skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Damn it. Stop making it sound so cool. I just applied and I don't need any more competition >_<

Seriously though, it sounds awesome. My CS skills are up to scratch but I'm still a pretty young programmer so I hope I can keep up (assuming I get in).
@, : and $ are already well used though.
.doc file? Why use a proprietary binary format when a suitably standardized plain text format would work just fine? I don't even open .doc files from unknown senders.
Big-O notation is used to give a ballpark estimate of an algorithm's efficiency.

No it's not. Big-O notation is used to denote asymptotic running times. The OP's question is invalid because his assumption of O(1) array accesses is only valid on hardware with finite memory size, which makes what is actually a O(log n) or O(n^(1/3)) memory read/write appear to be O(1).

I made the same invalid assumption and came to the same invalid conclusion as the OP (i.e. that language X has O(1) array accesses). You can't deny me this assumption (and therefore conclusion, which I reached logically) without denying it to the OP as well.

O(1) means that the number of possible CPU instructions is constant, no matter how large n is.

This is simply false. If n is larger than 2^32, the number of instructions (and more importantly, time) grows immensely.

Now if on the other hand you want to posit an infinite O(1) memory; OK, I posit a lambda calculus reducer which can treat infinitely sized terms as a single redux. Bam, I've got O(1) array accesses in lambda calculus (and thus functional programming) now.
I would love to spend 3 months doing this. I just browsed Hacker School's website and the application question 'If you had time to write any software, what would you build' made me salivate.
JVM in the browser had wide adoption and plenty of resources behind it, and failed miserably. Why should we try it again ?
It seems the criticism goes away once they realize you're a real person.
CSS variables don't impact CSS' simplicity. If you need CSS to be simple, its still gonna have that, but when you get around to needing:

css variables, transforms, gradients, border-radius, multiple background images, etc.

... you'll be glad to know that those features are available as well and that you don't have to add complexity to whatever you're building to hack those in. I also don't see how CSS variables, or other recent CSS features, hinder anyone from learning from a site's code.

All these things make it easier to create stuff. My only complaint is that they're not added soon enough.
Email isn’t the problem, the problem is the client. Here’s just a few of the things we use email for today:

Todo list
Social networking notifications
Text messaging
Planning meetings
Planning vacation
Discussing issues with colleagues (mailing list)
Bill notifications
Newsletters / grey mail
File sharing

We do all of those different things and shove them into a single client that was designed (with minor alterations) over 30 years ago. What were they using email for then? To send “holy shit, this is cool!” messages to other neckbeards.

We should be using a separate client for all of these uses. Email is nothing more than a messaging protocol. You could launch a group texting app and use email as the delivery protocol. Your user base would instantly be every person with an internet connection. It wouldn’t matter that person A has your app and person B doesn’t, you could make it transparent to the person that has the app and pitch to the person that doesn’t.

The biggest obstacle to this is that we all use regular old email clients today and increasing the already incredible noise would not be without backlash. I think you have to start out with apps that don’t require adding to your message count (a notification app that scrapes your inbox, for example).

Meanwhile startups are trying and failing to make every service its own silo that travels over port 80. This is what is most sickening about startup culture today, no one is creative about using the stuff that has been around forever and is used by everyone.
I guess the problem is just with calling it revolutionary now, before we wait and see if it actually does cause any drastic change. There have been lots of frameworks that seem promising, only to learn partway in that they are still missing some really key functionality. It's unfortunate to use revolutionary to describe everything that could, someday cause a change.
Yeah, the name spacing part is crucial because you can do

:root {
var-color: #000;
}

p {
var-color: #666;
}

* { color: var(color) }
Given Go is a compiled language I am rather surprised at its low speed in this benchmark. I am not familiar enough with the language to take a look at the benchmark code, has anyone else done so?

I can't help wondering if the benchmark code is falling foul of Go's garbage collection which I understand from discussions here is somewhat less intelligent than Python's GC.
Apple TV "single core" A5 actually has two cores, one is off
It does sound tempting.
I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the calculator security check. What an ingenious solution! It's not the most robust "hash", but it's no more than what he needs for the purpose. It really puts things into perspective when people are talking about how one technology is "better" than another. Pragmatism over pedantry.
I didn't know about this. What's the model? does it require registration and attendance? why isn't the material openly available?

Sorry if I'm asking something stupid. I'm not a newbie but I like teaching and I'd like to know more about their materials and approach.
But then when quarter of your red things have one width, and that's the same width as quarter of your green things, and another quarter of the reds have another width, which is the same as quarter of your orange things ... then you need variables again or you end up using multiple classes for each object just so that you can apply multiple properties.
Google's $12 Billion Toy
Minor nitpicking:

> unlike in Java, you can also call a class method on an instance

It's possible in Java, too. It's just considered bad practice.

Still, a very nice read!
Possibly, there are Thrift bindings for D.

However I suspect Alexei was hired more for his elite C++ chops than his Damascene conversion.
Note that where you mean Python you pretty much mean this optimized C implementation: https://bitbucket.org/cmoyer/python-twitter/src/5bba928d8c12...
Marketing/sales is, of course, a necessary part of success (as are effective editing and, within the limits of the medium, effective design). Simply making the book available for purchase is never going to be enough (unless you're the type who likes to by very expensive tickets in a long-odds lottery). What is not necessarily part of the equation is that the channels for that part of the process be restricted to its traditional agencies and suppliers in the e-realm.
Investigation of former Best Buy CEO continues
I'm biased, but I believe it's a fascinating topic. Many people would love to know the "magic" behind Google. When I studied Electrical Engineering (late 80s) the two most interesting topics to me were TV and microprocessors. Both concepts had been around for a while, but I still wanted to know everything I could about how they worked.
Just less than 500$ for the target!
I'm refreshing the page and it keeps rising! Impressive!
That guy is smart
Quick Summary:
+ Far improved ranking of posts (via rss, twitter & facebook)
+ Search
+ Collections
+ OPML file import
+ sync/stop & delete external accounts
+ javascript/ajax page loading on streams & source browser
+ entirely new source browser

Thank you for taking a look :)
Help Me With My App and Restore My Faith in the American Dream
First of all you are talking about Instagram and I am talking about facebook. If some random students made Instagram who were otherwise making minimum wage it's not like you can claim Facebook should be able to make it for <$1000. Also, it isn't just the app that we are talking about but the server and all associated infrastructure.

But secondly, I'm not sure how you went from 13 people to 3, lets assume we we accept that we are only talking about the 3 people. Even if those 3 people are making only $50k yearly salary, working on this for 6 months is already costing Instagram well over $100k once you take into account office space, benefits and hardware.
Thanks, but my favorite explanation of decorators is still this stackoverflow answer (see the second answer)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/739654/understanding-pyth...
Also, go buy the theme song (all proceeds to Caine's college fund).

http://cainesarcade.bandcamp.com
I've submitted pull requests to projects on Github and while there has sometimes been discussion, so far my changes have been pulled into the main project without issues.

Most of my commits are to homebrew for software I'd like in in brew but that isn't there, and also modifications to current software that is there to get it to compile on newer versions of Mac OS X.
I can't speak for the founders, but it seems that if you can write fizzbuzz, and in your interview genuinely express an interest in programming, you've got a really good shot at admission. There will be an expanding class size, and I'd wager that the admission ratio will be comparable to last batch. Be confident, study up in the interim, and want it!

EDIT: I'm not too comfortable singling out the skillsets I'd qualify as 'least experienced'. Suffice it to say there are people who do not come from professional programming backgrounds who have picked up enough to write up fizzbuzz, and speak intelligently about the things they've used in the past, and would like to work on in the future.
I thought Chrome's silent updates were supposed to keep everyone running the latest release?
Bin Laden at McDonalds
If I'm going to chance onto a page with a list of steps, it should be like:

(1) Do this

(2) Do that

And then this happens!

However, the ultra simple two step instruction set on this page is neither preceded nor followed by a statement of what outcome is meant to occur. I mean, I figured it out, but it should be dead clear without thinking.
For those curious, the US government releases geocoded zip codes openly:

http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.txt
One thing to note is that if you have a site that dynamically re-sizes according to the browser window (by for example using percentages in CSS), then you will physically have to drag your browser bigger and smaller to see how much a user with a smaller display size would see.
Fisheye Distortion with D3
You are making wide, sweeping judgements that are almost certainly not representative of the majority of people using CoffeeScript.
Research Paper shows Facebook Valuation is in a Bubble
Star Ratings. Shortest solution
This post made me laugh, and I sure hope that's what it was supposed to do. It happens more circa once per week to me that somebody "has already done all the legwork" and only needs me to design and code "the app that will make us rich"..
Not really; anyone could sell an ebook to amazon under the wholesale rules as well. It probably makes things easier for self-publishers in that amazon can't sell big-name titles for as cheap, which might increase demand for small name titles at lower prices, but is that a good thing?
Although perhaps not known to most people here, we do need pure mathematics to guarantee that numerical methods work. Although most of this is taken care of by most software packages available today, we needed pure mathematics to create those, and will probably need in in the future as well. However, this work is _hard_, and usually done by those who like math for math's sake.
I wouldn't worry too much about the length of the story - it's probably just an outlier that comes with your style of interviewing.
I completely disagree 100%. I think the mail system is exceptionally well-functioning. It's a massively-scalable, decentralized, asynchronous messaging system that supports large file attachments. At this, it excels. There's not one big evil company controlling all messages and unless you're sending massive amounts of emails every day, your messages almost always end up exactly where they're supposed to. I'd challenge anybody to do better.

The author's main gripe is Mailer Daemon messages. It's not email's fault that people write shitty clients that don't display a pretty failure message. If your car doesn't have anti-lock breaks, it's not the road's fault when you hit a patch of ice and slam into a tree.

Email is great not only because it works simply and beautifully, but because it's so extendable. People think it's broken. It's not. It's just simple...and it's this same simplicity that makes it easy to build on top of. Look at Gmail or Xobni. Both have incredible features that "email" doesn't have because they took the time to build extras on top that make it work nicely.

Email is NOT broken. There's nothing to fix. Whatever fixes you think it needs you can make yourself. The underlying platform works great. If you have a problem, write/patch a client.
...what value is there in spending days hand-optimizing an algorithm...?

Reducing latency?

Throwing servers at a latency problem doesn't usually help (unless a server is overloaded).
Yeah, profiling the Go quickly shows that the part that takes the most time is the JSON parsing.
I found the non-argument that you two just had to be interesting, informative, and entertaining. So don't feel too bad about losing the argumentative-agreement battle - it was great while it lasted!
i miss 1400x900 :( it was a lot nicer to use in a laptop than 1366x768
It's actually the JSON parsing. Python is using a highly optimized C parser, whereas Go's json package is in pure Go.
Have you tried watching sped up video? I've started doing that recently and like it quite a bit.
Also, unlike 90% of starups; he actually has a business model.
You're getting dangerously close to describing continuations. And I think it's important to remember that just because a programming language doesn't give you access to a data structure, it doesn't mean it's not using it under the covers. The call stack is a data structure in all programming languages, only a few provide you with easy access to it.
I actually did a very similar test to this recently and got similar results (though mine was just between Go and Python)... in retrospect the reason is obvious: in python I was using python-cjson which is a heavily optimized C implementation of a json parser, while in Go I was using a 100% Go implementation.

In a certain way this shows nothing, since we all know C is fast. But in another way it convinced me that Python is actually fine for most of what I'm doing since it's easy to drop in to C for parts that need performance. And even more importantly there are often already already C libraries with python bindings that do the thing I'm looking for (ie parsing, numpy, etc).
Excuse me but I have to do this: IT'S OVER 100000!!!!
The "checkmark" was pure genius.
The Best Hackers in the World all come from one Country
The first time you saw substitution ciphers you thought "hey how about using webfonts as a one time key"?

I guess because I learnt about such ciphers when our primary school only just got it's first computer, running at 4MHz, the conflation of webfonts and subst. ciphers never struck me before.

Before today I've seen this done with javascript and, TBH, I think that would have been the first method that sprung to mind but I've not really ever bothered to think about it.

Quick search only found one other example of this technique: http://eligrey.com/blog/post/tag/rot13 (rot13 fonts, lol) as well as this http://jsfiddle.net/QQ9WQ/ from the current author. It's hard to search as there is a font called "cipher font", which of course is available as a webfont! Of course there are lots of pages using js, like http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/substitution.php which does some funky substitutions.
Path Clears Toward a Quantum Internet
Back-End Engineers Are the Unsung Heroes of the Tech Industry
Coming up with ideas to fix Email in 2012 is like coming up with ideas to fix IM - why bother?
Be Proud of Your Accomplishments, Not Your Affiliations
The title isn't quite right. From the article:

Either Apple is only utilizing one core or they are binning parts

So, there are possibly two cores, but it's not confirmed.
Waiting for one-off events with Futures (C++)
I find their attitude worrying - how can something be overstated if it's essentially possible for anyone to take down servers as easy as that? It's possible, so it must be fixed, that's what basically any text book on security tries to convey: there's no such thing as "mostly secure" - either it's done right or there's no need to do anything at all. Ignorance won't help in making the web a safer (more secure) place.
If people would actually read the text of the bill, they'd see two things:

(1) It's not perfect and needs fleshing out. I have a fear that since it doesn't really do anything but give FOIA and liability exceptions and push everything to the DNI, then it may not really go anywhere.

(2) It's nowhere near as bad as SOPA. CISPA is bad because it may not accomplish what it wants, but it doesn't deal with blocking, advertising & payment providers, subpoenas, or even directly with law enforcement. It's managed by the intel community, taking away the process from DOJ (Infragard) and DHS (US-CERT and USSS).
I do. When sending a link for example, this is the path of least resistance. Yes, I could read it out and have the other person type it (which would take ten times as long). And yes, if I wanted to use bandwidth optimally, I would make a direct connection to their device and send it that way. But up to a certain length of data, the overhead of making that specialized connection outweighs any inefficiency of communicating through a middleman.
You should consider it, Schultzy ;D. It feels like what I imagine a mini Y-combinator would be. Similar network effects, more emphasis on being a good programmer than a sustainable business. For the programmer's programmer. They're also mid-way through systematizing the placement process a bit more. It's definitely on its way up.

I managed to continue working at diminished capacity for Bug Labs, and it was a LOT of work to manage both, but it's really worth it.
You could say decorators are for the code that you want to put inside a function but that don't really belong to its logic. The memoization example shows that: if you have memoization logic inside the function it works but you should feel that there are two disjoint logics at works.
For some reason the original site was submitted (as were a couple of articles about it) yesterday and not upvoted enough -- I'm glad this has finally made it to the front page. And wow. $100K for his college fund. The Internet is incredible.
You can find the slides in http://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Alexand....
This isn't a benchmark of the languages, but of the libraries that ship with them. That's fine, but be careful not to confuse that with a language benchmark.
My Jedi mind hack is to smile.

You may have to force yourself at first. :)

It's become a habit, and it changes my mood so that I want to get up and about.
Plus, you might find yourself more productive on days when you have exercised. I certainly do.
Dang. Bump to login could be a killer. Good thought.
I just spent about $2000 worth of my time watching this video and it was totally worth it!
P.S. If you don't get that reference, you didn't watch the whole video. ;)
Do you know how accurate that is? Every time I've seen census zip code data it comes with a big disclaimer that its only accurate as of the last census. The USPS changes zip codes at will.
Louis Vuitton Men's Bags - Cheap Louis Vuitton Men's Bags
Reputable to whom? To the end user?

Unless the end user is a TC reader the endorsement is irrelevant. And that's my entire point.
Can you please email all future posts to me? ;p zackster@gmail.com -- I don't use RSS any more, and I'd hate to miss them.
Livehoods: Understanding cities through social media
No, they can't. There's no standard format for these error messages that I know of.

Maybe there should be, but that's a problem that has to be solved before the shiny UI can be placed over it.
For an interesting use of Python decorators - event handling - have a look at Decovent on pypi
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Decovent.
"Only utilizing one core" would mean that the software only uses one, but the hardware has two.

"Binning parts" means they're either actually hardware-disabling ("diking out") the extra core, or the extra core was bad to begin with (making use of otherwise bad chips).

If those images are real, both cores are definitely on the chip, but whether one is hardware-disabled or not is not certain.
Cara Memakai Jilbab - Cara Memakai Jilbab Modern Terbaru 2012
Ah thanks! So nothing to do with GC or poor IO but a poorly selected operation to do in a benchmark.
If you judge your success by fidelity with your competitor's product you will NEVER win. The only way they can possibly gain double-digit market share is if they actually do something different/disruptive.

IMHO "metro style" isn't a differentiator.
Ask HN: How would you approach promoting this?
Well, I have been working for a while now on http://social-id.com.ar and now I feel like it should be hit by some public and try to get some feedback out of it. How would you go about this? I should mention that it's highly targeted at people who travel regularly.

Thanks everyone!
Juegos de Plantas vs Zombies 
Juegos de Plantas vs Zombies Juegos de Plantas vs Zombies . SI buscas un juego muy entretenido, y apto para los engreidos de la casa, te recomendamos jugar Plantas vs Zombies para quitarte el estrés del trabajo y tareas escolares. Juegos de Plantas vs Zombies
I mean "when presented with a bill, how much to tip." It's just not the sort of thing which mathematicians are ever expected to do. There is no math journal where you can publish the tips you calculated. It's not their job, there are no theorems to be proven there, etc., etc.

(You're actually doing it a little more complicated than it has to be because it sounds like you're spending a little memory remembering the number you took 10% of. Take half, add it to the original, which is presumably still right in front of you, then drop the digit after.)

I learned a lot of mental calculation because my background is in applied physics, where you're expected to reason about the size of things etc. (A good example question might be, "how far do you think an air molecule can go before it bumps into another air molecule?")

So, just for example, to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit you multiply by 2, subtract 10%, and add 32. It is exact. So 25°C → 50 → 45 → 77°F. To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius you subtract 32, divide by 2, add 10%, then add 1% if you really feel like it; it is approximate. So 52°F → 20 → 10 → 11 → 11.11°C. Those sorts of things I will do in my head when people give me a number in one or the other temperature. Tipping is especially nice when compared to the fact that in New York State there is an 8% sales tax which is not added to any of the prices on stuff at the store -- calculate a tip and halve it.

[Naive reasonings on air: small upper bounds can be given by the fact that it has to travel easily through the small passageways in your inner ear, but my favorite calculation is to take (kinematic viscosity) / (speed of sound), both of which are things that an applied physics geek should roughly know.]
The defense that prop trading source code didn't count as interstate commerce because it was for internal use and therefore didn't fall under applicable federal statues is brilliant. However the defense that this was a digital transfer and therefore didn't count as "goods, wares or merchandise" seems questionable. What really is the difference between me purchasing and downloading a song on iTunes and buying a CD online on amazon.com. Effectively I am doing the same thing in my books. I believe that law should be updated.
I am the author is there a better JSON parser that I should have used for Go?