skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very interesting. Are you sure? I get following with my squeeze, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't configured anything.

zokier@galleria:~$ uname -a
Linux galleria 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Thu Nov 3 04:23:54 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux
zokier@galleria:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.3 (squeeze)
Release: 6.0.3
Codename: squeeze
zokier@galleria:~$ which sh
/bin/sh
zokier@galleria:~$ ls -l /bin/sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Jan 1 11:38 /bin/sh -> dash
zokier@galleria:~$ debconf-show dash
debconf: DbDriver "passwords" warning: could not open /var/cache/debconf/passwords.dat: Permission denied
* dash/sh: true
zokier@galleria:~$
Here's the disassembly for objc_msgSend on ARMv6, iOS4.2.1 (sorry no ARMv7 devices on my desk at the moment). I'll try to annotate it:

0x32d98f0c <objc_msgSend+0>:	teq	r0, #0	; 0x0
0x32d98f10 <objc_msgSend+4>:	moveq	r1, #0	; 0x0
0x32d98f14 <objc_msgSend+8>:	bxeq	lr

Tests if r0 (the receiver) is nil, and if so, sets r1 selector to 0x0 and returns. I guess there's no nil handler on ARM. Simple function return values are in registers r0-r3, so I guess r1 is set to 0 in case the caller is expecting a long long.

If receiver is non-nil:

0x32d98f18 <objc_msgSend+12>:	push	{r3, r4, r5, r6}
0x32d98f1c <objc_msgSend+16>:	ldr	r4, [r0]

^ this loads the class pointer (isa) into r4

This looks similar to the bit twiddling x86 cache lookup in the class; it's somewhat harder to read than the x86 due to ARM's bit packing shortcuts[1]:

0x32d98f20 <objc_msgSend+20>:	ldr	r5, [r4, #8]
0x32d98f24 <objc_msgSend+24>:	ldr	r6, [r5]
0x32d98f28 <objc_msgSend+28>:	add	r3, r5, #8	; 0x8
0x32d98f2c <objc_msgSend+32>:	and	r5, r6, r1, lsr #2
0x32d98f30 <objc_msgSend+36>:	ldr	r4, [r3, r5, lsl #2]

Check if the method is NULL, and if so, jump to the cache miss at the end:

0x32d98f34 <objc_msgSend+40>:	teq	r4, #0	; 0x0
0x32d98f38 <objc_msgSend+44>:	add	r5, r5, #1	; 0x1
0x32d98f3c <objc_msgSend+48>:	beq	0x32d98f60 <objc_msgSend+84>

This would appear to be the part checking if this is the cache entry we're looking for:

0x32d98f40 <objc_msgSend+52>:	ldr	r12, [r4]
0x32d98f44 <objc_msgSend+56>:	teq	r1, r12
0x32d98f48 <objc_msgSend+60>:	and	r5, r5, r6

If it isn't, loop:

0x32d98f4c <objc_msgSend+64>:	bne	0x32d98f30 <objc_msgSend+36>

If it is, restore the registers and do an indirect jump into the method we found (I'm not sure what the teq r4,r4 is for):

0x32d98f50 <objc_msgSend+68>:	ldr	r12, [r4, #8]
0x32d98f54 <objc_msgSend+72>:	teq	r4, r4
0x32d98f58 <objc_msgSend+76>:	pop	{r3, r4, r5, r6}
0x32d98f5c <objc_msgSend+80>:	bx	r12

Tail call into the slow version with full lookup (after restoring the clobbered registers and the stack pointer):

0x32d98f60 <objc_msgSend+84>:	pop	{r3, r4, r5, r6}
0x32d98f64 <objc_msgSend+88>:	b	0x32d98f68 <objc_msgSend_uncached>

[1] A lazy excuse of course. I just haven't read or written anywhere near as much ARM assembly as x86.
I can build a Hello World app on Android in under 2 seconds. It takes another 2-3 seconds for my phone to compile, install and run the package locally.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui is really, really slick.

I would love to see a race. I very much doubt WP7 could win but I'll be very impressed if it does. Anybody have the appropriate collection of devices and the time to film a demo? :)
Disney’s New Facebook Game Has Players Poking Through Nature
I'm quite surprised TechCrunch didn't mention Exec's similarity to TaskRabbit.
> What on Earth do traffic numbers have to do with whether a site is infringing copyrights on not?

That was in response to "YouTube has now and has had far more infringing content than Megaupload ever did."

I believe billpatrianakos is arguing that what matters is the proportion of infringing files. YouTube could have more infringing content than MegaUpload with a much lower proportion of infringing content because they have "Google levels of traffic".
Assuming it makes enough money... why not just hire someone else to maintain it? As long as you're very careful about your documentation, even a pile of hacks like that could be interesting to work on.
Like I said, its a book about dogma and cherry-picked studies. The dogma and studies were wrong. So if you want books about broken dogma and studies, read Code Complete.
Mangled Horses, Maimed Jockeys: Death and disarray at America's racetracks
Update HTC Droid Incredible 2 With Cyanogen Mod 9 ICS 4.0.3 Firmware
Well, in my case I have Twitter (and Facebook) banned at work.

Fortunately I'm the only one wasting my time on Hacker News, otherwise it'd be blocked as well.

Edit: the recommendation "flee any company that filters your Internet" also applies to my case.
Anything from TJ Holowaychuk is beautiful and extremely well-documented.
Really, which? I have never come across a site using MegaUpload to host non-pirated content. Not one. single. time. I'd love to see some examples of this non-infringing usage. Surely you can find some via archive.org easily enough, if they're so common?
Or at least disentangle phone financing from data & voice.

Having financing and pipe compete independently would allow consumers to get a better idea of the (now implicit) financing rate they pay to have their phone subsidised while allowing more freedom for a financed phone, e.g. switching carriers without worrying about cancellation fees.
Thank you for thinking long term.
Lovely True Scotsman, there.

But okay then. I'll just quit my job because you said that.
The Basics of 3D Lighting
Can you name every programming language?
Show HN: Famigo Sandbox v1.5 released
I've been cranking on this this latest version for some time now and am happy to finally be able to show it off.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.famigo.sandbox

Overview:
Famigo's Sandbox turns your android phone/tablet into a kid-friendly device.

Details:
This version is a major redesign and includes some great new features including an app wishlist (no more downloading apps before parent approval) and remote sandbox management so you can remove/add apps from your kid's sandbox from your browser.

There are a lot of new features in this update and we'd love to hear your feedback or if you have any trouble with the latest version. Thanks!

email: info@famigo.com
web: www.famigo.com
twitter: @shaundubs

-Shaun
Erm, why are we talking about price per MB ? The per-MB rate is so intangible (1 cent? that sounds cheap!), it's a recipe for disaster. Current mobile usage/caps/etc are all in terms of GB, and that's what usage pricing should be specified in terms of.
a struct ;-) ...
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/std/utility/pair/
A much better version:

(http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/228653.html)

(http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57404585-76/accordion-shap...)

(http://news.techeye.net/science/3d-solar-cells-could-increas...)
Yeah, I agree that discovering the scrolling nature of the iPhone's typeface list is not immediate for every user. Of course, that's a problem with most scrollable lists on iOS (and now Lion--cf. John Siracusa's comments on Hypercritical #27 about pawing at everything on the screen).

On the iPad, the list displays 4.5 lines, with the top of 'Meta' peeking up from the bottom, so that's a natural visual cue that the list continues. Perhaps there's room to fit in 3.5 (3.4?) lines on the iPhone app, but I would be concerned about making the list either too cramped or unbalanced next to the triad of buttons on the right. In any case, once one discovers that the list scrolls, it's hard to forget it, so perhaps it's fair to trade discoverability for a cleaner interface in the long run.

One additional minor flaw I noted on that list (iPhone and iPad alike): the 'Lyon' text looks like it's aligned too high. I suspect the descender on the 'y' is to blame, although I don't see the same problem with the item for Georgia, the only other font with a descender in its name. One-star review until it's fixed in 4.1.1! ;)

P.S. Glad to hear the appreciation for Minion--I was so happy the day I got my TeX installation configured to use it. I'll likely wait for the 4th generation to update my iPad 2, so Marco's got a year to hash out an agreement with Adobe to use it....
I hope COLOURlovers gets a rebrand. The company is doing interesting things, but that name is displeasing to my taste. Written Coulourlovers (as in the title, but incorrect according to their trademark) is much more pleasing to the eye. Even the corporation name, CHROMAom Inc has this nauseating letter casing. le sigh.
This makes a lot more sense to me. Obviously a smartphone makes for a pretty poor CoD controller - but that's because CoD wasn't designed to be played with a smartphone (or even a touchscreen at all) in the first place. Looking forward, I think there are a lot of interesting opportunities, especially as some of the emerging IP in the mobile space moves "backwards" onto consoles, PCs, etc. For example, I'm pretty sure I'd rather use my smartphone or iPad as a controller if I were going to play Angry Birds on my XBox.
Technology and the Growth Imperative
Genius is Not Enough - 5 Things I Learned From Paul Graham
Reminds me of this: https://www.google.com/search?q=solar+panel+tree

Which it appears now has been debunked.
Ok. I'd be happy to take that bet with you. What's the largest amount you'd be comfortable betting? I'll donate my winnings to Parters in Health.
Interactive Image Vamp up with jQuery, CSS3 and PHP
New iPad heat output only slightly higher than Android tablets
Even i didn't get the 'spoiler' suggestion at first. But i did get it after sometime. No idea how i got it.
Reasonable that a contest Microsoft is hosting to promote their own product is skewered towards their own product.

The thing is, most of the Smoked by Windows Phone challenges (at least those that they did at CES and MWC) are actually pretty everyday tasks like uploading a photo, posting something to social networks etc. Those actually do make some sense.

Though, they did screw up this one pretty badly. Instead of giving out a $1k prize they're now paying way, way more with all the bad PR...
Market Musings of March 16-23
I've been cranking on this this latest version for some time now and am happy to finally be able to show it off.

Overview:
Famigo's Sandbox turns your android phone/tablet into a kid-friendly device.

Details:
This version is a major redesign and includes some great new features including an app wishlist (no more downloading apps before parent approval) and remote sandbox management so you can remove/add apps from your kid's sandbox from your browser.

There are a lot of new features in this update and we'd love to hear your feedback or if you have any trouble with the latest version. Thanks!

email: info@famigo.com
web: http://www.famigo.com

-Shaun
Worst 404 Page Ever?
Apple promises royalty-free license for proposed "nano-SIM" standard
From the post: "People think you need encouragement but what you really need is honest feedback."

It's really both. The feedback is necessary to force the founder to realize what challenges are ahead, but the encouragement is necessary to give the founder hope that they can be overcome.
How to train your dragon. And by dragon I mean vim.
Fresnel lenses come to mind. Another head-slapping moment.
Telco companies in other countries are able to do this. Why shouldn't companies in the US then be able to offer such a model?

E.g., see "Bob" in Austria: http://www.bob.at/gigabob

The table (for one of their plans) says:

Included volume per month: 9 GB

Cost per month: 8.80 Euro

Each additional GB: 4 Euro

Fee to activate the plan: 0 Euro

Max. speed: 4 Mbit/s

Commitment period: None

I'd say this is pretty transparent to the user and there aren't really any "traps" in the plan (except that traffic gets a little bit more expensive once you are past 9 GB in a given month).
From a technical perspective it's all just bytes. The fact that we (myself included) think of calls, texts and data as three separate things just shows how far off the rails things have gone. It's like if my home internet bill was divided into Skype Minutes, Emails Sent and Web Data.
I'm working on new engine myself. Feel free to check it out over at http://withpulse.com.
My take on it is that less time doing fiddly errands = more relaxation time away from work, which results in happier workers who are more productive when they are at work. If I knew that every second of my free time was open to possibility, and that I didn't have to set aside two or three hours a week to do the "grown up" stuff, I would absolutely be a happier and more productive person overall.
Diaspora* (decentralized social network) is intended to be a free service, not using users' identity as a merchandise. So while in general "free" services aren't really free, there are free ones as well.
Fans--Don't Miss Out
The difference is between being reactive and proactive.

Having a law in place is a start, but it has little effect against those who would cut corners. I believe the saying is that "laws only keep the lawful honest." There will be a lot of manufacturers building TacoCopters who will cut corners because it's cheaper, and others who simply don't care because the don't expect to get caught.

However, if the FAA mandates (e.g.,) complete engine teardown and rebuild every 200 operating hours along with an annual FAA inspection, they can actually verify that those procedures are being followed. The law will still be in effect, but verifying that it is being followed happens well before someone is killed and will take the vehicles most likely to kill someone out of the air.

That's what they're trying to accomplish.
Get associated file icon with only extension name using C++ on Windows demo
It should be noted, it's very clear his executable sizes are for a Debug compilation. I tossed the same code for the final example into VC10, and sure enough in release mode the compiled size is 10KB, and in debug it's just less than the size he stated. This is for 64-bit.

I'm not sure what point it serves to compare debug mode executable sizes, but that should be clearly stated in the article. As other people stated, the final example really ought to lose the wrapping class in the spirit of C++11 brevity and functional decomposition.
Is it an Android Phone, or is it a Condom? Have a guess.
And yet there are a people that don't see this potential and try to scam its current customers instead of growing a brand
I didn't really get the pancake reference, accordion makes much more sense.
We consider naming stuff often... You'll be happy to know our new site CreativeMarket.com only has two capital letters in it.
Delivering a Bunch of Mediocre Features – Why I Re-Designed an iPhone App
A litte more info here:

http://blog.forrst.com/post/19956380482/big-news-forrst-has-...

A non-public post inside of Forrst has more info, including comments by Kyle that the developer half of Forrst is not being abandoned.

Maybe Kyle or one of the other Forrst guys will post here with more info.
I never argued that they couldn't offer such a model. I'm arguing that they won't because they're too averse to change and the short-term risk that they might lose money in the pursuit of more customers paying slightly less (or more?) in the long term.
The seizures are analogous.

Per the document linked to Madoff's estate was put under an "order freezing assets" [1]. Dotcom's property is described as being "seized and restrained" [2], not confiscated or forfeited.

[1] http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-293-order.pdf

[2] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5...
(1) You can't improve on solar panels by a factor of more than 5 because 'regular' photovoltaic cells are already ~20% efficient.

(2) any geometric arrangement of solar cells that includes the 'third dimension' will shade an area behind it that is proportional to the height of the stack, that dead zone should we taken into account when calculating efficiency. In other words, the total surface area of the stack is what counts, not just the footprint. And placing these panels at a 45 degree angle actually decreases their efficiency. The total output will go up but the cost per Watt will go up as well (and it will go up more than the power output).

Why is it that every announcement about solar panels is always accompanied by either gross exaggeration or inaccuracies? This really gives a bad rap to the whole renewables industry, if I had a 1% increase of efficiency on PV panels for every 10x announcement I'd be at 300% efficiency by now...

MIT really hurts their reputation with announcements like these.
Check my profile. If I'm close, I can help with that.
You must read JonesForth, a literate program which starts from x86 assembly and builds up a complete Forth environment:

https://github.com/chengchangwu/jonesforth
Not so:

http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/03/11/carriers-whine-we-wuz-r...

"The average ARPU for smartphones on AT&T's network is 1.9 times that of the company’s non-smartphone devices."

For an iPhone, the subsidy comes to less than $20/month in exchange for significantly more revenue per user. The carriers are making out like bandits and then claiming they are the victims.

From a carrier's perspective, grandfathered "unlimited" data plans are acceptable because it costs virtually nothing to keep the customer at their usurious rates.
Its funny the Y-Combinator mafia (and I mean that lovingly) can really be such a great tool for these personal services companies like ZeroCater and Exec. I doubt they're forced to participate but its such a great source of initial users. I think for some of these companies this may be a bigger Y-combinator benefit then the mentoring/cash or VC intros.
That's exactly what I did (see other response), and it works pretty well for the most part. The bundle gives you both a nice container to deploy, along with the ability to pull assets out of it with a relative bundle path, just like on iOS/Mac.

Launchd works really well for keeping your server process running too, zero issues there.

The performance was really good, with the right libraries involved and some tuning you could have something really nice, but very few groups are focusing on it at the moment :\
What happens if I go in with a Windows Phone ( yeah, I do have a Windows Phone and I think its good and all, but am sure an Android phone can smoke a Windows Phone in reasonable tasks.)

When I lose, do I get to say - "My Windows Phone was smoked"? :)
I think most "big time" fireworks you see are more like a "Mortar" not a rocket. It gets its initial thrust through and explosion and is sent up a tube.

I'm not an expert either.
From talking to Quora engineers, my understanding is that they rewrote the majority of their stack in Scala. They might still be running Tornado (under PyPy) for their realtime connections to clients.
Android programmers shifting toward webapps
I've got a Weather app set up to show me weather in 4 locations. One where I live, another where I used to work (hey, this is LA, temp differences of 15-20 degrees within 20 miles can easily happen), another where my brother lives, and lastly in my hometown (for nostalgia and to know about friends/family).

It would take me maybe 5 seconds to load the app from a cold start, but so what? Windows phone doesn't win because a specialized pre-setup could save me 3 seconds. It would win if it could do something my android couldn't do at all...
Because the US has a duopoly (AT&T/Verizon), for the most part. We have two smaller national carriers (T-Mobile/Sprint) and many regional carriers, but they are not competitive, nationally.

With the duopoly, they can maintain the status quo as there's no real competition or innovation going on.
Apple Phlebotomy
What jlarocco said.

But more specifically...

Disingenuous: Because if you genuinely can't, you don't control your algorithm, you're just there to keep the lights on. I refer you to the joke about the autopilot computer, the pilot, and the dog.

Unhelpful: because it is. This is someone who is being deeply distressed by Google's actions in this small area of their operations, and their reaction is to tell him to take a hike. They don't have any obligation to him, but it's not good corporate citizenship. Vaguely related rant incoming; have some patience, please. (",)

We make algorithms, feed them masses of data, and have them suggest things to us based on our previous measured behaviour. This produces a positive feedback effect; in news and current affairs, you gradually get directed more and more towards news confirming your biases (see the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble concept).

And we have psychological research showing groups without dissenting voices get more radical over time - see here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/169/3947/778.

So naive implementations of news suggesters should be "considered harmful" to the public discourse. But those implementing these things don't seem to care, and often seem to show exactly the "it's the algorithm, not me" attitude displayed in this situation. We have a greater responsibility than that; if we're going to cause the (almost-)elimination of the job of newspaper editor, I'd hope we'd do it with something capable of doing at least as good a job.
Compilation time is becoming less of an issue as well with compilers getting faster and faster. For example the same codebase using GCC 4.6 and clang 3.0, clang is almost 20% faster at compiling the same codebase.

Even so, making heavy use of templates I have not yet found any major issues or that compile time has increased so drastically that it became a concern for the project.
Hey, Twitter Where's my hyphen gone?
One of the problems I have with articles like these is that they focus on Javascript's use in front-end development so the conversation settles on DOM tools examples of good Javascript.

Using Node.js (i.e. non-DOM server side Javascript) myself, I would love to see examples of beautiful Javascript in general i.e. linguistic best practices, not those specific to DOM programming.

Also, as a side note, for anyone interested in beautiful Javascript in Node.js, I love the examples posted on Express' Github repo: https://github.com/visionmedia/express/tree/master/examples/
It's starting to get to the point where, if the title of the post begins with 'MIT', I put my expect-the-BS hat on.

Edit: to be clear, I think it's because MIT's PR departement is hyper-inflatory, which you can hardly blame them for. But maybe due to it's reputation, the regular press picks up on like it's golden.
> Why shouldn't companies in the US then be able to offer such a model?

They don't have to because they are in a government regulated cartel. Classic case of regulatory capture. The only free market in the US is the wifi sprectrum, which is providing the most value to US citizens.
You really want price-per-MB?

Here is the current conditions for Rogers:

-Usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged in $10 increments. Additional usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged at $0.02/MB. U.S. data roaming is $0.006/kB and International data roaming is $0.03/kB.

Summary:
local: $20/gb, US: $6000/gb, international: $30,000/gb (prices in Canadian dollars, basically on par with USD)

Oh, but the good news is they offer 'unlimited social networking'. If you use the right app on the right phone (I believe it is currently some horrible WAP applications), you get:

Unlimited browsing on select social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Photobucket and LinkedIn)

This will crush mobile startups. How can you compete with services that don't cost the user money?
Completely agree. I always try to tell entrepreneurs that I believe in them but then give the critical feedback on their idea / process.
Regarding the first point - they increased overall panel efficiency not cell efficiency. There are a lot more cells in these 3D panels than in a flat panel and considering that in the accordion layout a lot of them don't see light unless sun is low (morning, evening, winter), the average output per cell is lower than in a conventional panel. But apparently it's the output per panel that counts.