the atomic bomb. Not to mention the birth of rock & roll, which came out of protestantism as well. All of this eventually led to the counter culture, which protestantism sort of pulled back from. These loosely affiliated movements were then basically embraced by liberal judaism. So today even though judaism proper is in the background, many of its values have still shaped those of the progressive movement to the point where liberal jewish values and progressivism are largely intertwined.

In terms of Japanification, one pretty clear example in schools is high stakes testing. In the workplace it's characterized by how bureaucratic large companies have become, and the way the people at the bottom are treated. I think it's in the movie The High Cost of Low Prices that there are videos of Wal-Mart employees doing their morning dance or whatever that corporate makes them do every day when they open the store, stuff like that is straight out of Japanese business culture. In general you see an increasing amount of abstract ideas being productized so that they can be sold as part of new fads, whether we're talking about rock band, credit default swaps, politicians, etc. It's essentially a glorification of surface appearances.

From everything I can see, the U.S. is basically becoming like Japan except without the ideas surround honor and the other spiritual norms, and without enough money to facilitate the same level of pop culture fads. Again I'm not a historian so if you want to call bullshit on me then go for it, I'm just calling it as I see it.
Twitter user growth - exciting figures, but still so much to achieve
I love the spirit of vacation policies like this. Your results are far more important than how much time your butt's in a seat at the office.

My only problem with it is that (at least in the US) you're not accruing vacation time. So when it comes time to leave the company, you're not going to get any sort of payout for that.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself and the people I've observed in various companies and startups: we don't take much vacation time. I don't believe I know anyone who has cashed out their time off in companies that have traditional policies.

So, in my case, while I like Balsamiq's vacation policy better, it has turned out that the traditional style has been a better deal for me.
Lars Rasmussen: Google Mapping a way to the top
Jeniflanc17
Can you explain how this "improved" liquidity benefits actual people? It seems to be an assumption that any increase in liquidity is always beneficial. I've never seen an actual explanation arguing how.

To put it another way, how do we know the function of liquidity to net human benefit is monotonic (always increasing) rather than having a local maximum?
Have you considered something like coLinux? http://www.colinux.org/

or UML on Linux
>If people are asking whether they should spell it colour or color, that's probably the reason they are not doing well! What a ridiculously pointless thing to worry about. //

It's presentation. It doesn't want to be top on your list but if the majority of your market is en-US then it seems a little silly to write in en-GB. The voice of your prose and your online presence can be an important part of the confidence a user has with your proposal/product. Moreover US America still carries a "cool" factor in some places that Her Brittanic Majesties domain and subjects do not.
Rate my startup: SafeboxApp.com
While the level of security on Dropbox and other cloud storage services are fine for most things, I wanted a way to store some files there that _only_ I could access. I could switch to a provider that had stronger privacy features but I really love Dropbox's convenience and simplicity. So, I built a solution:

http://safeboxapp.com

The app takes files it finds in ~/Safebox and encrypts them using AES-256 and stores the files in a subfolder of ~/Dropbox. When it sees new encrypted files in that folder, it decrypts them back to ~/Safebox. From then on, changes in either folder are automatically synchronized. The filenames and folder names are encrypted as well.

From a user perspective, you simply use ~/Safebox instead of ~/Dropbox for files requiring extra security.

It's packaged as a Mac OS/X app (and soon as a Windows app). We haven't decided pricing yet.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

Thanks, Denis

http://safeboxapp.com
I'm really enjoying these articles. Thanks for sharing.

Since iAd eCPM has dropped from 15$ to around 1-3$, from my personal experience, have you found that your revenues have also dropped 5-15x? Or has the volume, or other monetization techniques helped recoup the difference? In other words, did you find that period to be the peak income period for the Talking Gremlin app?
these people paid themselves less than 1/3rd market salary

Take into account these were 19-22 year olds, half of whom hadn't even finished their CS degrees, and didn't really have resumes to speak of. They're internship material, market salary would have been pretty generous.
And if you'd rather cowboy up some code than stick with the abstractions your team is already using, I'd be glad you left the project.

I'm not defending these exact examples or anything, but come on. Any kid out of school can toss some code into a project that just works. It takes some discipline to write reusable code that people know where to look for later.