skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I developed the scale because I found myself frustrated by "95th-percentile" syndrome. I noticed that, from when I started programming to now, I always considered myself around 95th percentile. And so did most other programmers I knew, whether they were "objectively" 80th or 99.5th. Which meant that these percentile-based self-assessments were worthless.

Similarly, if I were at the top of the scale, that would show a lack of imagination on my part, and also make the scale worthless in a "I won at a game where I just wrote the rules" sort of way. Personally, the territory that's most interesting to me is 1.7 to 2.2, because that's what I intend to be covering over the next 5-10 years.

People tend to estimate themselves as average within what they consider their peer group when comparisons are difficult or impossible to make (and the fact is that it's really hard to compare two programmers). So I think the 95 comes from the fact that it's "common knowledge" that 90% of "programmers" are incompetent.

Of course, these percentiles depend on a population and competence distribution that are by no means immutable, which makes them meaningless as technologies evolve and more people come into software, so I needed a scale for professional development of an engineer based on general knowledge and approaches. The actual 95th percentile is probably around 1.5 on that scale, but that's just a wild guess.

I'll still use "5-percenter" (loosely; no clue what the actual percentage is) to describe an elite set of programmers, but that has more to do with attitude, bearing, and trajectory than present-time skill. For example, the guy who picks up SICP because he's topped out and bored at his Java job is probably only 1.2-1.3, which is not yet 95th-percentile, but he's a "5-percenter" because he has the attitude and has found the resources that will make 1.5 likely and 2.0 possible-- which wouldn't be the case if he stuck with his same-every-day enterprise Java job.
Honest question: Isn't this within the kind of behavior that AppStore reviews are supposed to prevent, at least if there isn't an app specific functional explanation for it? Does Apple have a list of what kind of behavior like this is tolerated or does word just get out about what they don't reject?
So I download an IM app that automatically finds your friends based on your phone directory. I launch it and scrolling through my friend's list I see my mom. Some contacts later, I see the real name of the hooker. Both my mom and the real hooker are on this IM platform...just a click away from chatting with me under the same identity. This can be more than creepy, fortunately this is a made up example ;)

I thought about this with whatsapp. This is scary because while we are used to having multiple emails for different parts of our lives, juggling multiple phone numbers is still a chore despite services like google voice.
There is a difference between "we" and "you". Yes, I am not 5 mins away during the day, however my wife and kids are. In 4 years, we've never had to pay for a babysitter, we are very close with our families and see parents and nephews weekly. That would change if we moved further away for a shorter commute.

We could move close to SF, save maybe an hour or so commute each way, pay more for a smaller house, and then my kids no longer see their cousins and grandparents every weekend and we no longer get last minute babysitters.

Trust me, I analyzed my situation before and during this commute. It is very different from the outside looking in than when you are in the middle of it. And a few comments on a site like HN is missing a whole lot of context about a multi-faceted issue.
This sort of behaviour is almost certainly illegal in the European Union. You may not store personal information unless you have a clear and legitimate reason to store it. If you affected by this, you should contact your local data protection office.
yes you are right! (sorry)
The rule above is not from the App Store guidelines, but from the SDK license. I.e. even if you use alternative app store without restrictions (Cydia), but build a browser with Apple iOS SDK - it's still illegal, and that's why major browsers like Firefox wouldn't do it.
Haha, thanks Karthik
Small stylistic comment: the busy background on quotes makes the text very difficult to read!
So does whatsapp
Using lots of memory is not necessarily wasteful. Actually, NOT using memory that would otherwise sit there full of zeros is almost always a waste.
well i've been using dolphin hd
I should have qualified my statement by mentioning that the Chrome app process runs a couple of background services - this causes it to be killed for low memory after normal background processes (the actual behaviour is a little more complex than that, but that's the gist of it), which could potentially impact the performance of multitasking. The proper thing to do is to run background services in a separate process from the UI or whatever uses the most memory so that the latter can be evicted more quickly.

I stand by my assertion that optimising for memory isn't a priority at Google. An Android engineer poignantly put it (sorry, can't remember who) when they bragged on G+ that Android 4.0.3 was the first time since Gingerbread that they'd run the OS on a <1G RAM device (namely Nexus S). Then again, as an actual embedded engineer (none of this gigs of RAM crap!), all I care about is memory usage...
My ASUS Slider is supposed to be getting the update quite soon along with the Transformer. Last I read a couple weeks ago it was in final checks at Google.
Any factual statistics for that?
People who like AdBlock sure do.
What might media sales be? Another $20 billion? Let's say $40 billion. That's $70 billion + $16 billion = $85 billion, or less than Apple by itself. That puts the entire music + movie industry somewhere around the same revenue as Kroger (the grocery store): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroger. Does Kroger have anywhere near the political clout of the music+movie industry?
Simplee.com is paying for people's bills (& more)
The amount of time i used to waste deciding what to do next completely out-weighted the benefit it provided. Your approach is very similar to mine, love it.
Web Hosting Evolution to the Cloud
> USB Web Debugging

That will be great. Even better if iOS gains something similar--it's maddening to not have a real debugger.
Discuss with her and agree on / set a specific goal and then guide her towards that.

As of a year or three ago, there was a lot of consensus around Python being a good choice in a scenario like this.

Help her to quickly accomplish concrete things. Let those rewards provide further motivation.

Drop a few bucks on good resources, if and as needed (books, IDE, etc.). Enable her to quickly find and absorb high signal/noise ratio information -- as opposed to going on frustrating treasure hunts for it.
If I'm using Socket.IO via an Obj-C lib, is there a point to taking a look at this? Should the Socket.IO community look at integrating this as the engine behind the client on Obj-C, or is there little/no benefit?
I do. Deafault browser is slow, the Aurora builds for Firefox have been the fastest option I've found so far on my GNEX.
But if Chrome beta is faster I'll use it. On mobile it's all about speed for me!

O.
If you visit the web store it says it isn't supported by this operating system.
What else are you going to use the RAM for? Hell, you have 45MB wasted right there!

If the OS refuses to kill the app under memory pressure then you have a point. Until someone demonstrates this, you're being a bit more than disingenuous.
Duly noted—what made you hate it?
Apple Are the Kings of Minimum Viable Product
Well, that's what memory is made for right? You could also not run any apps and enjoy 300MB of unused memory, but that wouldn't be very useful. Android has a very nice system in place that manages its memory.
Samsung unveils new remote with Siri-like voice controls and touch support
Simpler Apple Apps Shouldn’t be Simple-minded
The importance of the Chef DSL is abstracting away common system interactions and most importantly, all the edge cases that come up. Whatever you are automating, you're going to be installing packages, starting services, and creating configuration files. Everyone should not need to re-invent that wheel, nor suffer finding the same Ruby GC bug when running a certain IO method.

By design, Chef fully expects you to leverage Ruby if you are operating in an environment of any complexity. Herein it differs from some other configuration management tools which strive to model everything you would want to manage. We (I am a Chef developer) often refer to our resources as primitives, the building blocks with which you code your infrastructure.
Which apps do that? Do you have a list? Can anything be done about the data after-the-fact?
Quora best handles this situation. There can be a lot of benefit for the user to have the contact lust on the server, but it needs to be (1) transparent, (2) obvious, and (3) come with a delete button.
How to Create a Stylish Image Content Slider in Pure CSS3 [Tutorial]
In this tutorial we will create a CSS3 only image slider. The CSS3 features that we'll be using in this tutorial are in tests in the most recent browsers.
Interesting. The chromium blog post linked above mentions upstreaming a bunch of new components, so maybe it will be like the Chrome/Chromium situation? Here's hoping...

http://blog.chromium.org/2012/02/deeper-look-at-chrome-for-a...
The first few levels make sense, but beyond that unless the author is the highest level described here i have to ask if this is a prediction or a description of their experiences?
My initial perception is that all the Chrome features are great, primarily the data syncing with my desktop browsers. But the rendering is flawed; it doesn't render like the standard Android browser, doesn't render like desktop Chrome, and doesn't seem to even render consistent to itself.

For example, a few screenshots comparing the standard Browser view of this comment page and the way Chrome beta views it:

Browser: http://db.tt/kv3xP1Mk

Browser: http://db.tt/s7S6lCBN

Chrome beta: http://db.tt/p9YXoWJU
The Minimalist Guide to Database Administration
Why not make SE a family-friendly company instead of just leaving? I'm guessing at this stage he has already lost control and can't influence that decision?
I don't accept that there's one track.

I know scientific programmers who still use FORTRAN and write incredibly fast programs in a domain that's much harder to get things correct than you think.

On one level these people are "geniuses" but many of them would be completely lost if it came to object-oriented programming or relational databases.

As for the computer scientist, he's an odd animal.

I remember a time when I got a program that did something almost magical from a guy who's a household name in machine learning and CS instruction. It turned out this program crashed before getting into main()! On close inspection the problem was that he was allocating a huge array statically that he never used! This worked OK on the 64-bit monster he was using, but would kill any 32 bit machine.

My experience is that code written by computer scientists is very rarely suitable for commercial use because computer scientists usually aren't professional programmers. They get rewarded for writing papers instead of writing programs, so a succesful endpoint for them is producing some artifacts that would demonstrate how the program would have worked if it really worked.
InPulse & Wimm, the tale of two smartwatches
I tried both, $2.99 and $4.99 and both prices seemed to work, although the former had more sales. That said, I still had people complaining that paying 2.99 for this app was waaaaay too much. Maybe I should've done what Starbucks does - call it a special seasonal drink and charge $5 a pop?
The app store rules talk about "built-in Webkit". Judging from the size, there's a good chance Chrome for Android bundles its own WebKit version.

It's similar in size to Firefox, which obviously has to bundle its own Gecko rendering engine.
From the Wikipedia entry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_%28social_network%29]:

"Contacts are suggested from among persons in a user's electronic address book, as well as people with whom the user is communicating by email."

It's been there for over a year. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Path_%28social_net...
I think in an effort to categorize himself, the OP has created layers of knowledge that only apply to him.

Personally, my expertise slides up and down all of these types, proving you can't really nail this one down.

There are going to be those who write to automate, write for design sake, write for scale, etc. Even saying that is a bit of a misnomer because there are so many facits that incorporate one or many of those functions.
I'm unsure what you mean by "Socket.IO via an Obj-C lib". Could you send a link? It looks like Socket.IO is node (which I don't believe you can use in iOS).
A couple tricks that are specific to MRI and probably not useful for everyday programming:

1. Get the bytecode for some code:

irb(main):001:0> x = RubyVM::InstructionSequence.new '1 + 1'
=> <RubyVM::InstructionSequence:<compiled>@<compiled>>
irb(main):002:0> puts x.disasm
== disasm: <RubyVM::InstructionSequence:<compiled>@<compiled>>==========
0000 trace 1 ( 1)
0002 putobject 1
0004 putobject 1
0006 opt_plus <ic:1>
0008 leave
=> nil
irb(main):003:0>

2. Output parser states and debugging information:

$ ruby -y -e'1 + 1'

(The output is long so I haven't pasted it. :-) )
Yeah, would love to see a write up on that. I think I heard you on Mixergy a few days ago too, so nice work there.
This is common Google strategy. They are trying to build the future and pre-ICS devices are not the future. So they get shafted. Google may make unhappy customers this way, but they can move a lot faster than companies like Microsoft, who support everything back two decades or so sometimes.
Apple doesn't prompt the user to ask for permission when the APIs are used (like what happens with location), so this is the desired behavior. It's very simple:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Addre...
Instructions on how to use web debugging via USB: http://code.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/debugging.html

You can then access http://localhost:9222/ which shows a list of all pages currently open on your device, which link to a page on http://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/ for example http://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/static/16.0.912.... which in turn connects to a websocket on localhost like ws://localhost:9222/devtools/page/2 to debug your mobile browser!
GoogleVentures loans technology talent to companies in its portfolio
I wonder how chrome does speed wise when compared to opera mini. I'm currently using opera mini as its one of the fastest browsers for my phone; G1 running the superE rom.
Chrome (finally) brings modern Web standards to Android
Last surviving veteran of First World War dies aged 110
If so, isn't it also extortion when people say "If Hollywood doesn't release their content the way I want them to (cheaper and without DRM), I'm going to continue to pirate it"?
Yes that's the offical line. There are numerous examples of bad behaviour going live though.
Roll your own joystick driver using Node.js
I don't think it's true, to be honest. "Not quite there" is a face-saving way of saying "I really like this". I've never used ICS, but Gingerbread was "not quite there". Windows Phone 7 was "not quite there". As of WP7.5, it's there. The only (only) thing missing is the huge app catalog, and Mango is ahead of the competition on many fronts.

With a self proclaimed iOS lover, "not quite there" is code for "I like this but I can't like it more than my own choice". It's a defensive maneuver.
> However, this can be avoided by using a semicolon and another statement:

Just a semicolon is sufficient, actually.

Also, importantly, it's not a statement, it's an expression (which is why you see the return value of your read to begin with).
In theory, all iOS apps are supposed to be reviewed by Apple and not allowed if they do Bad Things™. Walled garden and all that.

In theory.
This would be cool. We've been experimenting with uses for WebSockets. One of them is mocking push notifications in the simulator. The other is basically implementing a pusher-like service with a pub-sub model.
I'd say it's a very ugly practice, to use development tools license to ban competition. It's like saying buying this chisel you are bound to only carve logos of the chisel making company.
I've been running a build of CyanogenMod 9 on my Galaxy Tab 10, and I'm absolutely loving it. I really liked the tablet with honeycomb, but ICS has made it literally 10 times better and faster.
It's currently available in: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil

Sundar, SVP of Chrome just said "We are working hard to bring this to more countries and should greatly expand within the next three months."
The blog post doesn't go into it, but I'm curious to know what the long-term implications of this release are for the built-in android browser and the android SDK's WebView and WebChromeClient.

If this is indeed the first step towards decoupling the browser from the Android platform itself, I would expect to see continuing development of those aspects of the SDK to dwindle and die completely, leaving them in the dust feature-wise when compared to native apps, and putting the people who work on web-wrapper-apps at an even more serious disadvantage.
He means communicating with a Socket.IO server from Obj-C (most probably also using web sockets but speaking the Socket.IO protocol).
This was news to me, so I went ahead and submitted a tip to both CNN and Drudge. I hope they pick it up.
I don't believe so, for both your statements :)

First off, this took so long because Chrome was built using a "normal" devel framework (gcc, make, etc) with a few added tools (repo, gyp). The UX for Chrome is provided via OS-specific graphical APIs, like X.org, Cocoa, and Win32.

Android uses a Java framework, which in turn contains the code that manages all rendering and UX, so not only did Chrome UX needed to be ported to Android's graphical API, but the entire build environment needed to be JDK compatible.

I agree the Android browser is laughable compared to Chrome, and Chrome on Android is the future, but there were so many developmental problems that needed to be solved first before one could stick to the other.

Regarding your ChromeOS comment, this has nothing to do with that as ChromeOS is designed to solve an entirely different problem. Many power-users (developers, technology bloggers, etc) seem to have a hate-on for ChromeOS because they're afraid it'll kill their venerable laptop. That will never happen. :)

ChromeOS is designed to kill those netbooks and laptops where common-users (my wife, for example) only use them for browsing gmail, facebook, and a few forums. 95% of what these users do are web based, barring a few native apps, of which NaCL and other HTML5 technologies are aiming to solve.
Pitchfork Media, 1995 – present
Ubuntu's target market has a very different interpretation of "a bunch of footwork" than yours.
Chrome For Android: The Browser For The 1%
Perfect opportunity to join in a new mailing list, that won't die out.
Photographer Appeals Ruling Saying It's Not Infringement for Similar Photos
Messification: Why Games Should Be Designed to Be Games First
The license doesn't allow a different browser on iOS unless it uses Apple's Webkit anyway. Opera Mini was a technical exception. Every other browser is Safari, just with a different chrome.
Location: Permission is asked for

Browser History: There is no way to communicate directly with what Mobile Safari stores.

Other installed apps list: Apps are sandboxed so it is impossible to know what else is installed. If you've developed one of the other apps you can share the same App ID which gives you access to the same storage space so you could create a flag to indicate one of your apps has been installed. Some apps respond to certain protocols so you can ask iOS if a given protocol will be handled and if it returns yes then you know the app is installed. Again because they are sandboxed you really can't do anything harmful and responding to the protocol only allows the other app to receive information, not expose it.

Emails: No, the only way you can do anything with email is prompt the user to compose an email.

Notes: Same as Mobile Safari.

Pics: You can display a popup to the user that asks them to select an image from their camera roll/iPhoto and if they select a photo you then get a reference to an object that represents the photo. You can't just search their camera roll.

EDIT: rbritton points out that with the AssetLibrary framework you can actually search through all pics/videos and for some reason it gives a location access prompt when you do. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3563336

Vids: Same as pics.

Music List: You can get a list of every song in the users library without asking for permission:

Podcast list: Same as music list.

iTunes Username: To my knowledge there is no way to access this but I've never been asked to so I really haven't spent time looking. In theory because you can access the Address Book you could make a best guess at which contact is the user and then assume one of their emails is their iTunes username.
I'm typing this on my phone as I sit in Geometry.

Math is presented as several pointless tasks that need to be memorized, in order for the test in a week. For example, every exam tests if we "know" the theorums from the tested sections. An example of a theorem we were tested on is, "Each diagonal of a rhombus bisects two angles of a rhombus". Students can see that that statement is true, but students don't know why (including me).

As a result, we don't see any applications of it besides the test, the final, and future math classes.

I haven't seen any software that doesn't just make what teachers already do faster. Everything I've seen for math is just incremental -- things like putting a scantron online, or letting me find out what my homework is online. At this point, technology isn't helping me understand math better.
That's a very good question indeed, especially since some seem to suggest that Google will eventually replace the stock browser with Chrome, and Chrome is proprietary.
I'm running the same ROM on a NS4G also for about a month. It feels like a new phone and has been awesome in every way.
Android apps must explicitly request a READ_CONTACTS permission. But even there, no one actually reads those permissions lists, and apps routinely ask for far more than they need. User authorization is a very weak security mechanism in the consumer space.
It insta-crashed for me too on my Samsung Fascinate with CM9. I cleared the app's data, its cache, uninstalled it and reinstalled it. It works like a dream now.
Buyout Dwolla?
It doesn't support WebGL right now.
Some more answers to questions like this at http://code.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/faq.html
Skip the fancy email templates
I've never seen any chart or graph where Firefox Mobile even shows up. Usually when something has <1% marketshare it gets categorized as statistically insignificant or grouped in "other".

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201101-...

http://www.netmarketshare.com/mobile-market-share
> It's misleading to ignore both possibilities and pretend that only one will ever happen.

Then why did you ignore the third possibility?

> Only if you misread my post.

No, that's pretty much the definition of a false dichotomy. You only provided two scenarios when there exist more.

> That's not the type of corporation I was talking about in my post.

Then what did you mean by:

> Imagine you're a ruthless corporation and you don't care at all about the open source community.