skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Motorola is turning Android into a desktop OS with Webtop 3.0
A Web Services Company Friendly to Your Pockets: A Myth or Truth?
>Whether enforced compile-time strong type checking is a benefit seems to depend on the programmer.

And, due to the lisp's nature, you can have static type checking as a library, eg. there's some work on it for clojure https://github.com/frenchy64/typed-clojure, and AFAIK it's based on work already done by Typed Racked/Scheme.

Also I believe that because clojure is a lisp, has very few special forms, is immutable, has nice ns/var semantics and overall focuses on simplicity - you could build quality code analysis tools with relative ease, something that will do search on code for common error paterns, maybe even do verification outside type system with custom DSL. It's something that I would like to explore in few months after I finish my current project.
If you're in London, drop me a line - greg at memrise dot com.

And even if you're not, take heart - some of the best people I know have been in this situation at one time or another.
Instead of writing strong type checking code. I prefer to break function into pieces. Since Lisp has good trace function, you can easily see how functions composite with others during running time. For example, see my post: http://dryman.github.com/blog/2012/03/31/persistent-red-blac...
This is exactly what I've started thinking about doing. I am working at a great place but I'm getting tired of doing boring work for boring clients. I really don't care about how much money I make at my current place because it is making my hobby, my biggest interest and my talent - into something different.. it is now in a new, ugly shape. It has gone from something I could not resist doing, to something I don't even want to think about.

For me, it's draining more energy than it gives. Programming should be fun. I hope your journey goes well. Hopefully I will be on the same track in a couple of months. First I have to save enough cash to feel secure. Happy hunting.
jeromy@seedlauncher.com I look forward to hearing from you. :)
IOS: Share Your Location with Maps
I don't. Why pass these laws in the first place? I don't like junk in my legal system.
I'm also very curious how it turns out. One thing about Kickstarter that gets on my nerves is the fact that only American companies can have projects there. The crowdfunding market will be splintered into a myriad me-too businesses because of this.
I guess we'll be able to write our own malware to take over other peoples' ships, then? Pretty awesome, just call me Locutus :)
IOS generating $5.41m per day, vs. $679,000 on android. (8x More)
Where are you located? What are your exact skills? I might be able to help you out (email is in the profile).
How about a game that simulates people not building their own Linux distros, and instead contributing their efforts to improving the thousands that we already have?
Show HN: Studyers - create and share lesson notes
I believe their success lies more in the social aspects of the app. Looking at pictures from people you follow has less friction than on Twitter or Facebook. Also, the domain-specific nature of the network has its own appeal.
Although some of the implications require experience to understand, I'd say it already is in "relatively plain English", you simply haven't been exposed to the vocabulary and concepts necessary. Trying to explain in any detail would basically be reproducing Wikipedia, so here are some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_counter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JMP_(x86_instruction)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal#Computer_science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrupt

And no, don't expect Python anytime soon. Expect a C compiler, FORTH, possibly some sort of Pascal, but a highly dynamic language is unlikely. The system is too resource-constrained to make it practical. A static language that looks kind of like Python isn't out of the question, but it won't do a lot of the things you expect from Python, Ruby, PHP, or Perl.
It's an open source project: https://github.com/studyers/Studyers
I wouldn't use it equity is valuable
Good question. To run python on this CPU, someone (you?) needs to port Cpython to it. A CPU runs assembly language, and it's not hard for a hacker to port C to a new CPU, because C is small. In addition, implementing C is the sort of thing that hackers like to do. So you can count on C running on any given CPU, virtual or real.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPython
Safely Goes Up Against Kyte (YCW12) to Offer Mobile Safety Controls for Kids
> The LAST time I checked, this was still America.

As a foreigner, when I read this, I think "so why are you surprised?"

Nationalism really irks me.
Rich Hickey on Datomic: Datalog, Databases, Persistent Data Structures
My understanding of the Hawthorne effect is that it is a temporary increase in performance due to the subject's awareness of being studied. I stopped using RunKeeper over a year ago but my default walking speed has remained much higher than it was when I started measuring it.
We actually are doing that. We're in the process of looking at PG's list of ambitious startups/Y Combinators list of ideas for startups. Even if they don't get back to us over the next few days we're going to mull these over then execute.
It's good to see Notch working on the Little Coder problem, even if that's not his direct intention. :)
"real" python seems unlikely, given that the standard executable is well over 64KB in size.

A variant like cython that compiles to this assembly? maybe...
Just in case you haven't already read the lesswrong essay on optimization by proxy:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_...
Don't think of it as an app for you personally to share your photos. It's a photo-based social network that just stopped being exclusively iOS.
The problem is, that this only works because it's so completely different from all the other ads and because of that reason escapes some of the banner blindness.

We've had similar results when we modified our logo and added mistakes. For example a rectangle Google AdSense Banner with a mirrored version of our Logo or just some crazy saturation affect applied on top of it actually got excellent CTRs. Even though it was kind of unnerving to have all my friends tell me about the mistakes that were in our ads...
Actually advertisers have known this since a long time. Ugly wins more attention. More attention = higher conversion.

The first job of ads is winning attention. You have to fight against all the clutter and stand out. You can do so by a variety of tactics. Use human faces. Use cute looking models. Use ugly fonts or clipart. Use mouse pointers. Use fluorescent colors. Use dashed coupon type borders.

You need to know however that while your conversion rates will increase, the number of complaints you receive will increase too.
The second example fits POF's aesthic more, he should do all ads like that, along with some simple GIFs. Very cool!
Now here's an interesting bit:

"Question: can we trade the programs we create? How will you stop malicious viruses etc?"

"yes. And I won't stop viruses, the players will have to do that themselves."

~ https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/187474819980328962
Curiosity. The first one is obvious as to what it is, a racing game, with the second one you can't tell what it is, so people clik thru to find out.

Improve your CTR with obfuscation. Probably won't help with coversions though.
EDIT: "our" startup

We've always got room at the lodge:
http://gdkr.ma/LodgingSociety

Seriously, we're always welcoming hackers to come hang with us in NY.

We put you up, give you plenty of your own time to work on what you want, and ask for a part time contribution to our startup.

Hit me up if that interests you,

Adrian
Good lesson on the value of in-market testing. That said, would love to see some theory and analysis about why the MS Paint ad outperformed the standard ad. My hunch is that the first ad -- while it obviously looks a lot more professional -- looks like every other banner ad on the internet. It reeks of ad-ness, and it may set off some psychological barrier to receptivity amongst viewers precisely because their brains have been trained to filter out ads. (Banner blindness, as one of the other posters has pointed out).

Conversely, the MS Paint ad is, if nothing else, novel. It looks pretty different from most display ads out there. It catches the brain's attention, rather than being caught in the brain's passive ad-filtering heuristics. This may be, if nothing else, a story about attention and awareness.
NoSQL databases are susecptible to injection attacks.
The actual headline: Lumia 900: Redefining the smartphone?

Your headline: Lumia 900: Proof that competing directly against the iPhone is a bad idea?

Also, I'll reiterate that Extreme Tech has worse journalism than Gizmodo.
You aren't wrong if you are looking at the server's resource consumption. However, the need to buffer the errors is so that we can minimize network overhead, from the client's perspective. It's to reduce the number of HTTP connections, even if it means the payload is larger - much like why CSS sprites are a good idea.
I recently learned about the INSERT SET syntax, and have started to use it across the board. Sooooo much more readable when column names and values are next to each other rather than separated.
</offtopic>
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A business, startup or not, is not a solution to a problem (that's called a product). It is a series of solutions to a series of problems. As some of these problems are caused by the aforementioned solutions, it's important to be able to spot problems, and select the problems to solve, to continue the series. When the series stops, the business stops, even if the solutions live on.

What you're saying here is that you want someone to believe you can maintain such a series of problems and solutions, _without_ the ability to spot or select problems.
The screenshots are so unrevealing that I think a demo is warranted or better still - a free beta. When did people start paying for beta access? 10 years ago people would complain about that - now they're grateful for the opportunity to do the QA.

Is this made by that guy from the linux action show who hates freedom? I saw the episode where they abuse poor old RMS and found it shocking.
The history and power of silly digital games
When I started I could just about make a website but hell, it was what I wanted to do.

I did 2 things. Firstly I went on the freelancer job boards and picked up some of the worst jobs going with the most hard to please clients. I think my average wage was like $3/hr for the first handful of projects. However.. soon enough I starting getting 10 star ratings which opened up better jobs. Also I started to get a portfolio from these jobs which gave me credibility. It was a miserable time but I wouldn't have to got to where I have any other way.

The second thing I did was found a framework which was semi-popular and just camped the forum. I learned everything I could about it. I read every thread. I only answered questions. If I had a question I would join IRC under an alias. I didn't want to look nooby.

I would take notes on frequent questions. I was soon known as someone who always had the right answer. I would then usually be the first to respond on the job board for the framework. I would link to my forum profile and reputation. Some of those jobs paid really well and there was very little competition to get them.

I currently make 36k a year from a job I picked up on the forum. The post for the job was titled 'Developer Required'. The message was 'Urgent, please PM name, portfolio and email address'. Turned out well.

Ultimately though to succeed you need to stick with what you are doing. You may find the job terrible but if it leads to a great portfolio piece at the end then you should be doing it. Its rarely about where you are now, its about where what you are currently doing will lead you.
The Encrypted Elephant in the Cloud Room
Reading all these wikipedia pages is going to kill at least an hour of productivity today :/
But likewise, if I remove all braces from Java I can't necessarily get them back with a single keypress.
http://arewemobileyet.com/
There are definitely a lot of issues to overcome when logging errors from a javascript client (as pointed out in the comments to this post). Regardless, the information you can get from it can be really helpful and you should be doing it.

One of the problems we find with js errors is that they don't contain a lot of information by themselves, especially when you're just trapping window.onerror() with minified source. We like to augment the client-side errors with server-side errors/activity as well. If your logging solution supports being able to track errors and activity by a session (username, ip address, etc) you will have a much better time tracking down what caused a specific js error. Putting all the pieces together gives a much better picture.

Try a logging solution that enables you to track more. I run loggr.net, so I am partial to that, but there are other good solutions out there like newrelic.com, loggly.com.
This may come off a bit cliche... but their is the alternate Blizzard Model (Yes, I know blizzard isn't the only one doing this)... Blizzard has tended towards the "It will release when it's done" model in the past.. and recently with Diablo 3 their model had been identical until the very end where they cut half (maybe less than half but it felt like it) of the game out of the final deliverable to decide when they were going to deliver (They cut the pvp content though they intend to add it back later).

In this way I think blizzard provides a good counter example for A) Setting deadlines at the beginning and B) Not shipping whatever is done.
Search Engine Optimisation from uk
Thanks for mentioning this. I was getting real confused about why someone would create a CPU/ASM for their game. Thought he'd then have to build the new game on top of that CPU and notch is crazy but that seemed a bit much..
Long response from a redditor who launched a reasonably successful startup:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_w...
He could have donated for religious reasons. Prop. 8 was supported by the Catholic Church, the Mormons, orthodox Jews, and many evangelical churches.
You didn't say where you were located, but if you're in the Annapolis / Baltimore area, shoot me an email. My info is in my profile.

I assume you have some sort of internet since you're posting this. If hosting costs are an obstacle, shoot me an email and I can cut you off a piece of a Linode or something.

As for 'proving you can code', get a free Github repository and start filling it up. Find a project, any project, in any language, and build it. Projects don't have to be amazingly complicated or fit a broad needs. One of my first 'open source' projects was a library that would reliably fetch a favicon from a website.

No, it hasn't made me famous, and no, it hasn't made me rich, but it has helped a few people based on the messages I've gotten through Github. I have had offers from work based on it (not full time jobs, but implementation / freelance stuff), and if anybody questions whether or not I can write a line of code, I can point them at that.

After you write one library / module / program / app / whatever, write another one. The idea being that you'll establish a 'body of work'.

We recently tried to recruit another HNer to fill in on some project work recently and, when my project manager was asking how qualified he was, I just pointed him to his github profile. Not only has he released a lot of code, but he's worked on a lot of the libraries that we're using in our code as well.

Don't worry about whether or not the code you release is 'production ready', or if it's too small, or if you think it's only of limited utility. My favicon parser is under 100 lines of code. Backbone.js is only ~700 lines of code. Code doesn't need to be huge to make an impact. Hell, code doesn't even have to be GOOD to make an impact, but that's a different story.
> [...] computer programs [...] which find a computer password by which an information system can be accessed, would constitute criminal offences.

So, possessing 'net use' and 'ssh' now criminal offense in EU?
Oh wait, so do all password recovering tools! One better never forget passwords or risk be prosecuted.
RIM launches software to accommodate Apple users
Are full details of the "draft law" visible to the public?

From the article:

The proposal also targets tools used to commit
offences: the production or sale of devices such as
computer programs designed for cyber-attacks, or which
find a computer password by which an information system
can be accessed, would constitute criminal offences.

Many tools can be used to "find a computer password by which an information system can be accessed". For example a browser's view source function could expose passwords in a (really insecure) site.

Depending on how the law is worded, tools like curl, wget (or even telnet) could be defined as hacking tools.
I really don't like that article. I mean 766 words, just to say "The Lumia is cheaper than the iPhone, thus it targets a different market". Go straight to the point. If that amounts to a low word count, than maybe that's not worth a whole article to begin with.

On the other hand, I find it amusing picturing Nokia trying to conquer the "low-end" market. Not so long ago, it was still making the high-end phones, with LG and Samsung (of all companies!) trying to attack lower ranges...
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شفرات المزرعة السعيدة 2012
شفرات المزرعة السعيدة 2012
Assuming you are capable(and willing) of spinning a wrench spend a couple of days somewhere with free wifi learn some CNC programming and find a machine shop in need. The smaller the shop the less qualifications matter and the more can you do the job matters. Smaller shops have a harder time hiring so they are often willing to train people who show promise.
Just for fun, I wrote a disassembler for his instruction set.
https://gist.github.com/2300590

I previously wrote some assembler routines for x86, which is very complex, working with Notch's design is a breeze and actually enjoyable.

Does he somewhere mention if the code is loaded into the RAM? This would make self-modifiable code possible.
Looks like it's fake though. The thread is a reminder of the awful S/N ratio on Reddit.
Shareholders file suit against Groupon over shady accounting
Have you ever worked on a 1M line code base? Or with dozens (or hundreds!) of developers.

Once the team gets big, or the code gets so big you can't hold it all in your head, any machine-enforced QC can have a major impact.

(I'm working on a very large Haskell code base now -- the parts that tend to cause trouble are the dynamically typed bits -- they can just go wrong in so many unanticipated ways, and the complexity means its almost unavoidable that devs miss things).

I'm increasingly convinced that to wrangle massive code bases, you need both heavy abstraction abilities (higher order functions, DSLs, algebraic data types, polymorphism), and very strong typing, to keep the complexity under control
> Explicit access to PC as a register, makes "computed goto" trivial and very natural.

Am I right in thinking ARM uses this model? I haven't worked on them since ARM2, but I have a hazy recollection...
Where does it say only American companies can have projects? I'm from the UK and my friends successfully raised £1000 to fund their project, although it is true the money you receive is only in US Dollars but this standardised measurement is probably more usefl since the US is were a prevalent majority of backers will come from, and they will be more likely to spend money if they know exactly how much it costs them.
> No instructions for bit-manipulation.

What? Plenty of opcodes for that. SHL, SHR, AND, BOR, XOR are all bitwise operators.

Unless you mean bitset and bitclear macros, but no self respecting embedded programmer uses those. I've disagreed with almost everything else Notch has done, but from a simple pedagogical standpoint, he's doing the right thing by leaving those out.
Ugh. Googling Little Coder problem matches "small code problems" and "little codec problems" before something remotely related to what I wanted. There's a single relevant result in the first page.

The verbatim search returns a very good match in #1 and about 80% of the results seem appropriate. It seems the recent synonyms fixes are not nearly enough.

And, for the interested: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2009-12-28-the-little-cod...
Is it just me or did anyone else find the first ad terrible and the second one quite good? I think I have been in the game too long.

One of my favorite ads of all time was the stick drawn fat girl with the secret to losing weight. I am sure the person behind that ad has a serious bank account.
CSS Hexagon Tutorial
>>I can program
Ok, what can you program? Which languages or platforms do you know?

Irrespective of where you live I may be able to offload some paid work your way, that would then be part of your portfolio.
Banning software, seriously?

I get that most of them obviously have a very limited competency in regards to technology in general (seatbelts?), but they do have advisors who should know better. What is next on the agenda? Banning BitTorrent/p2p clients, media players, cd/dvd ripping software, video/audio capture software to fight piracy?
opensuse tumbleweed (install 12.1 and then follow instructions at http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed).

not as stable as a standard release though, in my experience (which was a while ago - stability is an important aim for the project, so they may have got better).
Have you viewed them on a new iPad? Much sharper than PNG/GIF. Even on "standard" res tablets, if an image-based UI element is scaled in any capacity, the smoothing renders it as blurry as an antialiased font or SVG.
I do wish there was a good browser I could keep open for weeks and not have to worry about how much memory its using at the end of it. Even on Chrome, using it without closing it for a few days runs me into a lot of memory used. I know a bit of this is used for keeping the history so you can go back or undo closed tabs, but I wish there was a way to make it forget that without closing it (maybe there is?)
Right there in the eligibility requirements for creating projects:

"Be a permanent US resident and at least 18 years of age with a Social Security Number (or EIN), a US bank account, US address, US state-issued ID (driver’s license), and major US credit or debit card."

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#A...

It seems to be tied to Amazon Payments. I didn't know this myself until recently when the guys making the documentary told me (they had to jump through some hoops because they're German).
Switching from Git - is it so hard?
I agree with his suggestion that most code manipulating byte order is incorrect or unneeded. Within your application's logic, everything should already be uniform.

I agree slightly less with "computer's byte order doesn't matter", differentiated from peripheral and data stream byte order... that's the same friggin thing. It matters that you treat your inputs and outputs correctly, and how you do that depends on your computer's byte order, so they computer's byte order does matter. Just not so much during the data processing stage.

But mostly, I'm just saddened that every post about C now has a "only people who do [X thing that requires C] do that, and you're probably not one of them, so you should do that!" Maybe there's just a huge disconnect between people-who-blog and people-who-write-low-level-code, but most of the software guys I know have worked professionally on microcontrollers, DSPs, operating systems, or compilers within the last 5 years, and I'm working on a compiler for a DSP right now (and I expect byte-order to matter).