skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I did add comments to the gallery. The first view in the gallery is always the previous day's view of the day, so tomorrow you'll see the tiger in there.

Adding comments to the front page does makes sense, I just couldn't figure out a tidy way of doing it (no space).
Damn, we're getting ever closer to Atwoods law!

"Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08/all-programming-is-...
Actually, we (me and a student) have built exactly such a device this year. Did not have time to finish and evaluate it yet, however.

Some papers on grasp interaction with spherical objects:
Tango: www.cs.mcgill.ca/~kry/pubs/iser/iser.pdf
Graspables: www.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/chi09.pdf
Grasp Sensing for HCI (my paper, more generic): http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/pubdb/publications/pub/wimmer20...
This is exactly the problem. HTML/CSS/JS is disgusting to someone who knows the power of a good native SDK.

People who only do web dev just don't know what quality is.
Second this - I've cooked up some weird SQL to do neat things.

Other devs on my team had real problems with it - they were stuck and found it really difficult to "think in sets." They kept asking me about how to use cursors to go through data . . . heck, they may even have been right from a clarity and maintenance perspective.

But the object-oriented part of my brain has apparently been excised by spending so much time fishing (SQL). So now I have too many fish questions in that direction.
Did this irritate anyone else? It really distracted me from the article when the guy just _has_ to make sure we know he's a hacker

To be fair, Mark probably had no idea this would show up on HN. I was the one who posted it here, not him. He probably thought his audience for this would be the same regular audience for his blog, which includes a lot of RTP locals who know him in person and know his background. In that context, those statements make perfect sense.

because he bought a VoIP system and installed Google Voice on his smartphone.

Nah, Mark's been hacking on Linux and Asterisk stuff a long time; and he's a sharp guy who definitely deserves the "hacker" appellation.
The only technical limitation I can think of is the one which exists server-side. Siri has been having troubles from time-to-time with just iPhone 4S owners polling it. Imagine if all iPhone 4 (and even 3GS) owners were trying to use it too.
The tablet market was very different before the iPad was released so I don't think it's a very fair comparison. Are there figures from the iPad 2 launch?
We're all average programmers here that know C#, Java, and/or Dart, but here goes!

A macro, in its simplest form, is a function of type syntax -> syntax, or, a function that takes syntax as input and produces syntax as output. These functions are invoked at "compile time" as the compiler is processing your source code, and the resulting code is then compiled or interpreted along with the rest of the code. The way you write these functions, what these functions are capable of doing, and even the precise data type of syntax varies between the languages that implement macros.

The most powerful macro systems allow you to "extend" your language with new syntactic constructs and features. In this sense you can think of macros as a way for you to team up with the compiler to improve the language. Macros also allow you to generate repetitive code that would be tedious or error-prone to hand-write and maintain on your own.

The easiest way to understand good macro systems would be to learn about them from a Lisp-variant like Clojure, Scheme, or Common Lisp, as macros have typically been the domain of these languages. It is still an active area of language design research to try to effectively integrate a good macro system into non-Lisp languages. Scala's macro proposal is supposedly heavily inspired by a language called Nemerle, which runs on the .NET platform. I don't know much about Nemerle, but it appears to be innovating very well in this particular space.
Why put two regions so close to one another? I am really confused. Why not do something in East Europe or central europe for countries like italy, germany and maybe even russia.
I saw the tiger and immediately wanted to send it to a friend. Assuming the front page changes, here's a UI recommendation: give me a permalink so I can save/share interesting ones.

Fun site!
You can also hear the sound of any phrase:

$ yes hacker news >/dev/audio
That is a typical troll post on 4chan /g/, quoting parts RMS
I have very rich HTML+JavaScript+JSON interfaces here that make me orders of magnitude more productive than I was in the 90's, but that may be me.

OTOH, you may be tied to IE6 and unable to see all this.
Giving an 11-year-old boy a 25-year-old laptop
I think you're mis-reading this.

I work around "real" people and I've been shocked at how many of them have ordered Kindle Fire's both for themselves and as Christmas presents. These are people who have never owned a tablet and in the case of presents they're buying for other people who have never owned a tablet. When I ask why they're buying them the answer is universally the same thing...

"I could never justify buying an iPad because I don't know what I'd use it for but for $199 I figured what the heck"

A lot of these people are influenced by the original Kindle and its reputation but most are looking for Tablet functionality. When I ask what they plan to use it for the first answer is always "browse the web"

I do agree its a different market from the iPad. But the question I have is whether these people will go for a higher end purchase further down the line. And if so what they'll buy. Because these people will be tied to Amazon by their media in the same way I'm tied to Apple.
if you know C# and .net and want to learn macros then check out Nemerle. it will be a familiar and excellent setting to learn functional programming and metaprogramming.
This summer Forbes reported...

"China Daily reported Friday that unnatural deaths have taken the lives of 72 mainland billionaires over the past eight years. (Do the math.) Which means that if you’re one of China’s 115 current billionaires, as listed on the 2011 Forbes Billionaires List, you should be more than a little nervous." (http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont...).

I wonder how much fear is playing into this desire for exodus.
Enterprisify your Java Class Names
Make sure your Java class names are Enterprisified(tm), use the Enterprisify tool!
Do you care about that when you use Twitter or Gmail? Instead for Apple, after paying a shitload of money, you are super interested in how hard is scaling for them?!

There is no limit to my shock at how people are mentally gamed by Apple.
Want to Get Cash for your Old HTC Arrive? Visit SimplySellular website
Haha, after a few minutes of digging around I managed to find the link to the google maps.

Feature Idea: If you are able to take a screenshot of a specific view, I would put it as a jpg so when I share the url, it shows up as preview pic in the facebook story. I was totally sharing this story and linking to your site until I found there is no preview pic.
This is an old link, but you just reminded me of: http://howfuckedismydatabase.com
HOW MARK FEELS ABOUT THE GOOGLE FACEBOOK WAR
Do you have a technical founder? If not, I'd recommend looking at this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2332349
I don't like the article because of the fatal flaw I see with novice programmers that this fails to address... tunnel vision.

When I say "tunnel vision" though I mean the fact that novice users don't entirely understand what code does or how it works. They're only understanding the very surface of what they're doing and without more fundamental knowledge they'll fail to understand when a different approach is better suited, or why certain things are avoided, or why their tool is not the best tool for what they're trying to accomplish (square block in circular hole type issues).

Sure its a good start just "diving right in" but its also a great way to get bad habits. The good coders, ones that have the natural talent, will figure things out regardless of their starting block. The problem is the swarms of bad programmers that come out of the wood works because "anyone can do it!"

How would I improve it? Don't gloss over the details as if they're entirely that simple. Programmers need to start simple (a calculator) and then build up iteratively so they're not overstepping their bounds. Thoughts?
Kindle Fire Seen Slowing Some Previously-Planned iPad Purchases
I hope that tomorrow Apple will release a new operating system that is a game changer, but you'll not able to install it in your macbook air that is two months old.

But your friends with a new MBA that has an improved webcam will be able to run it. Even if the features have nothing to do with the webcam.

Then you probably will understand that there is something unfair about it.
True story: I once had drinks with Chris Hardwick and Bob Saget at Madison's (now closed) in Westwood, near UCLA while I was in school there. I made them take a forest fire shot (half vodka, half Tabasco sauce).
I find that pretty annoying when I'm looking for tools, but I do think it works, with varying degrees of shadiness. Some companies completely rebrand a product as if it were custom-designed for an area, taking their Foo Software and making it Foo Software for Healthcare, when in fact that's a lie and it wasn't customized for healthcare at all (and certainly not based on any knowledge of the area or research into its practices). Maybe users don't notice, and even if they do, sometimes you can mitigate it by just giving refunds freely to the users who complain, and keeping the money of those who don't.

An even scammier version of that is to rebrand software you didn't even make, like take VLC and rebrand it as customized video software for $whatever, when indeed you've done no customization for anything.
the kindle is quite a bit cheaper than the iPad, so a lot more people will be able to afford it
I have to believe that Apple has the engineering talent to scale something like this up. It's a pretty straight forward problem, and it's not like they don't have enough cash to double their server farm.
Since the Fire is supposed to come with the Amazon Android Market, and not the Google Android Market, it could be a threat to both Apple and Google.
You're describing http://hubot.github.com/ which ist pretty much a configurable bot with a few scripts and an irc adapter. It doesn't have a configuration page though.
There is a permalink - just below the 'Go' button there's a panel with some sharing options. The first one generates a permalink.

I thought it might be difficult to find - will have to make it more clear, thanks.
10 Marketing Lessons for Start-ups from Girl Talk
" Why don't the shareholders fire these guys out of simple self-interest to protect the value of the stock they're holding?"

They're not willing to unilaterally disarm. They think their 'most talented' people will flock to the other companies that haven't reformed.
No, not really. Siri is not central to the experience. It’s an add-on. It doesn’t make the old iOS devices obsolete (like, say, not supporting iCloud would).
I have been considering a Kindle for some time and the Fire does indeed look interesting to me. I want to wait, however, and see some detailed hands-on reviews of the final product before ordering one.

As for being a threat to the iPad, I am not so sure. The Fire strikes me as being almost totally dedicated to media consumption, where the iPad seems to be more of a general computing device.
Right, because the fact that I mistakenly referred to the wrong amendment invalidates my entire point.

And NO, my problem is not with the word reasonable. Your problem is that you want to continue empowering the state to erode your freedom and invade your life.

It has nothing to do with wording. It's all about actions and results.

(EDIT: Anyway, you'd probably get rid of the 2nd amendment too, wouldn't you?)
Sorry you're right, i did change the meaning (even though i read the article :S).

In that sense you're totally right, BCC doesn't convey credibility, it looks like a landing page, and personally, i'd immediately go off the site if it was a product i was looking for because it looks scammy to me. It works though, apparently, is all i meant.
Stalemate?

Two years ago, flash was the only game in town; Good HTML5 implementations were no where to be found, and Silverlight adoption was a joke. It's not like you could HTML5 an equivalent to flash on an iPhone OS 3.

I agree that things started changing rapidly two years ago, with the introduction of iOS 4. But there was never a stalemate -- Flash was king; then there was chaos; and now HTML5 is winning (for the time being, though not for long, Flash is still among the royalty). Silverlight had always been a wannabe.
"are not fully aware of what those regulations entailed, or why they were repealed. "

But they are fully aware that the system worked pretty well, and was pretty stable, for decades, although it wasn't quite as profitable for the financial industry.
Timsort optimizes for partially sorted data, but that's a long way from saying it's not intended for uniformly distributed data. It's intended for all data, that's why it's the default sort in Python. It's no less intended for all data than merge sort is.

Even on random data, 50% of the time you'll pick a bad pivot. Get a slightly unlucky run and you're into quadratic behavior for that subset; the more data you're sorting, the more likely introsort's switch to heapsort on deep recursion (and insertion sort on small ranges) will help.
Ah okay, I just tried it again and it worked as you describe.
Here in Canada where the oligopoly of telcos locks you into 3 year contracts many people in my family still use their 3GS. In fact everyone in my immediate family with an iPhone has the 3GS (as did I until May when mine broke). Also worth noting that the 3GS has been sold up until this very day.

Some Canadians have been upgrading from the iPhone 3G this fall as well, which was sold up until summer 2010. My coworker just got a 4S and gave his 3G to his mom who now loves it.

I have no idea what it's like in SF and other similar places but there's a big world outside of California.
I would guess Oracles mod_plsql
Thanks, how do you downvote though?
Hubot does provide the irc-interface but then github itself doesn't provide a hubot hook. So you're pretty much stuck at the same place. Github itself does provide an IRC hook but that does not work since it can't authenticate with nickserv, it only allows for server and room passwords.
Nassim Taleb is making an argument about the structure of the banking system's risk management schemes. This is an attractive article for us to comment on because, doh, we'd like to punish somebody for the 2005-2008 Collateralized-debt-obligation and Credit-default-swap Cluster-f* (I'll call that the C3F from here on). And, surely it would be good to hold somebody accountable for what happened. Not that they'll be able to fix it. But still, it will feel like justice.

But that's not Mr. Taleb's point.

The real C3F problem is of TREMENDOUS professional interest to creative software folks. Most of us work on systems that can aggregate lots of measurements to try to get a big picture of the system. Some of us look at video and audio signals. Others of us look at web server logs. Today, I'm trying to troubleshoot slow DBMS performance. Our brothers and sisters in banking and trading look at measures of risk.

And we all know what we do to make sense of these measures. We average them. We sometimes throw out the outliers. We measure their standard deviations, or maybe their quintiles if we're sophisticated. And then we track the averages and other aggregates, assuming that it's sound to do so.

My boss asked me today, "is the average query time going up?" I responded, "wrong question! we need to look at the outliers."

This approach to averaging measurements feels like something we got from our mothers' milk as infants. But it's based on Gauss's Central Value Theorem, which shows that independent (repeat INDEPENDENT) measurements tend to have a normal bell curve distribution. (We call that a Gaussian distribution in honor of the Central Value Theorem).

So, what the heck, let's sell mortgages to poor folks, and huge mortgages to rich folks. They can't ALL fail to pay, can they? The ones who fail to pay will be the outliers, won't they? The Central Value Theorem teaches us that the average person will pay up. So we can manage the two-sigma risk by buying a credit default swap (you have AIG's phone number, call them!), and all is well.

Except for one thing. Mortgage defaults aren't independent of each other. When one property on the block goes into default, it becomes harder to sell the others or refinance them. So the Central Value Theorem's premise of INDEPENDENT measurements fails. Big time. Lo and behold, C3F.

Mr. Taleb's point is that in the real world of risk management, things aren't Gaussian. The events he calls black swans are long-tail events (that is, their probability curve falls off far slower than the Central Value Theorem predicts).

Why is this relevant to HN? Because we can easily deceive ourselves by ignoring outliers (black swans) in our fields of work. Hopefully it won't be as catastrophic as C3F, but we should beware.

Seriously, if you haven't read Mr. Taleb's book The Black Swan, it's worth your trouble.
Josh: They have a "share this view" in the lower right, where you indeed get a permalink to the current view!
You should expect to do pretty well. Base salary can range from 75k-100k which is fairly standard. Most of the big companies offer all standard benefits, health/retirement/fitness club/food/snacks. Signing bonuses seem to vary a lot by company from none to a few dozen thousand. Relocation is usually a few thousand. That's a fairly standard ballpark estimate for well paying Valley companies.
I generate screenshots of every featured view, to be used as a backup in case Google update their imagery.

Facebook should pickup the preview image if you use the permalink - first button in the 'share this view' panel.
Unique view of #nov9 demonstrations in london live via teleportd
Megan McArdle is a terrible journalist. I would suggest double-checking all of her claims.

For instance, she recently wrote that wealth inequality was probably worse in the 90s than it is now. In fact, it's now much worse than it was then. She didn't bother to check her own assumption.
Presentation on Amazon Silk by Jon Jenkins at Velocity Conf [pdf]
A few points:

First, I agree with a point that others have raised regarding Siri "working" on rooted phones. Sure, it will run, but does it run well? Does it slow the phone down signficantly when in heavy use? Until we know for sure, I'm not going to get worked up about it.

Second, it is very possible that the technical limitation is server-side. Apple has a pretty spotty history with web services and limiting Siri to the iPhone 4S may just be a way to slowly scale the backend.

Third, I think it's pretty absurd to call out Apple's lack of support for old devices. The level of support still available for the 2.5-year-old iPhone 3GS is outstanding compared to other smart phones. Most people who _really_ care about having the newest tech are probably upgrading their phones every two years anyway. And, really, who can blame Apple for wanting to differentiate their products? I don't mind if that is the reason, but I would prefer an honest answer if that is the only reason.
It should work to g++ easily, provided the usual "typename" adjustments.

Basically I wrote each sort block as individual functors (partitioning, merging). You run that through a filter stack that decides what to do depending on the input size and the current recursion depth.

It's faster (I think) because when the recursion depth is a compile-time value, the compiler can unroll the recursion.

It's old code I wrote for Boost but never had the time to finish & submit. As I quickly read through it there's a couple of rough edges to polish.
A Brief Q+A With Nicholas Carlson Of Business Insider
Accesorii GSM,  Piese GSM
This is really cool - thanks for making this.
Too bad silcnet.org is dead. It would probably be a better base for such chat application than irc.
Qualcomm has an easier time integrating the modems for one simple reason: they make them. Can't think of many other SoC vendors that also make their own modems (maybe Samsung?).
Oferte Bijuterii Handmade - Reduceri bijuterii
This news is far from being accurate.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806250
A scientist who does not get promoted or win tenure is likely to cease being a scientist. Losing those scientists who favour change makes the system even less likely to change.
Flat and boring with cheap land, abundant hydro and wind power, and low-humidity -- makes a good place for datacenters. Google, Amazon and Facebook are already here with a few more in the works.

I just moved to Texas from Oregon and folks here are astonished when they learn that the eastern two-thirds of Oregon is mostly desert; most folks think of Portland and the coast when they conjure up images of Oregon, but it's a really big state and the part east of the Cascades is different.
Reverse Engineering Web Applications: The Series
n the compiled binary world, reverse engineering is the taking of an application (executable or dll) and leveraging a combination of compiler theory and assembly to arrive at a reasonable representation of its original source code. And though, while this definition is accurate, it’s somewhat mechanical and not exactly very revealing.
I've used IntelliJ IDEA exclusively for 2 years for all of my Flash/Flex. It is awesome. Not Eclipse.
That's your opinion, for other people often using handsfree systems or alike Siri can be one of the most valuable features of the phone.
Is the real problem that lots of party functionaries without much money has power and little oversight? So they can press money out of the local rich, without repercussions?

Or is political uncertainty the real problem -- the political climate next month can be halfway back to the cultural revolution?

Or a third alternative?

Edit: Word choice, for clarity.
I bought an unlocked iPhone. What does that make me?
> "The police do not need probable cause to surveil a vehicle driving on public streets."

What I meant was: having telemetry data makes it trivial for the police to concoct a story that would sail through any judicial review for a warrant. They're already notorious for pulling people over for such sins as Driving-While-Black. Telemetry data would make it very easy for them extend that harassment with search warrants. Not to mention the knowledge that the police can get such a warrant on a whim (and toss your house upside down, impounding your electronics) would be absolutely devastating to the liberty of anyone they feel like harassing.

> "As long as an LEO has to walk up to a car deliberately and attach a device (which again let's be honest probably costs way too much for them to throw away), I am fine with it."

Cost is perhaps the least convincing argument against strict limits and judicial oversight on this behavior. The surveillance state has a clear and unwavering history of constant expansion in legislative authority, budget and implemented scope. And that's more than ably abetted by the constant downward pressure on technological product costs.

Your argument strikes me like saying that the TSA's scope was reasonable on day 1, and we needn't worry about strict limits on its inevitable expansion in invasive-ness and locations 'secured', simply because it would cost too much to expand.

Relying on the price of security state enforcement to protect our liberties is nothing short of shockingly naive.