skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I saw an interview where Musk said the rocket cost $50M to build but the fuel was about $100-200K so a few kg less to orbit would be ok if they could relaunch quickly.

but i did lol a little when i saw the legs push out from the rocket, when i think reusable i think drop it in the sea and have a boat go pick it up not land on the pad you just fired it from.

if this works out United Launch Alliance with Boing and the rest can just quit the rocket business, its like the intro to Patton "You know i actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against. By God, I do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards. . ."
My first pass (assumes input file is an arg):

import sys

def first_unique(word):
if len(word) == 0:
return "EOF"
for i in range(0, len(word)-1):
return word[i] if word[i] != word[i+1]
return "NA"

def main():
with open(sys.argv[1],'r') as f:
print first_unique(f.readline())
The guy the journal editor talks to still has limited minion resources at his disposal, and he still has the option of caring about the future of academic publishing even if he isn't interested in the topics of the papers.
MIT-developed artificial leaf can turn sunlight into power for fuel cells
You're kidding, right? I find his post a bit amusing, and its far from unprofessional. It strikes a lot of programmer nerves, and that's better than being quiet and not asking: why can't it be this way?
tabs are interpreted as exactly 8 spaces, and oftentimes people set editors to use less than 8 spaces
Various harm-reduction organisations like DanceSafe[1] offer testing kits that can be used to determine the primary agent and any significant adulterants[2].

There are also testing labs which process anonymous samples sent by post and determine the active agents. For example, http://www.ecstasydata.org/ Due to the complicated issues of the legality of illegal drug analysis, they can provide only ratios of active agents, rather than quantifiable values[3].

A quick look doesn't turn up any testing kits for LSD detection (or rather, the only ones that do are intended for testing people, rather than the drug itself)

[1] http://dancesafe.org/

[2] http://dancesafe.org/products/testing-kits/complete-adultera...

[3] http://www.ecstasydata.org/about_data.php#quant
Smart cities get their own operating system
>>I take exception to the idea that my personal opinion needs to have a "reference"

Oh, private musings instead of an argument? Less interesting. :-)
Myth: "You cannot safely mix tabs and spaces in Python."

In fact, you can mix 8 tabs with spaces in CPython (and do wacky stuff like

def f():

<tab><8 spaces>x=3

<4 spaces><tab><4 spaces>y=3

<8 spaces><tab>return x+y
I believe there should be a description of what this website does, rather than repeating the URL in the title...
I think you're referring to the same setup as rprasad was talking about in his comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3055493).

(If I'm correct) When a US company pays dividend to it's non US parent company, the US charges a withholding tax of 30%. This can be less if there's a tax treaty between the two countries.
Thanks for a quick reply. So having GHCi - the GHC's REPL - successfully emscripted could make adding Haskell support possible, right?
Berlios closing down
The article claims tabs are more likely to be shredded than spaces, but I didn't find that to be true. Half the tools on the Web are going to irreparably shred Python code no matter which you use. I still think Ruby is displacing it largely because it's actually possible to talk about Ruby code without ridiculous workarounds like pastebins.
You took a link about FF adding a twitter search option and turned it into a rant about how FF sucks and Chrome rules. But ok, I'll bite.

I've used the two extensively, and the only thing (for my use case) that Chrome has over FF is interface speed. Here are a few things FF does really well over Chrome.

Low level extension access to the browser: This is the reason you don't have Noscript or HTTPS Everywhere in Chrome, it's also the reason mouse gestures are fundamentally broken on Google's browser. For example perform a gesture to open a new tab, then perform a gesture to close it. Oops, you can't, since extensions are disabled in certain types of pages on Chrome due to its security model.

Search as you type: You actually have to hit CTRL+F in Chrome to start finding stuff, versus just starting to type in FF.

Tab activity notifications: On FF, I can have Gmail, Reader, etc.. pinned as app tabs, and if they get updated with new items the tab gets highlighted. Chrome, for some strange reason doesn't do this and you have to keep opening the tabs to check for updates.

Search keywords: Much more straightforward to add in FF, just click on a search field and select "Add keyword for this search". Chrome automatically adds just about every search engine/form you come across to a huge list, which you then have to trawl in order to customize the one you want.

Bookmarks & History: Chrome's bookmark manager sucks big time, I guess Google wants you to search and not bookmark. FF has a half decent manager with tag support. The Wonderbar also works a lot better than the Omnibar when searching your history and bookmarks.

Tiddlywiki: This is the big one for me (although only tangentially Chrome's fault), I use tiddlywiki extensively and FF is the only working browser on non-Windows platforms.

So all of these annoyances in Chrome negate the gain I get from its speed by a large margin. Again, this is my particular use case, but I definitely get stuff done quicker in FF than in Chrome.

And by the way, the initial extension breakage is fixed on FF 7.0.1, which was just released.
Preferences Considered Harmful
FPGA emulation of Amiga and other platforms:

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/

It's full of wires:

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/atari_amiga.htm

Now that he has found someone competent to assemble them without a crippling NRE, I believe Mike has just got his hands on the first run of boards.

(No connection other than that I used to be on the software side of his day job)
Lawsuit Filed Against Carlsbad Wal-Mart
I don't buy that they are buying user profiles. The ability to run WebOS apps on the Kindle would be interesting, but buying such a small app market and spending the extra money to integrate it, I don't know if I buy that. And a complete move the WebOS? Abandoning the people who bought in to the Amazon App Store? No way. Moving to WebOS and making that able to run Android apps makes more sense, but I still don't see any incentive there. The Fire will be a huge success, and it looks like it works pretty good out of the box, and that should only improve with time. Why would they bother to start over with a move to WebOS?
Misunderstanding on my part. Fixed.
That's fine for OSS projects like DDG for Android or Firefox, but do you really feel that way in general? You can be passionate about a project, but to give away your time, sense of ownership, control, and credit to someone else's proprietary startup company? Fuck that. I'm not doing that unless I really feel a hire is likely. I've actually thought about building Android apps for a few web services I like, but the motivation simply isn't there when what you lose from doing it is that great.
Modern SUVs Pose Lower Death Risk to Cars (IIHS)
"But the fact that Firefox makes all add-ons incompatible by default without any modifications from the developer, is also unacceptable."

This is not true for addons hosted on addons.mozilla.org. Addons that are hosted on that site get their versions bumped automatically without any modifications from the developer.

"And do we really need that small search box in the right? I think it clutters the bar."

It can be removed.
Free 48-Hour Cash gift...
Technically, the parser converts one tab to 8 spaces (at least in the versions of python I'm familiar with), so your second statement is not quite true.

def foo():
<tab>print 'a'
<sp><sp><sp><sp><sp><sp><sp><sp>print 'b'

compiles and runs properly in python 2.6.
The Amazon Kindle Fire : A Developer's Perspective
Speaking as someone writing a fairly major HTML5 iOS app using Jo and PhoneGap: this looks like a very helpful way to take the make-work out of the case where you have an app that uses no native functionality, and is not in any way optimized for best appearance.

That's not a knock - a lot of people have that use case, and spend a lot of time on their own systems for deploying to multiple platforms. Consider internal apps, for example, that don't have to be massively visually slick and polished.

But ... given the very large differences between even similar platforms, and even between versions of platforms, you're not going to be getting much from this if you are building ultra-slick apps in which you really do need consider, say, how hardware acceleration or browser quirks fit into the picture.
We could do that as well! Especially if we go the web route and go SVG and use the native vectors... :)
HTML5 is JavaScript. Without JavaScript, HTML5 is just a few semantic HTML tags (like header and section) and a few extra form input attributes (like required and placeholder).

As far as JavaScript frameworks go, you could use Sencha or jQuery Mobile or one of the other few dozen frameworks out there --- or you could roll your own.

I've been doing mobile web development for about a year now. I've done both PhoneGap and over-the-air mobile web/native apps (with embedded webviews that load HTML/CSS/JS from the web when requested). Both types of apps accepted by Apple and in the Appstore as well as in the Android Market. I would recommend rolling your own and not trying to imitate the look of native apps. One of the strengths of using HTML5 is that you can create a custom look and feel that doesn't look like every other app out there.

Since you mentioned Sencha and jQuery Mobile, here's what I think having used both:

Using Sencha is nothing at all like using HTML5. You don't even write HTML or CSS. You write JavaScript that uses Sencha's classes/methods. The look and feel very much tries to mimic native and they do a pretty good job at it...except that most widgets look like they were ripped from an iPhone, which is disorienting for users on Android. That said, you get good performance and a boatload of widgets/ui controls out of the box. The price for this is a large, multi-hundred kb framework and a commercial license.

jQuery Mobile doesn't really try to look native and it really doesn't "feel" native either. jQuery has it's own ui controls that more or less look identical on iPhone or Android. With jQuery Mobile, you do write HTML and have a more transparent view of that as well as of the CSS. But, you have to write HTML the "jQuery Mobile way" to utilize the UI built into the framework. You don't get as many widgets and ui-controls as you do in Sencha and overall, the look and feel is not of the same caliber either. But, it's smaller than Sencha, has your standard MIT license and is more easily modified.

Neither is perfect and both have pluses and minuses. If you know some HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you will absolutely get better performance and and a smoother look and feel by rolling your own light JavaScript for your app that does just what it needs to do.

If you'd like to see an example app I built using PhoneGap and handrolled HTML/JavaScript/CSS, you can download Easy Baby from the Android Market. It's free. You'll find a link to it on my website: http://newbabysleep.com
Cockpit error sent 737 into nose dive
In other news: An actor on stage shouted fire in a crowded theater.
Is Google's Larry Page Already Turning Out to Be a Truly Great CEO?
Well, as Bakunin said, the passion for destruction is also a creative passion.

This isn't really rage and hate. You're taking the words too literally. It's the frustration of being able to feel clearly that there ought to be a simpler way, that there is a simpler way, while at the same time being caught in a sticky spider web and unable to do much about it.

You know what I bet is driving this? The realization that Node.js itself has turned out way too complicated. It ought to be a nice library to provide non-blocking I/O and networking APIs to V8 apps. Now it's becoming Rails at one end and an operating system at the other.

(I don't mean to pick on Node. It's valuable and I use it. My point is that we are all the sorcerer's apprentice, and runaway complexity will always be the default unless ruthlessly counteracted. It wasn't counteracted in Node's case, and since Ryah is a true hacker I imagine that he has the taste to know it. Indeed he says as much in the OP.)
Agreed. Or for small trusted teams any linux box with ssh access will do fine. This is a very well served product area, it really shouldn't be a problem that demands new software development.

Edit: Hah! That's basically what it is, just dressed up with a tiny script and the two-factor trick from last week. Never mind then. This is sane. Just maybe oversold.
It's definitely a cultural thing though. It works at DDG, where Gabriel will personally answer email from users. I'm glad this has worked out so well for you and look forward to seeing your future projects.
Microsoft security tools nuking Chrome browser
You might be confusing the OJ/vitamin C with the properties of grapefruit juice, which is well-established to alter the properties of various liver enzymes, particularly those which typically metabolise psychedelic / hallucinogenic drugs. Wikipedia has a brief blurb about it:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_drugs...

Actually, it does mention orange juice as containing flavonoids which may have some (albeit lesser) effect on drug metabolism.
Asking because I do not know. Is Australian law so different that this kind of an argument is actually persuasive? "You should block our competitor from selling XYZ, because it is such a nice product that we might lose customers to them."
Argument? What was I arguing? In fact, what are you asking other than saying "my language is gooder than ur language!" In fact you haven't said that because you don't want to defend a position in a mythical argument I was putting forward. So instead you asked for a reference to an assertion I did not even make.

I said I like that my coworkers need local bindings to code they pass. You asked for a reference.

Well here it is! Some guy on the internet saying why python's lack of multiline anonymous functions is so good you should not only change coding styles but adapt his language over your language because his is obviously proven superior in every way, scientifically.[1]

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3057283

Yes, ruby blocks are useful. Yes, lambdas let lisps do cool things. Python makes you name your blocks. It's a horror show.

And to your straw man issue. Yes, we actually just terminate everyone on the spot who tries to commit code that doesn't follow pep8 to the letter. Even when it doesn't make sense for a line that isn't nicely split at 80 chars.

And by terminate, I mean execute.

-------

It's like any commentary on a language must be part of some epic language-war.
History of Twitter: Infographic - SkotGat
Getting Creative with MapReduce
Wasn't there a time when apple rejected phonegap apps? (they did reject one of mine for sure).
A Simple AppSettings Type Provider (F# 3.0)
I'm surprised freddiew is not on that list, since he has a massive subscriber base, has tv and film celebrities lining up to participate in his videos and does youtube on a full-time basis. Surely he makes more than $100k.
Find Your Social Media Voice
There's a security problem with that:

$ chpasswd maybeUniqueString
Error: maybeUniqueString already in use.

$ su maybeUniqueString
LOGIN OK, PROCEED TO EXPLOIT ME

So username and login are not totally redundant.
Trying functional:

import sys

with open(sys.argv[1], 'r') as f:
word = f.readline()
try:
print filter(lambda x: word.count(x) == 1, word)[0]
except IndexError:
print ""
Go to your profile and swipe left on a wall post and observe the "Remove" button and its animation. Now go to the bottom of your wall, and tap on the "See more posts..." cell. Notice that the activity indicator is an animated GIF. Open the app frequently and you'll see certain elements in the UI automatically changing without downloading an update. Or check out m.facebook.com and play around with the news feed that is identical to the one in the iPhone app.

Granted, there are other approaches you can take to get this behavior, but I'm not sure why you would. My impression is that they're using HTML5 in these areas.
Auto Transport West Valley City, Utah
real good idea... real easy to use too
Who's the best leader: the saint or the scrooge?
Mobile browsers are getting better and better, and apple's iOS happens to have the best. I think the app store distribution mechanism is the main reason you don't see many html apps. It's the big entry point, there's a huge network effect and its cool to say "we have an app for that". Maybe facebook's project Spartan will spark the inevitable switch to html. I mean, check out twitter or kindle on the ipad... what are they lacking in?
The problem isn't that it is unfair to people who suffer of epilepsy, the problem is that it could be DANGEROUS to people who suffer of epilepsy. Someone who is blind can't be harmed by being unable to see this particular visualization.
Has Amazon just Fire-forked Android?
I sold my Amigas a few years ago, and soon after bought a Commodore 64, which I still have and still tinker with occasionally.
Same setup as Jot here (Hi jot)...

Had zero trouble with Payment Express (known as Direct Payment Solutions to the UK banks). Only thing that is maybe not ideal is the time difference, Payex. are in New Zealand and so email-threads can take several days if you don't ask questions at 1am.
>(Adobe and 3rd party toolkits for instance)

Flash builder definitely builds for the iOS appstore now.

http://www.webkitchen.be/2011/06/20/build-ios-applications-w...

Android has some major challenges. Android tablets haven't really "just worked", and have had crippling return rates and price points that do not truly reflect their quality relative to the iPad.

Non-standard android builds (aka, the Kindle Fire is a fork of an old, non-tablet based android) are getting more prolific, and hopefully do not fully fragment the market into two.

What $14 kindle books are you talking about btw? I've never paid more than $10 that I noticed.

Another issue is Android is becoming the gateway drug to smartphones, instead of holding share, a huge number of people buy it for their first app wielding smart phone, then step over to apple for the second. They need to become more "the windows to mac"(works okay, but has hairs, standardized) instead of the "Desktop linux to mac" (can customize anything, but all over the place and confusing to non-technical people), and I feel they're still hovering much closer to the second category there than the first.

Additionally, you should probably be classifying the 5" "tablets" such as the Galaxy S into the same market as smartphones, as well as the iPodTouch, for the purposes of looking at things like app sales. They are in some ways more important, because their dominent purpose is consumption, instead of phone calls.
Since the rapid release cycle started, Firefox has no longer automatically considered all add-ons incompatible. http://blog.fligtar.com/2011/09/26/add-on-compatibility-prog...
Yes. Policy changed in 2009.

https://code.google.com/p/phonegap/downloads/list
This was discussed when it was on Reddit - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959137
I'm no tactical attack expert, but don't think that the prototype in the video is "battle ready". However, the news of al-Awlaki killed by a drone attack (along with numerous other such successful hits) implies that the armed forces are definitely moving towards more drones and robots.

I don't know what the chances of AlphaDog against a man with a high powered rifle, but think of this: A number of these, armed with some sonic weapons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon), attacking a compound at night. Then, the "instill a little fear in the enemy" bit may not sound so stupid.
Um, things don't just "make their way" into contracts. Yes, they suddenly appear in drafts, but finals? Sorry, no. Finals require approvals and signatures from the people who are going to be on the hook. (The e-Bay lawyers who approved the Skype purchase may beg to differ, but they're hardly unbiased.)

The draft-stage is where you take snorkel's exactly-right advice, and declare that the difference between 99.999% and 100% is about a bajillion dollars, give-or-take. Go a step further, and sell that 0.001% hard by pointing out just how much they're be prepared for ("multiple earthquakes plus a giant robot attack, all at once!"). They'll start rethinking fast - guaranteed.

And that's the essence of diplomacy; letting the other guy have it your way. If he thinks it's his idea, even better.
Why is that a problem though? If you consistently always use tabs for indentation, this interpretation does not matter.
Sterling Silver Bracelets
Silver Trendz offers highly fashionable gemstone sterling silver bracelets using color, texture and intricate crafting to create unique designs.
> I’d say that for someone right out of college, or even pre-college (like Fred), making $100,000 or more a year is not too shabby.

Not too shabby? What world are we living in? That's insane money for someone like Fred who is making a video every so often with close to zero production value. That's money for nothing and your chicks for free.
Google CIO and others talk DevOps and "Disaster Porn" at Surge
Both the Falcon 1, and the Falcon 9 have multiple stages (and both have already made orbit).
It's a bit surreal. I once posted a picture on my petty little website, and posted a single link somewhere. The link ended up on DrudgeReport.com. Soon couldn't even FTP the site for some vital maintenance[1]. Had to call the ISP:

"Hello, Foobar ISP, can I help you?"

"Hi, I'm the reason your servers are melting down right now."

"Ah. Let me connect you to the company president..."

Told him the detailed story, he got a kick out of it, and deleted the attracting file.

([1] - AP took issue with what I thought "fair use" of the Elian Gonzales pictures the day they were published. No argument; I didn't expect concocting them into an animated time-lapse sequence would get _that_ popular.)
Nice, and I use PhoneGap for Android, but you lose all the niceties like access to hardware buttons (which means you convert limited screen space to menus) and keyboard and intents and whatnot.

I had to write some plugins to get my game working on Android (and there are still compatibility problems around opening intents), so PhoneGap apps definitely lose something in the usability department.

And of course animations are not successful in this environment.

Ads are a pain too, if that's important to you, with the Google Admob/Adwords migration happening and the mobile web vs app ambiguity.

PhoneGap seems helpful as a part of the app's main UI, but native chrome is still important to completing an app's functionality and usability. I don't see how Build solves that use case.

Still, it's a niche.
Your failover code never has bugs?

See the linked discussion, only 3 out of 20 top sites had 5 nines.
Nokia not abandoning Linux after all, adopting a distro for low-end phones
Peter Thiel and The Definite Future
In Python:

Importing urllib hangs
zlib imports, but the compress and compressobj methods fail

> import zlib

> zlib.compress("askldas")

Internal error: ReferenceError: _deflateInit_ is not defined
I just watched this video (http://gigaom.com/2011/09/27/facebook-mobilize-2011/) where Facebook's head of mobile product talks (a tiny bit) about using HTML5 in their mobile products instead of all native development to keep pace with launches on the Facebook desktop site.

Check out the video at ~16 minute mark.
InfoQ: Using APIs to Connect People to Your App and Each Other