skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's an odd cultural aspect to it that I'm not sure is entirely the same as difficulty per se. Among some programs, at least, there's an almost masochistic love of all-nighters, long-as-hell problem sets, etc., etc., and if you're not into that culture, you'll probably feel like a foreigner.

Fortunately, where I went, that was common in engineering but not in CS, which had more of a "work smarter, not harder" attitude--- still quite a bit of work, and sometimes people pulled all-nighters, but there was a cultural difference in that people didn't see pulling all-nighters as a good in itself, some sort of hazing-esque badge of pride, but just something that, unfortunately, sometimes happened due to too much work, poor planning, or procrastination.

That's a bit different from the actual difficulty of the material; you can study difficult material without that kind of culture, and in the other direction, it's quite possible to grind someone down with piles of work even if they find the subject matter itself easy, depending on how you design courses and assignments.
The advertising business.

Probably isn't the same as IT.

Although keeping track of your time so you can figure out how much time a similiar task may take in the future is pretty sensible.
I think they are just parts of the same (long) interview.
Why it's silly?

Apple has 90 days of non paid supplies on the books (and $80 billion in the bank - "cash and investments" as stated in the article).

If they'd (OK... IDEALLY) pay all of them at once and continue paying supplies as they get delivered, only then would their balance sheet look realistic.

Or, am I missing something?
But if the more important problem is diminution of student capacity / capability for the work, better teaching helps only so much. Anecdata like "helicopter parenting" suggest more kids lack emotional preparation hard work and differentiating curricula. I certainly don't see any sign that K-12 has gotten _better_ at math preparation.

Then there is the premium attached to integration into social networks. Wall Street bankers are scarfing down large chunks of the national income, more from government guarantee of leverage than productivity. Prices are signalling to focus on placement in the social network, rather than on productive work; and once there, to get good at predicting / managing regulatory intervention. The interest in studies orienting people to the political and social milieu shouldn't be surprising. Especially when these offer less risk of marked out as a loser by poor grades.

There is a premium for government work, too. It's less remunerative, but more secure, and has very high status, in many circles. The effect carries over to nearby careers like law, and journalism. Median income, housing prices, and unemployment rates in greater Washington D.C. all suggest that the worldly payoff for public service isn't bad.

So I worry that we're training less capable people, and encouraging them to think more about where they work than how they work. It can't go on forever, but a lot of folks will get hurt as it ends.
Many well-designed proportional fonts have fixed-width numerals (if not by default, then available as alternates) to address alignment.

I don’t think tech writers necessarily use monospace fonts for good reasons—most likely they’re simply accustomed to it, and it doesn’t occur to them that there’s something better out there.

And this isn’t just about superficial appearances—I focused on poor legibility because it’s a readily apparent detriment to usability, but there are plenty of other things wrong with programming languages—enough to fill a book, which I should probably write. Strictly imperative programming, for instance, is a degenerate style of problem-solving that forces developers to exert far more effort than necessary to get the same amount of work done. Haskell is better, and more productive for me, than any procedural or object-oriented language I’ve used.

Thanks for the comments, though. I really appreciate this kind of long-form feedback because it helps me improve my future writing.
How can this be "regularly" happening? Wouldn't farmers stop selling to walmart if this happened even once?

And if they "committed" to buying all the output, why weren't there repercussions from breaking that commitment?
I'm still holding out hope that they do target a lower market with a future model. But, since they no longer plan on announcing products before they're done, we'll have to wait and see.
They forgot #7: Do not read articles of the form "n ways to do X".

Also enable noprocrast on Hacker News, and use a time-tracking tool like RescueTime.
Getting The Best Out Of Eclipse For Android Development
> Plus there’s something to be said for separating content from presentation

Indeed, I would enjoy a world where this is done better (and more often), for instance having things like alignments, line-breaks or indentation be completely independent from the actual source.

Of course, this generates a number of other problems in turn: different software on a given machine have to all use the same configuration (or be independently configured to match), communications becomes much harder unless new data pointers are invented as the concepts of line and column become fuzzy, some tools/concepts become impractical to say the least (a context diff for instance, would have a hard time working correctly unless it was token-aware and language-aware with diff/patch reader software able to use the global source formatting configuration for the language to display the diff as the user expects), and shared data display (e.g. a github source view) would be rife with strife.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure this wouldn't create as many problems as it solves, if not more.
Definitely... but I'm wondering about doing it anonymously. So basically find some way that people could donate to a specific person or business, then have that entity make money orders and send them off directly to wikileaks?

I'm guessing there are laws in place to prevent such a thing... It seems too much like money laundering. :)
We use fail2ban (available as ubuntu package) very successfully for this. You can point it to apache log and finesse the rules by browser string, URL or whatever you want.
I don't personally recall the four-AA revision. Wikipedia links to Apple's press release http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/09/16Apple-Introduces-W... which confirms four AAs.

My keyboard, bought in November 2008, part number MB167LL/A, definitely takes three.

Current revision available on Apple's website is MC184LL/B and that one is well known to only require two.
Law school is actually extremely hard, there is no grade inflation in law school, if anything grades are deflated because there area maximum number of As (and B's) given out (usually around 10-15% is the max for A/A- and 20% for B's) for each and every class. So you end up with a bunch of liberal arts majors who have never gotten a C and suddenly they're getting a whole heaping lot of them. They get complexes.
This may be a really, really dumb question...but can't we all put our tech heads together to hack a way out of this problem for WikiLeaks? Just for fun could anybody dream up a good hack? If you were super passionate about this, what would you do?
There is no proper separation of concerns in the JVM. The JVM instruction set has instructions like `invokevirtual` and `invokestatic`, `invokeinterface`, which are Java specific features. The JVM also knows the concept of classes and methods and fields, even though those abstractions should be defined at the language level, not at the VM level (a Lisp or Forth-like stack machine needs different abstractions).

The datatypes in the JVM are pretty weird. You have chars, but not unsigned chars, some integer types (but not all). You have no support for unicode. There is a low-level struct for arrays and multidimensional arrays (of a specific type), but for nothing else. It supports exceptions, but only Java like exceptions. (You can't make an exception system where execution can be retried or resumed; it's just not supported). It also has a java-specific thread model (want to create lightweight threads with lockfree data structures? nope, not gonna work).

What you want is a low-level platform with different modules that can be picked by the people who implement the programming language. Pick a parser module, a garbage collection module, a JIT compilation module, and so forth. This is really difficult, because you have to have a good understanding what kind of primitives different programming languages need. When all these things are fixed and non-interchangeable you end up with a virtual machine that is suitable only for a specific kind of language. It's turing complete, so of course you can make any language on the JVM, but it's just not a good fit.
While I hope not to open the entire can of worms to which codyrobbins referred, I strongly suspect "I could care less" is a shorter form of the more obviously ironic "like I could care less". Treated as straight-up irony, the usage makes perfect sense.
A number of things:

1. I'm pretty sure Google already makes money for Android, through advertising and such.

2. If the Motorola acquisition goes through, Apple may not be able to extract much in terms of royalties, given that it almost certainly infringes on some of those patents (unknowingly, of course).

3. Microsoft extracts money from Android, right now, but it has a huge number of patents.

4. Listing a dozen patents is somewhat irrelevant when we're talking about these companies acquiring huge patent portfolios.

Also, abolish patents.
This is really neat!

I never realized how much of the reddit content was internet memes :)
You lost your wager. I found it totally confusing, and only understood the meaning after reading the reply that explained the meaning is the opposite of the words.

I don't think the issue is whether language prudes are offended, but whether the communication is clear.
HackFwd announces Pitch in Berlin v2
Gravitational Lensing: Hubble Sees The Disk Around A Black Hole
Good for them. There is a trade off to be made, better/quicker features delivered at the expense of supporting an obsolete browser.
> This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6

How did it ever happen that IE6 ended up in such a long lasting and dominating position? Was it (I am just guessing here) the coincidence of tho things: (1) IE6 just happened to be the most recent Microsoft browser around the time when most of bigcorps initially build their inter/intranet apps, and (2) because this was the first wave of building such things, the web coders did not bother to think about a future when IE6 is no longer a modern browser?
Isn't this just like about anything else? There are still plenty of people who use VCR's. There is still good money to make for people who are willing to support older technology. If you don't do it, someone else will.
The Darker Side of Apple: The Human Cost of Your iProducts
I wouldn't say it's mandatory; about half of my grad-school friends did post-docs, and half didn't. It depends strongly on your sub-area, and in part on how flexible you are on location and type of school. In some cases, people who take post-docs could've gotten professorships, but not at top-tier research universities, and preferred a year of post-doccing at Stanford to taking a professorship at a low-ranking school.
It isn't that the math is too hard, it's that the students want to run before they learn to walk.

I'm a 17 year old in high school right now and having taken Calculus AB and BC (I and II) the teacher was constantly skipping material that I think was very important to have a general understanding of Calculus. Needless to say, I read the book to learn everything she was skipping, and I was also the only one who got a 5 on the AP exam. My classmates weren't stupid, they had just learned to solve very specific problems rather than actually learning Calculus. The very specific testing curricula hurt actual learning.

Another issue lies in the fact that (at least at my school) calculus and other high maths are seen as only for the very smartest kids. We need to change that. If students are required to have been exposed to calculus they won't be in as much shock when they get to college.

The availability of higher classes is a big problem as well. I was super lucky to find a public school program that allowed me to take classes with a community college, because otherwise there would have been no classes for me to take past sophomore year and Calculus I. I'm taking Multivariate Calculus next semester, and I doubt many high school students have this opportunity at all.

I realize that I'm in the minority here. Not many high school students have the opportunity to take Calculus III their senior year, and that really needs to change.
You say that you get suck on algorithms and data structures, and that you are worried that your lack of a formal education may hinder your interview-ability.

Well, fret not. Little of what is taught in college has any relation to the types of questions asked in technical interviews. And although a lack of degree may influence an interview in more subtle ways, most interviewers are far more interested in your technical ability. So, scratch that nagging fear off your list, and proceed with the following steps.

Step 1: Apply for lots of interviews. Yes, you will fail many of them, but it will also up the stakes and encourage you to take steps to improve. It's easy to want to learn. Having deadlines and commitments makes it harder to push things off to another day.

Step 2: Keep track of every question that is asked in an interview. Make a spreadsheet of places you've interviewed at, and the questions they've asked. Begin to reflect on your interview, and jot down any terms you weren't familiar with.

Step 3: Learn what those terms mean. Answer those questions you couldn't answer before. And most importantly: Understand what the interviewer was looking for in asking that question. Understanding of OO? Algorithms? Systems design? An understanding of the technology stack? Categorizing the questions in this way makes it far more manageable to digest. These are the categories you want to study. Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, Books. Go.

Step 4: Repeat step 1. (You have now caught up to the average university graduate)
Yup, those would be cool too.
How much of the workforce in advertising is actually "creative?"
A Christmas Craol Arts Theatre
Months of hardwork, finally ready to launch iphone game "CandyPot"
Creativity doesn't need a rule. That's why it's creativity.
Perhaps I wasn't clear, but I was referring specifically to the aesthetics of the typeface. Good code in monospace is no less beautiful than good code in font X.
Notifier.js – Elegant Javascript notifications
A minimalist Javascript library for Gnome / Growl type non-blocking notifications.
I don't know that it's grade inflation.. I think it's the fear of being wrong.

Look at Moniz (in the article), he bailed on engineering and went to an English/Psych where the classes are "a lot more discussion based."

In math, there are right and wrong answers. In physics, there are right and wrong answers. In engineering - where math & science hit the real world - there are "best answers given the requirements" but it's a similar concept.

In English & Psychology, not so much. There are points of view, interpretations, theories, speculation, and working models, but there are very few "right answers" and lots of "reasonable interpretations."
Talking Points Memo Browser Usage
It does seem like our society is too focused on making learning "fun." While I wholeheartedly support design projects, especially if they're based on real-world problems and can give students extra experience beyond typical class assignments, I get the impression that sometimes they're offered so that students can get the whiz-bang effect from otherwise dry material. We too often expect to be entertained.
Speculative claims based on poor fact checking. Some examples...

"Apple’s new CEO is not like Steve Jobs. In fact, in many ways he is the polar opposite of the technology icon that he has replaced. Pundits and fans alike see this as a major problem for the future of Apple, something that was reflected in the stock market after the resignation of its titular head"

- The day after Jobs stepped down the Dow was down 1.51%, the S&P was down 1.56% and Apple was only down .65%. A week later it was up 1.5% and a month later it was up nearly 8%.

"Where Jobs wanted solitude and a environment free of people making suggestions, Cook seems to be pushing the tiller in the opposite direction, opting instead for dialog when it comes to making decisions for the company."

- Read any biography of Jobs, even the negative ones, and you'll see that isn't true. EVERYONE says the same thing "He was an ass who would scream at you and call you names but he expected and encouraged people to do the same to him"

"These small moves are certainly laudable, and indicate that Cook may indeed be a savvy businessman, but he has a hurdle to overcome as he is certainly not the “product guy” that Jobs was."

- This completely ignores the huge role played by Ive and Schiller. I'm not saying Jobs didn't add a lot to the equation but, in his own words, Ive was his "design soul mate". Jobs gave his approval but it's Ive who has been designing Apple products for the last decade.

Also the author claims Steve Jobs came in and discontinued charitable giving programs that were already in place. I find that hard to believe and the reason has nothing to do with Jobs. Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy when Jobs came back and I can't see them spending money to match employee contributions when they barely had enough to keep the lights on.

So yeah, this guy has no idea what he's talking about.
Two LTO Consortium Studies Reveal the Benefits of Tape Storage
Show HN: static blog engine for amazon s3
If they want fancy new features, just use Modernizr with a polyfill. That generally seems like a better solution for the dwindling population of legacy browser users than creating a completely different codebase.
I agree that most ideas are obvious in retrospect. Still, In my experience most ideas are obvious before hand as well. So what is a good way to define obvious or novel as applied to patents? I have two ideas.

1. Boggle rule. In the game Boggle when two players come up with the same word neither get credit. If from a given time of filing a patent someone else files a similar patent both are rejected.

2. Virgin engineer rule. Take a group of people competent in the field of the proposed patent but without any knowledge of the patent. Give them the problem the patent purports to address. If in a single day their solutions substantially match the proposed patent, reject the patent.
Shower - cross browser presentation template
According to an analyst from Piper Jaffrays, Google made about $5.90/user during 2010.
I think it's time I shut down http://ihackernews.com. It's getting impossible to keep the IP address from being blocked. Really unfortunate, because a lot of people like to use the site.
Rigor for the sake of reputation is completely unnecessary.
Apple relies on frickin’ lasers to shine light through metal
This kind of "positive statement of empirical reality" tends to (1) be true, and (2) make the world a worse place as everyone acts accordingly, until (3) it stops being true and (4) everything goes horribly wrong.

Banking, circa 2007: As a positive statement of empirical reality, selling unrealistic mortgages to unsuitable customers and then packaging up the default risk into CDSes and selling them on will perform better than lending responsibly. Banking, circa 2008: Oops.

Any pyramid scheme, in its earliest stages: As a positive statement of empirical reality, signing up will perform better than ignoring it. The same pyramid scheme, after a couple of iterations have saturated the market of available fools: Oops.

The Dutch tulip market in 1735: As a positive statement of empirical reality, selling everything you've got to buy tulips as the market climbs inexorably higher will perform better than holding on to old-fashioned goods like gold and houses and food. The Dutch tulip market in 1740: Oops.

The personal computer market, circa 2000: As a positive statement of empirical reality, what people want to buy is the cheapest possible computers (or, for a lucrative subset of the market, the cheapest possible computers with impressive-looking specs) running Microsoft Windows. Selling cheap generic boxes will perform better than trying to make something of really high quality, and anything other than Windows is a loser's game. The personal computer market, in 2011: Apple is bigger than Microsoft, many makers of generic beige boxes are frantically trying to get out of the business, and it's a serious question whether "personal computers" in general will get their market almost completely eaten by tablets (meaning, for the present, mostly iPads) and smartphones.

Spamming users' social networks is like selling crappy mortgages, tulips, or mediocre cookie-cutter computers. It may, for the time being, be an easier way to make money than the obvious alternatives, but every time someone does it the world becomes a slightly worse place, and sooner or later it's likely that people will notice and stop playing along.

Of course you're welcome to point out the "positive statement of empirical reality" that spamming works. You're probably right. And you're under no obligation to acknowledge the ethical issues that those of us with tenderer consciences may have. But when someone responds to that with "please get off the internet", I think they've got a point, just as they would have if you'd suggested that startups should lie to their customers, or sell addictive drugs to children, or dump poisonous byproducts into the local water supply, in order to increase their profits. It might "perform better". It might happen not to be illegal. But that still doesn't mean that a reasonable person should be recommending it.
There's still a reasonable number of public schools in middle class areas in the US that offer good educations. The interesting population is the eng/science/math majors at good colleges who didn't go to such great public or private high schools, how did they get leapfrogged? I remember some of my friends going to community college classes while in high school, math camps, programming comps, stuff like that.

Those program offerings are really important, they're like a parallel education track to public K-12. Now there's Khan Academy, the MIT and Stanford courses online, all kinds of resources, but you have to get motivated/gifted together with like minded ones.
Skyrim the elder scrolls V un A-RPG qui sortira sur PC PS3 et Xbox 360
Thanks! Also give other subreddits a try, /r/listentothis (http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=listentothis) or /r/itookapicture (http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=itookapicture), those really show the power of the UI. Another thing to try is to visit it with a tablet :)
TL;DR: I'm an expert/patent troll myself, Apple has a couple patents and here is the TL;DR version of them, ergo Apple will make billions.

Of course, this article ignores exactly how Android violates these patents. And that Google and its partners aren't exactly entering the ring without any patents themselves. And more importantly, the fact that Apple seems very uninterested in making billions off Android. If they did, they would be acting like Microsoft. Not to mention the Jobs decree was to spend all of Apple's money destroying Android, not padding its coffers. There is a fairly large disconnect here.
Jekyll and Hyde: Frank Sinatra's Manic Depression
The iconic iPhone interface tarnishes the legacy of Steve Jobs
Watching the video was like - WTF, this UI needs a complete redesign, it's so fucking complex.
Any suggestions on books from the list? I couldn't find an easy way to see which books are included and it would be great to compile a suggested reading list from it.
Cross-Browser PSD to HTML - How Compatible Should It Be in the Mobile Web?