skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The CTO of RightScale, Thorsten Von Eicken, taught the undergrad computer architecture course (CS 314) for a couple of semesters.
Coffeescript doesn't even have its own standard library, much less a runtime being cross-compiled with its own garbage collector and stack frame constructs.
My first guess would be that a FIFO queue is more efficient as a list than an array, but maybe there's something weird about ruby that makes that untrue. I'd love to hear why.
>I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.

The only argument against this is a statistical one, akin to how entropy works: One should engage in revolution only when the set of likely worse systems is larger than the set of likely better systems. (I could probably state this better if I knew more mathematical terminology; I suspect matrices are involved.)

Obviously in the US you haven't reached that point. Yet.
Businesses with microscopic margins and high fraud losses (hello, eBay / Amazon Marketplace / etc vendors) sometimes get a little peevish about it. It is less commentary about you than commentary about the ten thieves they dealt with this week whose visible actions were indistinguishable from your own.

That said, I get to deal with the occasional "OK, now that our event is over I don't need this anymore, how do I get a refund" email. I eat all the costs on those and don't argue because there is no profit in arguing, but one can understand if I don't have those folks in my Favorite Customers Hall of Fame. You bought a book from a mom-and-pop business, got exactly what you were promised, and then -- because it was convenient -- reversed the transaction and stuck them with all costs. You're a textbook pathological customer. Do you understand why people might not want to work with you?

[Edit: Oh, the economics of the "dispose of it how you want" are fairly straightforward. It simply isn't worth restocking/shipping/admin overhead to take the item back. We had a similar canned line at the office supply store I worked at: if you complained your paper was "Made out of trees!!!" and that prevented you from using it, I would tell you to "Donate it to a local charity or otherwise dispose of it in any way convenient to you." Same thing with BCC disks: they're cheaper to print than to ship and if you hypothetically sent one back to the factory they would just destroy it and charge me for wasting their time.]
I have about 3/4 of a panic attack if a big plane flies low near me in an urban environment. It has to be low enough for me to feel (or imagine that I feel) the vibration from the engines in my body.

Now that I think about it, I also get freaked out in moving crowds now, which I never did before. (I can be in crowded places, no problem--it's just when a lot of people are moving and mixing, like at a parade, music festival or busy shopping district.)

The airplane thing is totally manageable; I just need to stop and take a few deep breaths. The crowds thing starts off that way, but can get outright panic attack inducing if I don't get somewhere less crowded, and quickly.

I'm with OP. It seems that to be a 'disorder' it needs to have outwardly visible and functionally maladaptive outcomes on your behavior.
It would seem if this is the case, then for "returns without defect or seller error" then the seller should have a shorter return window as part of their clear selling terms.
All great engineering managers I know were also great engineers. It's possible to use your geek focus to improve your social skills, I've done it :)
I also don't use Chrome because of the combined elements. I think they serve different purposes and combining them is confusing (at least to somebody used to having them as separate features). I also use the search bar as a kind of clipboard, as I'm sure many other people do as well.
The Failed Promise of ‘The Verge’
Even accepting the basic premise of the article, that CS doesn't strictly give you anything you can't get with JS, I still don't see any of the reason explain why I shouldn't write CS instead.

Even if there are no language features CS gives me over JS (and there are -- list comprehensions to name one), I get cleanliness. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is just as relevant in programming languages as in human languages. Equivalent JS being "possible" is not a reason to not write easier to understand and more maintainable code with a language that lets me expend less effort to arrive at the same place.
You must be new to the internet, then:

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553386...
You say Cairns, but perhaps do you mean Atherton, or Tolga? Because that's where I grew up, and your name is awfully familiar.
For arbitrary businesses reaching out to mass-market clients, it'll be a decade at least before "customer is extremely likely to be carrying true smartphone" will translate to "exploitable assumption". Local businesses do not as a rule write cross-platform phone apps. If you want to be the company that e.g. gets rid of those stupid flashing pager things that restaurants give people waiting for tables, it helps you very little to know that 1/3rd of restaurant customers will be holding an iPhone.

On the other hand, that application is more or less "hello world" with Twilio, and presents a fine customer experience even to people with iPhones.
Huh. I'm the author of the post. I'll think about it.
TorTV
Indeed, it's almost on par with the the other runtimes. Remember that the Google thanksgiving doodle was written in Go and ran on standard App Engine infrastructure.
I don't agree with it. Chrome is awesome, granted, but it's tightly designed for making Google more money. Not that it's something wrong with it, but it's not useful from my perspective (that might or might not be correct).

Let me explain you. When you type something in Chrome's search bar, you are searching. Firefox, having two bars lets you do different things. On the right one, you search. On the address bar, it lets you find.
When I know I want to go to a wikipedia entry for, say, webkit, I don't have to look at the results. Go ahead, type "wiki webkit" on your Firefox's address bar* and you won't have to go through Google as it has the "I'm feeling lucky" behavior.

You can't do that on Chrome. I think that's the reason both Firefox and Safari are sticking with two bars.

*Note: It might or might not work. Each time I install Firefox I have to set the keyword.URL setting to "http://www.google.com/search?btnI=&q= because it stopped working, but that was the old behavior.
Unless you have an extraordinarily clever implementation of "linked list in Ruby" (in which case this is still a terrible interview question), no. Arrays are more efficient for every reasonable access pattern. If the links of your list are references to Ruby objects (which every online "linked list in ruby" page uses), they're not so much "more efficient" as they are "tractable" compared to linked-list's "intractable".
I think he meant videos, which are on preorder and will only be released in March?

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-First-Season/dp/...
I felt the author was making a bit much out of this, especially to spend so much time mulling over the negative feedback. This is a passive aggressive blog, spawned by passive aggressive transaction notes.

If I received such notes and felt moved to action, I would have either a) shot an email back explaining my laziness and apologizing, admitting I understand their position (because I do), and offering once more to send the book back, or b) viewed the notes as a jaded but fair note given my slow reaction, not responded at all, and just given the feedback as if the note did not exist.

But I doubt I would have returned the thing at all, and probably have just either given it away or sold it to a used book store nearby (probably at a loss) because I personally don't feel 10$ is much to eat when my own hasty purchase resulted in me getting something I didn't need. I do realize that everyone has their own habits, though, when it comes to returns/money/etc.

edit: clarity
Google Search easter egg for the holidays
>> it's an accretion of rewriting tricks

I think you'll find this point of contention won't work against raganwald: https://github.com/raganwald/rewrite_rails
Exactly. I've had lots of candidates basically pass the initial question and then sink their own battleship by volunteering some running commentary that happened to be totally wrong. Memorizing enough crap to impress an interviewer about even a basic reverse the linked list question without understanding it is actually quite hard. It's not enough to remember to drop the terms stack and heap, you have to remember which one is which.
Also, Cornell is named after a guy who made his money in the communication technologies business. Unlike Yale, Stanford, Duke, and most of the other elite schools in the U.S., which are named after drug dealers.
Or perhaps:

CoffeeScript is [not a language] worth learning.
Non-mutable linked lists have advantageous memory/copying properties.
Wait a minute...

According to the article and his website the machine costs $2,500 each, can produce 2 napkins per minute and requires 746W of power. Each machine employs a crew of four people.

A full scale industrial machine is claimed to cost $500K and, from a quick bit of google-ing can produce 350 napkins per minute and requires about 80KW of power. Each machine seems to be operable by a small team of five or so, but let's double that to ten people.

In order to match the production rate of a single industrial machine you would need:

Machines: 175

Cost: $437,500

Power: 131KW

Workers: 700

According to this (http://mahadiscom.com/emagazine/jan06/india1%5B1%5D.pdf) electricity cost in India runs around 1.5 rupees per KWh for residential and 3.5 rupees per KWh for industrial applications. Assuming ten hours per day (for easy math) the power costs compare as follows (converted to USD):

175 low cost machines @131KWh in household settings: USD $37 per day.

Industrial machine @80KWh in industrial setting: USD $52.87 per day.

The industrial machine cost a little more to run (power) but it produces 175 times more product per machine. Put a different way, around USD $0.03 of power is required per napkin with the household machine. The industrial machine --even at more than double the electricity cost-- only requires USD $0.0003 per napkin in power.

In terms of labor costs --assuming $1 per hour-- the household machine would cost about $0.033 per napkin while the industrial machine runs $0.0005 per napkin.

According to the linked statistic the TAM (Total Addressable Market) is around 300 million women:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-01-23/india...

If his dream to "make India a 100% napkin-using country" is fully realized you would need to produce a minimum of 1500 million napkins per month (assuming five pads used per period). The solutions compare as follows:

Assuming that the machines are run 24 hours per day for 30 days.

- Household solution

Machines: 17362

Cost: $43,405,000

Power: 12MW

Labor cost per 30 days: $25,001,280

- Industrial Solution:

Machines: 100

Cost: $50,000,000

Power: 8MW

Labor cost per 30 days: $90,000

Unless my numbers are grossly wrong (please check, I threw them together quickly) this is not as good a solution as it has been made out to be. In fact, it looks like a really bad solution to a large scale problem. The costs are staggering. Power consumption is at least 50% greater. I'll bet that product quality and consistency also suffers a great deal. And, of course, we haven't even covered maintenance costs and MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of 18,000 low-cost machines versus 100 industrial grade machines.

Good job. Lots of work. But I'd invest in a used industrial machine out of China over making thousands of these low cost household devices.
38% discount coupon off of all programming books at Manning publishing house
Your question reminded me of the following posts from Tim Ferris:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/06/28/mba/?utm_sou...

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/07/05/how-to-creat...
For a university project course, a friend and I did something similar, except with sound. It seems the professor posted our demonstration but not our report or code (I'll have to ask him about posting that too!): http://esg.uwaterloo.ca/node/254
Live: NYC picks Cornell/Technion for new Campus
I was also hoping for Stanford. This is not meant to disrespect Cornell - I just question how additive it will be. Cornell has long produced great Engineers, but many wind up in NYC anyway. Will cutting the prop plane to Ithica really be a game changer? The most interesting part is the Technion angle.

With Stanford, you could accomplish two things. First of all, you add incremental Engineering talent. Second, uoubopen a new network and way of thinking. It really could have been a game changer.

My question for Hizzoner Da Mayor... Why not both?
Couldn't this be addressed by requiring all spending bills to have their funding built in? ie, the bill must include what they are proposing to spend, and where the funding will come from (tax hike). This would also help people understand the costs of what they are voting for.
We know they don't want it open. The question is why.

dustingetz was speculating they don't want it open because it either hits too much on their database or doesn't make enough money from it.

My position is that they feel the question doesn't fit with the SE model and there's no ulterior/egotistical reason behind keeping it closed.
I have nothing against Cornell, it's a great school, but I'm not sure where this logic that the city needs a tech school comes from?
There are a number of top notch universities in the NYC area. The city alone is home to NYU and Columbia - isn't it easier to just beef up the their programs by redistributing space and using the money to attract faculty members?
Has Carnegie Mellon resulted in a tech startup ecosystem in the city of Pittsburgh?

Seems more like a political play on the part of Bloomberg.
If you want to build your company into a Apple, Intel, Google, etc. in NYC - good luck finding the space to do it. What you will more likely see in the city are smaller sized startups that will find success in working alongside with the many other industries that exist in the city, such as finance, media and fashion. And that's not a bad thing.
In a city full of Very Big Deals (TM), this is a Very Big Deal for NYC. Looking forward to what they are going to do.
Wow, that sounds painful. So do people not use things like graphs or trees in Ruby due to perf? I actually used to do Python development -- about 13 or so years ago, but had to quit due to perf just being abysmal for applications intended for customers (and started focusing on C++). Is Ruby today similarly bad for apps that make heavy use of data structures like trees/graphs as Python more than a decade ago?

EDIT: Updated to remove the term 'toy-apps'
Cleaning Services Sidcup SE9, DA14, DA15
I'm actually on my second career since then.

At the time of 9/11 I was an enterprise Java programmer. We built software for MBS desks: trade capture, portfolio management and risk analytics.

Finance is hugely interesting, but I was not learning any of it. I was building CRUD operations hooked up to Swing UI and a black-box (to me) analytics backend.

There wasn't (and isn't) anything "wrong" with that, objectively. But I possess two things: one, a strong need for self-determination--I need to eat what I kill; and two, a love for learning that can manifest as antipathy toward using things that I don't understand.

I ended up getting into finance proper and spending six years as a multi-asset prop trader at a gigantic hedge fund and then a gigantic bank, living in NYC and London.

I've ultimately realized that I want to help build stuff that people use, so my lovely wife and I moved to SF and are building a life here.
http://core-js.org

MVC Web Framework for NodeJS written in CoffeeScript.

This is an open source project that has just been released, and from my experience developing it, here are my conclusions:

I believe some people are comfortable coding one way, and others are comfortable coding another. Anyways, everybody uses what works. At the end, the productivity you've got and the time you save is all that matters.

Regarding the issue with the stack traces and CoffeeScript, you're right, line numbers are not accurate, but if you know where the problem is and you'll know how to debug it, on the spot.

I was not attracted to CoffeeScript myself when I first saw it, but after having a closer look, I finally realized it is a great tool to use when applicable. Then I decided to migrate the whole code to CS.

From my experience, it's all about your coding workflow. Knowing CoffeeScript syntax and how it translates to JavaScript. I use CoffeeScript's simplicity to implement complicated concepts that would require some ellaboration when it comes to syntax.
It will impact precisely 0% of the users that want to access pirated material. They will Google for solutions and they will find them.

"Oh, they'll just block those searches" you'll say, and then maybe they will, but then they'll re-phrase it. They'll ask around and, lo and behold, someone they know will know someone that can "fix" it. Maybe even for a price!

Napster tried to crack down on pirated music one time and people switched from literal spellings to Pig-Latin in a heartbeat. You wanted "Metallica" and you'd search for "Etallicamay". Word travels fast. How are you proposing to subvert that? People can adapt faster than laws.

What it will affect is site operators simply trying to make a living and having to deal with being DNS blocked all the time. Startups will fail. People will lose their digital possessions because one of the users on the site where they chose to store them was flagged for a copyright violation.

Legitimate users and businesses want a consistent, predicable identity. Shady ones could not care less how often they have to switch domains, IPs, service providers, nor how hard they are to find by the average user. They're underground. It's all word of mouth and word of mouth doesn't care about DNS filters.

It is simply not possible to block something on the internet. There is always a way around it. Look at how locked down some corporate networks are and people have found ways to bust out using HTTP or DNS tunnelling.
I used to complain about these things too, until I started using readability. Now nary a blog post gets read by me before I readability that sucka...
Allow me do introduce you to Ctrl-L:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=120404
Solaris 11 Source Leaked
I'd respond to this, but the "toy apps" wording makes me think this conversation will be unproductive.
I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. Just because it made a good interview question (for the interviewer) doesn't mean it's something you'd actually want to use in everyday practice.
Original paper (no paywall): http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/turnbaugh/Papers/Reshef_Scienc...
They would be doing this anyway.
It is ignorance not selfishness. You are looking at these women from the lens of someone who can probably not fathom the level of ignorance amongst the poor uneducated folks in India. If they really understood what it is to lose a uterus, and they believed this random stranger that this would happen, they would be much more open to the idea of using a napkin.

As things stand, these women and all generations before them have been using rags. They really can't imagine why they need this new fangled thing called a napkin. Worse, it is very likely a choice between this new fangled thing they don't think they need, and having a bit less food tonight. In that context, it's obvious why they choose to go with the rag.
Simple Steps To Create Social Timeline On Facebook
It'll put a dent in their revenue, but it'll also open up a massive market for underground advertisers.
> But I absolutely never think about overriding a parent function
> in JavaScript. In CoffeeScript this is actively encouraged.

Unfortunately, if you never think about overriding a parent's implementation of a function in JavaScript -- all that means is that you willfully don't use prototypes. The famous "prototype chain", by which object-orientation in JavaScript is accomplished, is all about overriding versions of parent properties.

> Class inheritance is not a common JavaScript design pattern.
> It's a hack, used by a minority of JavaScript developers,
> in a minority of projects.

Nope, it's deeply ingrained in all object-oriented JavaScript that uses prototypes. What are the built-in String, Function, RegExp, Number, Array, and Object, if not classes?
I started asking if I could assume TCO - usually knowing they would say no, but it would set them back a bit because that's an unusual question.

What does TCO here mean? Tail-call optimization?
Turning Small Projects Into Big Profit, A Case Study
I think the difference between Amazon Inc and Amazon Marketplace sellers is that Amazon knows you'll come back if you're happy. Marketplace sellers will probably/likely never see you again, happy or not. So Amazon sees it as an investment in the future, but the Marketplace sellers just see it as a loss.
Excerpt of the terms and conditions:

8. Rights to End User Content. By posting, uploading, or transmitting any data or other content on or through the Application, or causing any data or content to be posted, uploaded, or transmitted on or through the Application (the "End User Content"): (i) you represent and warrant that you are the owner of the End User Content and/or that you have the right to grant the licenses to Digi-Key contained in this Agreement; and (ii) you grant to Digi-Key a fully-paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferrable, sublicensable, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use the End User Content (in whole or in part) for any and all purposes, subject to the terms of the Digi-Key Privacy Policy, the terms of which are incorporated herein by reference. Digi-Key may use End User Content for marketing and market research and for other purposes as set forth in this Agreement.
1) Thanks for the edit; the more you know!

2) I think I've flash-learned a lot about the process now (of which I knew little before). I'm really interested in disruptive uses of digital social systems, so taking advantage of online vendors might be something I'll actually look into for a future research project.

3) Random thought: Given the increase in algorithms that weigh prices against other sellers (and the obvious examples I linked to in the piece) I wonder what the potential is for mom-and-pop businesses to employ their own algorithms... or at least what the conflicts are when you have small businesses with different levels of technical skills and access to those sorts of advantages. Is that a new business competency that's necessary if you're a small business looking to work within these systems?
Marc Andreessen: Predictions for 2012
> The Windows desktop GUI system is more stable than anything else out there (meaning that it's not going to change drastically AND that it's a solid piece of software that just works)

So you assume that Windows8 metro-mode won't really catch on? Also comparing OSX to Windows over the past 10 years, it's Windows that has changed more drastically, so both future and past evidence to the contrary...
Drug dealers!? Please elaborate.
His solution may be better given the infrastructure. I don't know what the infrastructure is like, but using one big machine requires being able to distribute the napkins to a much wider area. In, say, the US, that's an easy win. We have good infrastructure, and it makes sense to use one big machine and buy them in stores. That may not be true in India - I invite anyone with knowledge on the subject to comment.
I think GO is still experimental in app engine and doesn't support some services like OAuth, Google Cloud Storage, and XMPP. Also, "experimental" scares me for production use.