skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was intrigued by the author's library "envoy", which is intended to provide a more intuitive interface to running processes from python. (https://github.com/kennethreitz/envoy)

The back story is that the older APIs that Python comes with -- os.popen and os.system -- are deprecated. Programmers are urged to use the "subprocess" module instead. Although this doesn't have the problems of the original functions, it has a rather arcane interface, in particular if you want to read the output (stdout or stderr) of a subprocess.

"envoy" seems to aim at fixing this, by providing sane defaults and being optimized for the common case. However, these defaults have drawbacks of their own.

1. envoy defaults to keeping the process output in memory, as a giant string. This can be a bad choice with regard to memory usage and performance.

2. You can run several processes in a pipe using ("cat foo | grep bla"). But otherwise as far as I can see, run() ignores regular Shell semantics, such as quotes. I imagine this can lead to unexpected results. The amount of data passed from one process to the next is capped at 10 MB -- recipe for bugs that are hard to find.

3. subprocess.call() accepts an array in the style of ["ls", "-l", "/mnt/My SD card"]. This has obvious advantages over having to deal with escaping shell characters. A good API should preserve this advantage over os.system().

4. The defaults cannot be overridden, and no preperations have been made to allow changing them. Of course this can be changed in the future. However, one of the reasons the subprocess.* API is convoluted is that it allows all kinds of flexibility, much of which is needed in many serious programs. It may be difficult to add this flexibility to envoy at a later stage. The point is that a flexible API is hard.

None of this is to discourage this initiative, which seems to me a much-needed improvement over Python's built-in API. Also, with a version number as low as 0.0.2, there is probably little need to worry about API compatibility.
If I Say No to Your Project
Mobile Morning Coffee (01/03/12): RIM CEO's off the board?
Apple TV hacked to run iPhone and iPad apps
> Didn't I see this same thing about PHP the other day?

This affect all languages using hashtables with non-randomized hash functions to store POST arguments, it's been discussed on Python's mailing list for instance. It's also been noted on the Erlang list, but all erlang frameworks apparently use proplists for POST mappings, so none of them is affected.
This presentation brings up a tangential point that has always confused me: how error-prone is starting a subprocess, really?

I agree with the author's goals of making common tasks easier and more obvious. urllib2 is an easy target, as it was added to the standard library over a decade ago, long before REST was something people talked about. The best tools for packaging, versioning, and testing have always been a bit ambiguous in any language, including Python.

However, the author points out something that has always bothered me about Python: it is way harder to start a subprocess with an external command in Python than almost any other language. This has been true whether using sys or os or even subprocess, which is quite recent.

I always felt that this had something to do with the constant warnings in the documentation about how a pipe between the subprocess and the Python process might fill and cause the subprocess to block. Or how running the program through shell rather than exec or something might cause some sort of security issue. Are these real issues that other languages ignore in the name of user convenience, or has Python just never been able to make the right API (as the author seems to argue)?
bigger version: http://i.imgur.com/YAlPH.jpg
R programming for those coming from other languages
As my fiance is so fond of telling me when I say "I'm off to do some work!" when going to work on my programming side projects (which includes open source development with plans for future closed source commercial projects as well), she replies "Until it makes us any money, it's just a hobby. Have fun."

Ah, good times.
I just haven't taken the time to fully dial in the details available at each zoom. It's really hard, since in one area that level of detail will look sparse (much of the US), but in the UK, that much detail at a particular zoom will look way overcrowded. It's doable, but takes alot of patience and tweaking, which is my next round of styling. That and US state borders being messed up.
"Even if writing your own firmware would be illegal (would it be, really?) "

For a radio module I would say so. It's one of the reasons cited by the openmoko successors from not doing it. Radio devices have to be tested and certified that the device stays within FCC or EC standards. Changing the firmware changes behaviour.

"what prevents manufacturers from releasing the code for examination?"

Patents, security... I'm sure they have their reasons.

"Accompanied by the fact that Google gets to do their mining on your data, Android looks just a little more open, compared to iOS."

Not if you use your own ROM or root your phone and stop all Google applicatons.
RIM Co-CEOs May Lose Co-Chairmen Roles
Microsoft will add Linux virtual machines to Windows Azure
The reason prices are so high is because it is a charity event.

"All the money raised from this auction will be put straight back into the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and will be used to fund its charitable activities."
Great list. This is basically my new years resolution, which is actually a list of things I've wanted to do for a long time that I put together after I lost funding. The most important one being complete a personal project. My list has a few additional items including learn web dev and launch a simple web app and get back into mobile development and release something on Google Marketplace and\or the Appstore.
I'd like to add a caveat to the "Implement a cryptosystem" suggestion--Implement one, but DO NOT USE IT. It's a fun challenge, but only fools use their own crypto libraries.
Any other info? I'm interested, but the "Why We Think Uber JS Rocks" section isn't quite enough to convince me to pay $10 to peek behind the curtain.
DOS is an pretty limited operating system compared to any real modern systems like UNIX and NT.
http://card.io

San Francisco, CA. Full time. H1B applicants welcome.

card.io is an early stage mobile payments start-up located in SF's Mission District. We're backed by top-tier investors including Harrison Metal, SoftTech VC, Manu Kumar, Omar Hamoui, and Alok Bhanot. Company founders were early employees at AdMob, and are now building software to enable simple, low-friction transactions on a mobile device.

We're tackling interesting, hard technical problems with immediate real world application. We maintain a work-life balance and have fun. We have generous comp, benefits, and vacation.

You should be an amazing engineer, love writing code, love deleting code, and live in the Bay Area.
Interested? Drop Josh (CTO) or Mike (CEO) an email at jobs@lumberlabs.com, showing us what you've done -- a resume, a letter, an open source project, etc.
If you have so many Javascript snippets that you need another javascript snippet to organize them you may want to think about how your developing your application and what your application means to the user.

Heavy Javascript on the client side either means your writing a full featured web app or the entire website is clientside in javascript. The former probably has performance penalties that make this a bad idea. The later, IMHO, is just bad.

The only useful thing I can think of with this is the fact that it can serve up a custom load of libraries all bundled and gziped in one file. But to that extent I can run a small script on my computer that will do that and then upload it to my server rather than having to cross domain half of my Javascript.
> it has a rather arcane interface, in particular if you want to read the output (stdout or stderr) of a subprocess.

oputput = subprocess.check_output(my_command)
Lucrative for founders, I suppose, probably decent return for VC's. For early employees, not so sure. Going on eight years (7.5 years for me personally) on current company, wondering whether it's worth it.
The MicroPHP Manifesto
Why Teach For America Is Not Welcome in My Classroom
I believe that the critical ASP.NET framework update that Microsoft pushed just before the new year was to fix this issue as well, amongst a few others.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms11-10...
Hadoop: Quant Calculations With Distributed Excel - 1
A Brief History of SIMD
10 year returns across the Nasdaq Composite and S&P500 were garbage during that time. It's not just VCs. Everything is correlated.

S&P: -20% (2000-2009), -3& (2001-2010)
Nasdaq: -40% (2000-2009), +4% (2001-2010)
(google finance)
Pod2g Tells How Corona Accomplishes Untethered Jailbreak
Business Logic in the Database
Noel, nice article and good luck with your venture, one tiny pet peeve of mine i'd like to bring up with you is the slider on your homepage, when you click the left/right buttons it has that ugly focus outline (at least on my linux FF) and you can easily get rid of it with:

onlick="this.blur()"

or perhaps a more elegant jquery solution
Tips for completing resolutions, such as these 12:

a. Have a plan with dates, milestones and accountability mechanisms

b. Start small (Instead of one month using a different OS, how about day and go from there)

c. Make it meaningful, Know why you're making a Committment, Be Selective (Have an intrinsic motivation to make a change in your everyday life)

d. Stay the course (If you get off track, get back on)

edit: formatting, typo
Think you are misinterpreting a bit. I just thought the URL was funny enough to make a joke about.
Your decision are the right ones. Any experienced developer would chose those. In my humble opinion, they are faster to implement than the alternatives.

The right solutions are often the fastest ones too.
I had the same idea a while back but never executed.

Pricing is going to be tricky. You have to convince your users that your service is really worth it. Copying and pasting code into their site costs nothing and takes very little time. Once it's there it rarely changes. Most users don't understand the performance impact of 3rd party scripts.
I know what you mean about the stroke patient thing.

I had (still have, actually) RSI-ish problems in my right wrist but not my left, so I started mousing with my left hand and it felt exactly the same. Years later, my day-to-day productivity has fully recovered, but I still can't play mouse-intensive games like Minesweeper without getting confused and clicking the air with my right hand when I meant to use my left.
I understand that a fair amount of revenue for the NBA is probably coming from the deals it made with TNT, EPSN, and Fox, but a viewer is a viewer, whether they're watching from the net or through traditional venues - why do they care, so long as their advertisers are getting enough eyeballs?

Not "some" all of NBA's TV Revenues come from selling the rights to networks. The networks sell the ads, and they're the ones that care about eyeballs. So the networks care if you start streaming local market games and they're going to try to prevent that. If the NBA allowed you to get your local market games via streaming it would undercut the product they sell to the various networks which is their primary source of revenue.
The Three F’s Every Successful Entrepreneur Should Master
> So the "dystopia" is the artificial disability to lend books?

No, that's not bad enough. But it sure leads to a dystopia. Quoting myself: "True dystopia is when the means of enforcing [copyright] kick in: the only know way right now is a "total surveillance" regime, where free software itself is forbidden."

By the way, it still applies even when Big IP do permit you to share with a few friends.
The Verified Twitter Account for Rupert Murdoch's Wife Was Fake [Updated]
"""For example, any website I've built I can surely make with just a text editor but I'll lay it out with ps first. That way I can go back and check what colors / gradients / dimensions I used to speed up the process."""

You may be a bit behind the times:

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop

http://24ways.org/2009/make-your-mockup-in-markup
Poll: As a freelancer, how much do you bill per hour?
How much in USD do you bill clients by the hour as a freelancer? Alternatively, if you quote a flat rate for a project, what would it breakdown to as an hourly rate?
50-74
75-99
100-124
125-149
150-174
more than 200
Not necessarily specific to node.js, but in general, instead of a standard webserver, use netcat, on multiple obscure ports, where each instance of netcat acts once and is discarded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netcat
I would really be interested to know how many of those computer scientists are also google employees.
Clojure needs more libraries and I would like to see it moved away from JVM eventuality.
I will check it out. thanks!
DOS with DJGPP (GNU userland) is actually not too bad of a system to work with. I did my undergrad thesis programming project using it back in the day (1997). Sometimes the multi-user paradigm of Linux is just too heavyweight for a single user system.
So, is it super fast?
Derek Sivers: Keep your goals to yourself
True, but then you have to mimic the form submission without alerting the user. It's certainly possible, but much less feasible compared to just passive logging of all POSTs that have a field called [password|pw|pass|passwd].

I guess if you're targeting a single site the difference is small.
What's the package manager for windows?

Mostly I agree with you, but installing python on windows is a PITA compared to *nix.

PIP works until you need something that requires compiling extensions which is also a PITA on windows.

IIRC easy_install can install binaries, but I could be wrong about that since I don't do windows development anymore and thus pip works for me 99% of the time.

Regardless, my point is, though I think we all wish it was as simple as using your package manager and pip, it simply isn't that way for everyone.

And it probably never will be, but we can always make it simpler. :)
As a Grand Rapids native, I agree with you for the major streets. 28th St, 44th St, Fulton, etc. Some of the smaller streets are nightmares with the one-way system (Lyon/Fountain) and roads that should connect but end abruptly only to pick up again the next block over with the same name (Barclay/Bostwick).

Don't get me started on roads that change their names every few miles (Northland Drive is also East Beltline is also Broadmoor is also 3rd St (and later 4th St) is also Federal Rd is also County Road 599 is also M-44 is also M-37).

Your point still stands compared to European roads or larger unplanned cities, but we've got a long way to go before we reach truly logical road names.
I am willing to spend up to $400 depending on mobility and reliability.

My laptop charger is 60W. it is a normal HP pavilion laptop.
Same day delivery of Flowers and Cakes to Mumbai and Rest of Maharashtra.
It also has a lot of advantages:

- all you need is a pair of decent trainers and shorts

- you don't need a partner

- you make obvious and steady progress

- most people unused to exercise need to work on cardiovascular stuff, not six packs

- you get to go outside, not stuck inside a hall or somewhere
If you're in a startup that is up for trying new things, I think having a group of developers working together on these resolutions would be a great idea. Let them take 5-10% of their time during the day to work towards these resolutions. Happy developers == healthy developers == productive developers.

Plus, working together with other people always gives you motivation to complete tasks, whether it be working out at the gym or learning a new programming language.
My guess is that they're trying to maximize "butts in seats" at the event itself. If people were given the option, they might choose to stay home and avoid the inevitable annoyances of crowded events (like, you know, other people), and that would cut down on revenue for the venue itself.

There is also the psychological effect of a large crowd in a venue showing enthusiasm for the sport. How much fun would a basketball game actually be if there were no crowd cheering and no people present? Athletes might live for the sport, but they get a boost from crowd enthusiasm. This follows on into the remote audience as well.

It would be an interesting (though costly) experiment to see just what happens, on many levels, if you do away with the crowds and just have teams playing in an empty venue, with only online and/or video spectators. I think most people would tune it out and stop watching completely, if not the first time, then soon after.
This isn't the same thing at all.

In this case, someone wanted to watch the Knicks. However, he had no way to do so, regardless of how much he paid Time Warner. TW didn't pay MSG, so TW doesn't have a right to show the game. NBA League pass doesn't cover home games, so that option was out too. The only way he could have watched the game legally was to either A) go to the game, or B) figure out some way to hook up a satellite dish with DirecTV (who I think does pay MSG rates for some tiers), or C) rent an apartment in a different cable company's market and hook up a Slingbox (it would have to be his Slingbox and cable sub, not a friends for it to be legit).

With the CD, you have a license to listen to the music. If you download MP3s of the music (assuming the source was identical to yours), all you have done is outsourced the conversion of the CD to MP3 format. The other person may not have the right to distribute those MP3s, but you should have the right to listen to them (however you obtain them).

(The RIAA has argued otherwise - that you just get the physical media with no rights, but I thought they were found to be wrong in court, but I can't remember the case)
I believe you were wrong then, and you are wrong now, despite "everybody doing it".

"Fluid layout" is a half-arsed solution to re-use the same design/markup everywhere, instead of sweating the details for particular classes of devices/screens.
An alternative is to host the documentation on readthedocs[0] instead: rtfd is dedicated to hosting sphinx documentations so it'll build the documentation on its own, it understands git (and mercurial, and bazaar, and svn) repositories[1] and it provide webhooks to get it to update your documentation on push[2]. In fact, Github has built-in support for rtfd so you only need to check the corresponding option.

That way, no need to mess around with committing your (compiled) doc in a separate branch and remembering to push your compiled artifacts.

[0] http://readthedocs.org/

[1] http://read-the-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/features.html...

[2] http://read-the-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/webhooks.html
I got married early compared to my peers. I've been with my wife for about 12 years and married for 5. Over time, I've definitely noticed that in my group of friends that aren't in long term relationships are using online dating.

I feel like 12 years ago there was a negative stigma attached to it, similar to the chat lines. It was the sort of thing you used once you 'gave up'. Now, several couples I know are proud that they met online.

I wonder if I'm only noticing more acceptance of online dating because my peers are reaching the 'breed now or never' age?
Adidas Teaches Early Stage Tech a Lesson: Differentiation Requires SPEED
I remember some guy from Twitter saying that percentage-based layouts are not good, especially with nested columns. Some problems with math, I guess?
Which is strange because it's actually easier rip them than have to hunt down a high-quality version, if you have some obscure titles.
There's a big assumption in this logic: that most people who date online are looking to get married.

A lot of people use online dating simply to hook up -- the virtual equivalent of approaching someone at the local bar, only with a lot of the potential awkwardness pre-vetted out. Though many of the biggest dating sites advertise themselves as places to get married, the use cases often tell a different story. That's not the fault of the sites, so much as the predominance of "off-label" use by the customers. (And the fairly recent plethora of hookup-specific online dating services are catering to an existing trend, not trying to create a new one.)

Frankly, none of this should surprise us. Many young people are primarily interested in casual sex. Still others are pursuing a try-before-you-buy strategy, and even among those people, the intent to "buy" is nebulous and flexible.

I have no doubt that a large contingent of online daters are genuinely using these services to find The One, and are earnestly focused on dating. But I'd be very curious to see what percentage this userbase represents. My gut tells me it may not even be a majority.
While it's possible that this is true, it's still exceptionally bad practice. Reversible encryption, particularly when stored server-side, which is almost always going to be the case, and even if using a HSM, isn't entirely different from plaintext when the attacker holds the keys.
> It has all the unpleasant effects of exercise

That's subjective; I like running outside. It lets me clear my mind like no other form of exercise. (I hate running int he gym, though)

> it destroys your knees

Only if you do it wrong. Unfortunately, 99.9% of the people do it wrong. I had started to develop some knee pains (only while running) after a healed knee injury. And then I discovered the Vibram Five Fingers, and after two weeks the knee pains were gone for good.

They take a while to get used to, but they're worth it.
It sounds like your lead developer is possibly out of his depth.

Yes, all those solutions are no-brainers. Micro managers aren't the ones who dictate how parts of the software should be written (especially in these cases - you have legitimate reasons for your chosen solutions); they're the ones who sit there constantly asking a developer "What are you doing? What are you doing now?".

I have had micromanagers in the past, and it's not fun, but there really is a difference between a manager making clear decisions, and one who's messing with a developer.

Seriously, though, if you have a lead developer who thinks that storing plain text passwords is a good idea (ESPECIALLY in a piece of software that has to comply with HIPAA standards), you should probably put him out of his misery, and out of your code base. No amount of "simpler administration" is worth plain-text passwords.
I'm not even sure where to start. Failure to whom? The people making money by providing a service? The users of the service? The marriage industry?
You know, some sort of clue that the arrow keys are used for navigation would be helpful.
It's funny you mention that. The author/speaker wrote a "Subprocesses for humans" module, too: https://github.com/kennethreitz/envoy

There's no fundamental problem that's stopped Python from doing this before. For some reason, all of the ways to spawn a subprocess in Python have tried to map almost directly to the underlying C API... which is pretty awful.
When To Get Rid of Your MVP
Well, heck, maybe I'm wrong. :-) I haven't actually done it yet, but I can pull up a "Warning: Installing a different OS can void your warranty, are you sure?" message.

Do you have any specific links?
#1 - ALWAYS encrypt passwords, no exceptions. Implementing SHA1 salted hashes is trivial.

#2 - Dates should be stored in UTC (make sure the server has the timezone correctly set), and display in the user's TZ or a reasonable default. The language will worry about DST. Don't let SQL touch it (in fact, you should probably store a UNIX timestamp - uint - instead of a datetime).

I would argue the above as "best practice" for storing that info. The douchebag is the developer who won't spend 5 minutes implementing either solution.
اخبار العرب
اخبار العرب هو موقع متخصص فى جميع انواع اخبار الوطن العربى لحظة بلحظة يوميا على مدار الاسبوع