skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would think a more natural approach of making join a method of any sequence would result in cleaner programs.

(a, b, c).join(',')

instead of: ','.join((a, b, c))
2^10
or
((10*101)+(((2^3)*2)-2))

Ummm...

Vert cool, like the design, layout, and how it works! :)
If you're doing test charges for SAAS, you're doing it wrong.

The subscription is worthless without you flipping a little bit in your database somewhere, right? You could flip that little bit at any time if you suspected the account was fraudulent, right? Great news. Assume everybody is telling the truth that they're authorized, even if they fail AVS. If the charge is later disputed, rescind it and (optionally) lock the account. If it is not later disputed, hey, it must have been authorized.

This is time tracking not file hosting -- scamming 25 days out of the provider doesn't provide you any benefit. You should expect fraud rates to be negligible.

Why is locking the account optional? Well, really, clanging the doors shut on a legitimate paying customer is a lot worse for you than letting 10 illegitimate people take up another record in your database.

(Oh noes, how will I scale with invalid records in my database?! Oh wait, I charge people money which means I scale practically by definition.)

So sure, give people a few extra days to get their details re-entered before you shut down their access. The time is free to you.

In my business (selling downloadable software), after I have handed over the Registration Key the horse is out of the barn... and I could care less. They're free to me. You can try paying me with an e-check, which is basically a promise that 5 days from now you'll have money in a checking account ready for me, and e-checks come with NO verification for those 5 days. I'll still give you the key as soon as you hit the submit button. If you were dishonest or fumble-fingered your account number... oh well? Paypal will send you an email to retype it, if you do that is great, if not then I'm not out any money am I.
The question is, do we live in an age where someone (admittedly someone in a very strange place mentally) might actually take the response seriously, or is that age just a few years or months away?
It's objetive, but, after all, it's also C...

I find the Smalltalk-ishness of it a little weird when it intersperses with more traditional C code.
osx, by definition, is no familiar (aka not windows)

i see a lot of "make Windows looks like Mac OS X" from google or even "make Linux look like Mac OS X"

i believe I've never seen the reverse (OSX->xp or even OSX->linux)

to me linux is copying the wrong model, her role model should be osx
If it's a particularly cool question you want to save, star it.
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Really?

more than 1 in 25 people on a site like HN using IE6 would seem odd to me.. I'm not sure of anyone that would like this site and is still running ie6.

(on an assumption here that we're talking organic traffic - not SE results)

PG - want to give us the browser stats?
i don't think i want to use os which kernel is designed by ui-programmer or its ui designed by kernel-programmer

i think the beauty of open source is you can work on what you love, even if it's not efficient
My string/sequence related annoyince is ''.split() -vs- ''.split(';').

The first returns [], but the second returns [''].
That's really simply a decision based on how you wish to operate your business, don't you think? We've decided to require CCs up front based on a number of factors.

Doesn't make the pains of validating and charging CCs any less.
The power of Slime (Emacs Lisp devel. mode)
Edinburgh Hacker Meetup wednesday
The December Edinburgh Hacker Meetup is this Wednesday. The time and venue are the same as last time:

Venue: 8th Floor Appleton Tower
Time: 6:30 PM

Hope many new people come along this time too...

Arnav
I do that all the time with instapaper? Have a look at their "text only" version of the articles.
San francisco web design
Flying Cow Design offers custom web design and development services in San Francisco, California at great prices.
Java - I love Javadoc Tool. Don't really get to use it much now, but still love it.

c# - Constraints on typed params.

public T AssignLiteItem<T>(ArchivingItem archivingItem ) where T : Item
{

T myITem = (T)typeof(T).GetConstructor(new System.Type[] {}).Invoke(new Object[] { });

myITem.ItemReference = new ItemReference(archivingItem.Id);

return myITem;

}
I don't think RoR is that bad on Windows. I've used InstantRails on Windows quite successfully for over a year now with only occasional problems with plugins (like Paperclip, though it's fine now).

It seems the incompatibilities come from things like capistrano which are quite close to the metal. And that seems reasonable to me. However, expecting new users of your language/framework to delve into the internals just to make their basic app work isn't going to happen. Maybe it should, but it isn't.
Massively parallel crowd sourced JavaScript app server; SETI for JS
Massively parallel crowd-sourced JavaScript app server cloud
The first iteration of our website ran OpenACS on AOLServer. It was an interesting experience. I actually found AOLServer quite charming...but OpenACS, not so much.

I didn't really have any complaints about Tcl, as a language, but OpenACS was really difficult to work with. It seemed like second system effect had had its way with the whole project and in a bad way. So, I ended up scrapping OpenACS and AOLServer, and I haven't touched Tcl since.
Kansas city webdesign
Flying Cow Design offers custom web design and development services in Kansas City, Missouri at great prices.
Looks really interesting. There is a slight problem with your URL. You need to drop the ' at the end.

http://github.com/gregdingle/genetify/wikis
Niagara falls info
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No because unlike sport, which is artificial competition for entertainment, mental work is real productive work that benefits society. Increasing our mental abilities can make the the world a better place, the same cannot be said of steriods and sporting ability.

Another difference is that steriods at the level taken by athletes use is demonstrably harmfull for their health, this is not necessarily true for mental boosters.
one of jquery's main strengths is the sheer number of plugins for it. so far only prototype comes close.
Which was written by Wietse Venema, who went on to write the finest general purpose SMTP server in existence. But, he chose a more suit-friendly name (Postfix) for the mail server.
Difficult to program for in what language? It sounds like a perfect fit for the Actor model and languages, like Erlang, that directly support the idea of partitioned memory and asynchronous communication.
So he's saying that if your core audience is in Windows, and your product works best in Windows, you should ignore the Linux people clamouring for a port?

It goes both ways - you ignore them today, they'll ignore you tomorrow.
well it's good that open hardware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_hardware) is starting to grow and we now have DIY 3d printers (http://fabathome.org/).
You reckon 500 lines of Python, whipped up on a whim, provides everything you need in an MTA, other than IMAP and POP3? Really?

Add five years of heavy development, and it'll probably be a suitable replacement for Postfix or qmail or Sendmail.

Besides, what's hard about Postfix? It usually only requires two or three configuration file changes to get mail processing working.
Macroeconomics is Complete Bunkum
"Laws can never be universally and compulsorily enforced because laws are merely guidelines."

But this kind of thing is encoding those "choose to follow or suffer the consequences" laws into "we will take control and force your devices to comply".

e.g. no photography within 100m of the police, even if you are an investigative journalist willing to break the letter of a restrictive law to cover a story.
Security is not a luxury item
Can't speak for KDE, but your statement regarding GNOME is totally incorrect. We follow our own UI guidelines, we do NOT blindly follow the Windows guidelines. The focus is on our thoughts on usability, not on being different. Further, people work on whatever they want.
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/
Considering firefox chokes on it, I would say the css is badly written.
Your two Java points - the first one: Amen. The latter - not true:

public static String foo(final boolean b) {
if( b ) { return "Yes"; } else { return "No"; }
}

Compiles just fine.
Didn't accept my utf8 very well, the second answer is supposed to be P ≠ NP
http://icantdeci.de/109438
How to lose friends and uninfluence people | On.eTi.me
If a problem is parallelisable to that extent, are the cores actually hitting the same memory? (Presumably not, since you don't want multiple threads mutating the same memory).

So the problem is really that we have:

[lots of cores] <=chokepoint of memory bus=> [lots of ram]

when we could have:

k times:
[1/k of our cores] <=single mem bus=> [1/k of our RAM]

That increases our aggregate memory bwidth by a factor of k. This has to be <= number of cores, and the problem being solved needs to be able to be partitioned into k chunks.

This is basically the clustering approach (individual proc+ram working on the problem), with the added advantage that we can leave some of the RAM unsplit so we get 'local' shared RAM for free.
Can you cite a specific example where the condition is NOT ambiguous and the Java compiler WILL produce an error? The example you cite is incorrect (see my post later) - you can compile code of this form just fine.

I'm not aware of unambiguous situations where the compiler will complain; if you see an error it's usually pebkac!
Another 23 Signs You're Becoming a Design Geek
Because, by definition, when an AI breakthrough is achieved, it's no longer AI...
I don't want to interrupt the cliche fanboy hatefest, but when IE6 came out way back in 2001, it was by far the most standards compliant browser out there, and much better than the dying outdated Netscape in terms of feature-completeness. They did not update it for several years while there was little competition. Many of the features taken for granted in modern web development are proprietary Microsoft extensions - InnerHTML and Ajax both come to mind.

It's funny you criticise Vista when the reason that you still have to develop for IE6 is because of the huge unprecedented success of XP. IE6 has been the XP browser since it came out. The fact is that if Vista had been a bigger success, an OS that ships with IE7, IE6 would be less of an issue. The "plague" was actually caused by what you praise in the next sentence. They're unlikely to stop supporting IE6 until they stop supporting updates to XP since it's XP's default browser.
Vim Plugins You Should Know About, Part I: surround.vim
Lesson learned from my biggest business mistake
>> 2. If you want to process AmEx, you have to call them directly...

This is not true when using Paypal Payflow Pro or Website Payments Pro for your merchant account.
Python: Too many things evaluate to false, like midnight datetime.time(0, 0), and XML nodes with 0 XML children ET.parse("&lt;foo;&gt;Hello&lt;/foo;&gt;").

Perl: Too many things evaluate to false, like string containing single character "0".

Both make "if foo" testing too fragile, so I'm back to "if foo != None", "if foo == True", "if defined $foo" etc.

Python: Explicit self makes some really crappy testing DSLs.

Perl: No way to compare two structures for equality, so no generic assert_equal. I hacked myself assert_equal with Data::Dumper, but it breaks in many cases that would be trivial in Ruby/Python.

Ruby doesn't seem to have any particularly intrusive warts.
Dealing with your Escort Agency
Today, you can find a lot of escort agents operating in all the cities to help lone visitors with some decent companions. If you want hot Monaco escort girls or Madrid escort girls or escort girls from any of the popular cities, the best way to go about it is to use one of the reputed escort agencies like Independent Ladies.
Maybe because it's not a product?

Not everything is for sale, you know.
Today, you can find a lot of escort agents operating in all the cities to help lone visitors with some decent companions. If you want hot Monaco escort girls or Madrid escort girls or escort girls from any of the popular cities, the best way to go about it is to use one of the reputed escort agencies like Independent Ladies.
I've used the Auth.net live support option several times and have always gotten the information I've needed much quicker than calling.

As far as test charges go, Auth.net has a "test" mode, and since they batch daily, you can charge whatever you want and then just void it before the batch even when it's in live mode. I don't see any issues there or why you have to worry about 'small charges' either.
> Ruby's int.to_f seems much nicer than a built-in function float(int)

I multiply by 1.0 to turn an int into a float:

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Jul 31 2008, 23:17:40)
>>> 3/2
1
>>> 3*1.0/2
1.5
>>> float(3)/2
1.5
Function scope is the entire point of closures. If it was lexical scope it would not be a closure, it would just be a regular function.

Just pass in j when you call it and you can have lexical scope easily.

But if you changed that, a TON of code would be impossible, so I'm very happy with it working that way.
Graffiti in shadow
Great work of street artist who attempt to stop the moment and to capture shadow! Amazing graffiti street art!
I agree. Join should word the same as split:

>>> "abcbe".split("b")
['a', 'c', 'e']

So to get back the original string you should be able to say:

['a', 'c', 'e'].join("b") #!!! WRONG !!!

but this doesn't work and instead you have to say:

>>> "b".join(['a', 'c', 'e'])
'abcbe'
We use Auth.net with one of our clients who processes an order about every 5 minutes around the clock. They started with LinkPoint which was horrible (bad support/high failure rates), and Auth.net is like a vacation in comparison.
"which is artificial competition for entertainment, mental work is real productive work that benefits society"

Uhhh, professional sport isn't 'real' work? I would would say without a doubt every single processional athlete probably works much harder then your typical white collar worker (due to the fact that they are not typical athletes) As far as "productive" goes, each pro organization is staffed with hundreds of people all doing 'productive' work which is possible because of the athletes that work for the corporation.
I was confused when I first visited - the different color text entry fields made it look like a flag and I didn't initially realize they were text fields.

Worked well for me, though. Neat app.
3g in India and leading mobile service providers
India is seeing an unprecedented increase in the mobile users. According of one of the latest TRAI reports released in November 2008, the total number of mobile users in India has reached 325 million. In October 2008 alone, 10.42 million new subscribers added. These figures are bound to shoot up with the launch of 3G network. Some of the major mobile players in India are BSNL mobile, Airtel mobile, Reliance mobile and Tata mobile. At one time Aircel mobile was leading the market; however, it has now lost the market share to BSNL mobile, Airtel mobile and other leading mobile players.
The author is a surrealist.
I have been prescribed Modafinil for Adult ADD.
Sometimes you have to take risks. There is some question as to whether cell phones have long term medical risks, but I bet you use a cell phone (for increased productivity no less).
You miss out on a nice side-effect of join being a method of string:

br = '<br>'.join

br((a, b, c))

Personally I think it makes more sense the ruby way but it's never bugged me.
Flash's History
Well does it really matter? Why the focus on "genius"? Why not just focus on hard work and doing as much as you can without worrying about factors you cant control?
Ask HN: How to Transform my Web-App into an Open Source Project?
I have the impression that my web-app (decision making tool http://dezidr.com) might be too small and too specialized to pay the living of its creator one day. I therefore consider to transform it into an Open Source project to make it available to people who like it or to developers who want to extend it even when I move on to other projects and shut down the service.

Does anybody of you have experience with doing that? What are the necessary steps? Is the idea useful at all?
Ask HN: know any good browsergames?
I know it is not the best question to ask in a community obsessed about productivity ;-) But still, do you have any recommendations? I very interested to study what makes them successful.

Also, which ones are hacker friendly? Most seem to disallow scripting, for example, which only indicates that they are boring (because they make people do things that a script could do easily as well). Any games that are interesting enough to not warrant scripting? Hacker friendly would be either interesting enough in itself, or allowing scripts (make it a battle of the scripts, maybe?).

The market seems to be booming, but I have not been able to find a browsergame that really appeals to me yet.

Also, shouldn't it be "browser games"? I have found the use "browsergames" more often, though.
Am I the only one who doubts that popular vote can accurately select the greatest (or last) "genius"?

I mean, it's not like the mainstream has a better grasp of the relative magnitudes of the achievements than the physics or math communities. Why would they be right about Einstein? From my limited understanding of the matter, I'd venture that Newton was a greater genius for his time. In mathematics, Andrew Wiles and Gregory Perelman solved more vexing problems than Einstein did in physics. Is Einstein overrated?
If # were a comment character in the language you could do this:

% puts "hello" # hello
bad argument "hello": should be "nonewline"

But this works:

% puts "hello" ;# hello
hello

That's the point; that nothing in Tcl is "special" or "reserved", everything is a command that takes parameters.
Another thing - withdraw from the commercial media market. I think if enough geeks stopped copying music and movies and took on a position of "only what's legal" we'd rapidly build alternative culture streams that would be all of good, legal, and free of retriction. Part of the problem is that people's brains are poisoned. For example, many musicians I meet are hard-wired into the idea that they need to protect their work, when in fact they would most benefit by getting their music and their names out there and then benefiting from more audiences at gigs, and better jobs (teaching opportunities, partnership deals to produce jingles for advertising and anything else that comes by way of their increased network).
Salesforce.com builds another bridge to Google’s cloud
My understanding was that SF already had a fairly strong datacenter backend. Or is that not the case?

By doing this wont they be restricted to what the GAE can functionally provide like:
- Python only support (with Java and Rails coming soon),
- other technical limits

or is that a "small" cost to pay for the kind of scalability they cannot provide themselves any time soon?
Online marketing tips for beginners - Helium
4% of 6 billions is 240 millions.
You mean Rails.

This works as expected, though:

Time.now-1.day
Regarding issues 4 and 5, I had this happen to me recently when a service tried to charge my card 1 pence (GBP) to check the validity of my card.

The bank said they fail these transactions on fraud protection, as many fraudsters will try a very small charge first to see if a card works.
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Are use of drugs like these prevalent in the startup world? I can imagine it has to be pretty tempting. Plus there's the added incentive that you already (should?) have pretty productive people and stacking another multiplier on top of their productivity would be hard to turn down.

Or is it the case that working in a startup is already motivating enough that there wouldn't really be much of an additional benefit?
The BBC have picked up this story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770456.stm
The Freedom That Technologies Help Bring
Funny to see this on Hacker News -- I wrote it. Which means I should also take full responsibility for the performance complaints that have shown up in this thread.

Someone in the thread mentioned that they're "not sure how you could screw up a web app this simple." I'm entirely sure how we screwed it up.

My friend came up with the idea, designed the layout, and I built it. It was a spare time thing, just for fun. When we launched we seeded the database with a couple hundred questions and put it out there. Somehow (thank you Twitter, Tumblr, etc), the site saw 10,000 uniques in its first day, which exposed the fact that I'd over-normalized the database to death, and the site could hardly function. We launched at 11am, and by 3pm I was on the phone with mediatemple to upgrade the server just so there'd be enough memory to allocate an ssh session.

I spent a sleepless 72 hours after that rebuilding the architecture to try and make it scale, which it did -- for a while.

But now we've got a database with 13 million votes in it, and the app must cross-reference those votes with a user guid so as to serve fresh content, and it's simply outgrown whatever fixes I was able to make during that marathon coding weekend.

I haven't done any work on it in months, yet every so often it pops up somewhere on the web and guilts me into thinking I should probably re-architect it once again...

So if I don't sleep or leave my apartment this weekend I've got you all to thank :)
You can't really put piracetam in "just about any beverage", both because of the taste and the sheer quantity. That would be like trying to hide a tablespoon of ground-up mothballs in your orange juice. (Aniracetam or oxiracetam, maybe.)
In short, yes. A little less extreme though would be to guarantee privacy and security to all stored files, and should any changes occur to the current policy, users should be notified and given the option to completely wipe all of their data or continue using the service. That to me is common sense. Under no circumstances should an acquisition impact the user's privacy and security.

As for encrypting data before it's uploaded. Sure, I mean if you believe their target demographic is tech-savy enough. Which probably means a small fraction of their current users.

I think security in the cloud has to be a shared a responsibility between users and providers, for all cloud apps. Telling your users that it's their sole responsibility is ridiculous and not very competitive... unless you're releasing an open source offering to sysadmins. Technology has gotten so confusing for the typical end user that of course they're not going to invest the time to understand what cloud security even is, whether or not you believe they should.
Something is going wrong with the HN ranking algorithm for this to get to the top with one vote. What's going ON?
We need more philosophy without facts
Really, they usually won't talk to me unless it's about a web interface question. They keep telling me to call them.
It's cute and pretty, and pretty nice for a spare-time project. I like it well enough already. I'll just wait for the traffic to die down a bit.
oh my god, thank you. i love you.
Thanks for the article; it gives me hope that we can stop obsessing over the damned tests and concentrate on teaching the subject material.