skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's true, I had forgotten about va_arg()'s use of naked types. I do think the standard library has a bit more license to do weird stuff, and it's fairly well-known that va_* can be macros.
Fez is out now
Similar: http://www.responsinator.com/
If they don't like it when you're at this stage, you're in trouble! How are people presenting/explaining responsive designs at the concept stage? Designing in browser? Multiple mockups? Mood boards and style guides?
Your argument doesn't make sense. It is a touch focused UI and you have to atleast try it out with touch input and then comment. Yeah it might not be good for traditional mouse and keyboard input, but using that as an argument that you don't want it on a tablet is not right.
Concurrency is not Parallelism (it's better) - A talk by Rob Pike
No, really, please don't turn every comment page into a pun thread that would be an end to HN as we know it. Please try to keep it serious and technical, and down-vote if you can this kind of conversation.
ZipWhip to open source "textespresso" machine
Instagram adds 10 million users in 10 days, passes 40M mark
No encoding that can handle all the necessary languages will be efficient for random access.

I'm not saying don't think about it. But once you think about it, I think there's really only one sane conclusion to reach.
FACEBOOK adds “Download Your Information ” feature
Ahead of its initial public offering, Facebook has added additional categories of data to its “Download Your Information” feature. But privacy advocates say the changes aren’t enough.
Six Ways Investments in Space are Paying Technology Dividends on Earth
Unless you modify the behaviour of the human population to make it more unthinking, repetitive and predicable.

Then it becomes impossible to spot the replicants!

LOL, frist post, l33t ......
Most permissive licenses need attribution (in form of leaving the
original header comment etc) which lets the whole world know

If the code is being used for commercial and propriety purposes then the code is never seen, never attributed. Attribution in the form of source code comments is really only valuable in other open source projects.
no no no no no no no no no

I cannot stress this strongly enough, _NO_.

You need to walk before you can run and it is of NO BENEFIT to the student to hide programming behind a fancy UI with fun results before they know what is going on.

Let's be clear here, I am not against Unity. But I'm definitely against Unity for teaching how to program.

The "strength" you exemplify about having unity doing physics in the first lesson is precisely why it's a terrible choice. Students without prior programming knowledge will not understand that this is javascript (a language) connected to a physics library (3rd party module) being represented by the UI (unity). You will introduce them to this mess of interconnected parts and they will have no idea who is responsible for what. Plus you will spend so much time teaching them Unity-specific concepts and fundamentals they will walk away with a crippled ability to program.

I know this because at my university they taught first year programming with java and used a book written by the instructor that showed you how to load an image with swing before teaching conditionals. The boilerplate code that allowed the students to load images did nothing but completely confuse them and negate the teaching aspects as he slowly introduced programming fundamentals. It was a complete disservice to try to "fancify" basic programming and all it did was confuse anyone who hadn't previously learnt to program.

Python on the other hand is a fast, interactive, forgiving interface that boils programming down to the basic nuts and bolts that you need to understand before interfacing with fancy UIs and physics.
I feel like you're taking part in some unrelated discussion. This entire discussion started because jcampbell claimed that NPV was derived from the sum of future dividends. (Actually, he claimed that stock price was NPV of those future dividends.) No one here seems to be disputing that stock has a NPV. They're disputing jcampbell's claim that NPV is derived exclusively from future dividends.

You're arguing against a claim that no one is making.
Life's too short to write shitty software
> Not only do they help the student with writing code, the introduce important parts of programming as well as Big-O notation.

Are sorting algos the best methods for helping students write code and learning about Big-O? I don't think so. Learning the fundamental data structures are a lot more useful for that purpose, I think. Of the standard crop, I think the binary search is a good algorithm to teach (though one must note its historical implementation problems in languages with fixed int sizes), and if you're going to do sorting then quicksort + insertion sort when N < 16 wouldn't be awful. At least mention the language's built-in sort so that open source projects like gnu flex don't inherit a DIY sorting function in the code (in their case, the evil bubble sort which should never be taught).

Instead of the cast of characters for sorting algos, I'd rather see something like this cast of maze generation algos: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorit... I think they would accomplish your goals better, plus they have shininess built-in.

>…"Lets learn Unity3D" course in front of me, I would never ever attend that university.

But you would probably still be doing programming and CS elsewhere. You're already set. This post is about trying to attract people into programming at the HS or college level who otherwise wouldn't be. But from the other comments it seems like I might agree with you specifically on Unity3D; I haven't used it myself but it doesn't sound all that rad as a teaching tool. I fully support mixing PyGame into a Python course, though.
Instagram user research reveals people just want to be "better looking"
Give me a break. No self respecting "nerd" would call himself a nerd.

..here comes the white knights.
It's generally instigated as an alternative scenario to merely buzzword compliant ongoing forward dynamic enhancement using synergies between interdisciplinary field approaches.

See - all you need is perl, rand and /usr/dict to create an AI that while it can't pass as human can at least obtain a research grant
Actually technology is the best way to solve cultural and political problems. The invention of the printing press solved (or contributed to solving) many such problems, like the tyranny of the catholic church. Technology also had a huge role in the Arab spring protests -- Facebook and plain old tv.
CISPA does not include domain seizure. Doctorow has a tendency to go for sensationalism instead of accuracy. His writings are getting close to going on my "automatically flag" list because of this.
Browser screen resolution stats rile devs
"git grep" only searches tracked files by default, so to get correct behaviour, you will need to create an alias (I don't think there's a way to change the default).

It also only works on Git repos; having to think before choosing between "git grep" and "ack" just adds unnecessary mental context switching.

Personally, I prefer ack's output, which puts the file name on a separate line, and includes line numbers by default. Together with -C you get a much more readable output.

Mostly I end up just using Sublime Text's built-in file search, which is like ack, but has a generous -C setting enabled by default, and supports replacing.
It's true. My comment it's an old feud that I have with civilization or even Sid Meyer... I love the game, but I am portuguese and in games like colonization the portuguese are not included and is a major history failure in colonization scope. Spain and Portugal, arrogantly divided the new world in 1494, the beginning of colonization...

So how can you refer to Age of Sail and you don't mention Portugal?!??!

Believe me it's not nationalism, it's history...
Screen readers generally don't support content appended to the page after load. Twitter doesn't work on a screen reader.
A Monolith on Mars?

Damn Fedex - it was supposed to be delivered to Jupiter.
I recently used a pointer/controller with stopwatch that seemed to be this one: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-2-4-Cordless-Presenter-Black/...

It was loaned, I had no idea it was so expensive. Good design, though. The stopwatch can be 'pumped up' in 5 minute increments to the time for one's talk. All there, nothing else to fiddle with.
Really? What a surprise
I think the problem has arisen from a misunderstanding of what Turing was getting at in his paper. At first he talks about Chess (an example chosen, as we know, because it has a well defined rule set) and a computer imitating a Chess player.

He makes the point that, to a human player, it may be difficult to determine between a human player and a computer imitator. Even though the computer is not AI or otherwise "intelligent" it could be mistaken, under the constraints of the test, as human.

Then he sets up the more complex test with the questioning (i.e. "convince me you are a man").

The point there is much the same; at some point it is possible to construct a machine that, within the constraints of the test, is functionally "human". He never claims it as an ultimate test for AI.

IMO the greater point he suggests, which always seems to get glossed over, is this: that at some level of complexity a computer will be able to pass a test (as yet undefined) in which it imitates complete human intelligence to such a degree it appears to be full AI.

That could all be rambling... but that is my understanding of his point.

Over the interim the Turing Test has gotten mixed around and confused to such a degree that this insight is forgotten.
Show HN: Ticketdata, see what others paid for tickets to any concert or game
Have you released the prototype or do you plan to? I cannot seem to find it on your GitHub account.
I have never actually understood the "chinese room experiment".

As formulated in WP, the point is supposed to be that while the room is working, the man in it cannot understand Chinese, so similarly the computer cannot understand it. But isn't this completely pointless, as despite what the man and the computer can or cannot understand, the room or the program can? The man (or the computer) is just a cog in a larger system, and cannot be expected to understand the system, just as none of my individual neurons cannot understand English.

> I think what we all had hoped for, however, was HAL. What we are going to get is more and more iterations of cleverbot.

And what is the difference? When we can build a program that can parse natural language and use it to access information, it will open a whole new technological revolution.
The Long Road Home: Super Commuters
The story isn't necessarily interesting or great in itself, but the fact that some people are commuting nearly 100 miles one way to work is baffling to me. I used to commute about 30 miles each way to work and I hated it so I moved closer to work where my commute is < 5 miles. It's a little more expensive but my quality of life has improved greatly.

Anyone have a super commute?
This is pretty exciting stuff. IIRC ibdknox used to work on Visual Studio when he was at Microsoft.
sure, there's nothing in between.
agreed, but it does not need to be included either because they simply do it already.
TechCrunch Giveaway: Nokia Lumia 900 #TechCrunch
I don't see the code out there, but here is his github: https://github.com/ibdknox
I think a great deal of societal problems are caused by social 'pressures' and 'norms' (ie. bullying). Remember how terrified everyone was about being perceived as uncool? I remember when I developed an interest in classical music, i pratically had to keep it a secret.

One more point i'd add about the general immaturity and unfairness of school pupils, is that the smart boys are probably unkind towards to the smart girls, out of some sense of competitiveness. I don't have evidence of this but it seemed to be an abundant sentiment when I was at school.
20 Examples of Responsive Web Design
The maths of publishing, by Alex Bellos, author of "Here's Looking at Euclid"
Linux doesn't require copyright attribution, whereas things like MySQL and OpenOffice did. Notice how much more momentum Linux has (for other reasons too, of course).
The linked article doesn't have a source for this, but after a bit of digging I found this page - http://intelligence.house.gov/hr-3523-letters-support which does unfortunately list Facebook as a supporter. Looks like it's time to delete my Facebook account, sigh.
I already know where I would instantly put 2 of them and probably a third if this ever came to fruition.
Former RIM boss sought strategy shift before he quit
since i "cancelled" my FB account 15 months ago i miss nothing.
I get the sentiment(and i'm right there with ya), but the author isn't asking for your whole website to work without JS, just to display some very basic, static stuff without Javascript. Hell, even just ignoring that JS is missing might be a better solution. That way, the user at least gets to look at the HTML and CSS, which will probably still convey enough information about the website.

I really don't understand why anyone'd even react to missing JS. Anyone willfully turning it off will be aware of that.
Yes this is relevant. Family pictures used to be something you put in albums and maybe pull out a few times a year to look at as a family.

Publishing all your pictures, all the time is like carrying a projector with slides from random moments in your life to every party you ever go to and setting it up for everyone to see whether they asked you to or not.

It sounds like a crazy thing to all of us who are aware of how things used to be.. but maybe for the next generation this is going to be cultural norm. I don't want to be judgmental and I'm not a psychiatrist so I can't tell if that's positive or negative or even if it's a long-term or short-term phenomenon, but at least for right now, that seems to be how we're evolving.
Software grades student essays as well as humans
The license difference is why you're aware of so many places that Linux is used. It's hard to miss a blob of text as big as the GPL.

There are a lot of boxes running FreeBSD internally which you never hear about. We try to convince vendors that it's ok to talk publicly about using FreeBSD, but an awful lot of them consider it to be "secret sauce" which they don't want their competitors to hear about.
Searle calls your objection the "systems reply", and his response can be found here (2a): http://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/#H2
Yeah, it does execute some JS, but not a lot. Here's a Dec 2011 analysis; a more current writeup would be welcome. http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/google-stop-playing-the-ji...
Looks really interesting, would be great to have something like this for the web. I wonder how interested the author of Sublime Text would be in this as he seems to be very responsive with development, perhaps worth reaching out to him.
I dislike the Chinese room experiment.

The argument that he doesn't understand Chinese is like arguing that the hardware itself isn't an AI.
No it isn't it is the software that is the AI.
It is the set of instructions that he is following that understands Chinese.
The argument that the creator of the experiment used against this was that if you removed the pen and paper and had the man do it all in his head, then the man still doesn't understand, but he completely missed the point. In that case it just changes from the pen and paper + man that is the hardware to purely the man.

The Chinese room argument against AI falls down when you remember that the man is only the hardware. He may be essential to the running of the software, but he is just as much the mind of the Chinese translator as my processor is the maths running through it.
Could you give more detail on the reverse engineering. Did you use something like WireShark?
Startup Stops Sites Selling Your Information in One Click
We are moving into a post-literate world. "Artificial Intelligence" is a field of endeavor, not an entity that can try to pass a test. The headline is not as bad as movie stars and news anchors using objective pronouns as the subject of a sentence, but it still shows that the language is changing, and not for the better, IMHO.
Then they need a lot of smarter military who can integrate this info, while keeping a clear head in the middle of a firefight, and yet be able to follow orders to the death. Soldiers aren't supposed to win every battle.
I expect that between the mental load, the cost of deployment, possible data changes by enemy hackers, and simply being able to pick up dead soldier's equipment and use it, that this will never be something for general rank and file infantry, likely just the officers.
99% of usage will be for entertainment.
"Personally, I've never seen a website that delivers content that absolutely needed it."

Really? Etherpad, Google Wave, Google Docs. Every HTML5 game I've ever seen. Aviary, Picnik, Picozu. etc.

I generally agree with the point that most sites that present text to a screen don't absolutely NEED JS to work, but there are a myriad of apps out there that do.
If goverments can break ECDSA with quantum computers, it will make bitcoin fanatics very unhappy.
I really enjoyed this post. It's a great read on how a good, simple idea can be executed on quickly. Nice one :)

The use of Twitter's Bootstrap in particular seems to be catching on a lot. Your site looks great, Bootstrap was clearly a good choice for it.
This is exciting! We wouldn't be coding the same way in 50 years - I hope what we do now will be compared to punch cards of early computing by then.
SQL and NoSQL at Craigslist
Memoirs of an Apple Genius
Lynx. Then IE6. Then Firefox, Chrome etc.
Not really a good comparison. A TV costs $1000 or so (for one that isn't bad). Then it costs about $50 a month to even be useful, plus whatever HBO costs to get a good amount of shows that aren't bad. Even then, the picture quality is worse than my iPad or Ultrasharp. If anything, I think that TV ownership is probably lower among "tech-savvy" people.

Enabling JS is free.
Who codes during a wedding reception? That's pretty disrespectful.
I agree with teaching Processing. What is wonderful about it is that you get immediate visual feedback, and an immediate interest in learning algorithms.
I think Unity is perfect for an introduction to game development or game programming class, but not so great for a general purpose programming course.

The issue with Unity is that it is a complex, fully featured 3D game engine. A lot of what you do and learn, as a beginner, has nothing to do with writing code and is more about how game engines work. Like what a mesh is, what a rigid body is, how to set up a particle system, etc. I can see students getting hung up on these details to the point where learning how to script is a secondary goal.

This comes from experience. I've worked with a game designer whose only real programming experience was inside of Unity and he was difficult to work with because he didn't have the ability to separate game engine (Unity) features\concepts from programming language concepts. So I'd get weird questions like "why doesn't Lua have 3D object parenting".

The same thing can happen in any complex environment where scripting can be secondary to the idiosyncrasies of the environment (Unity, Flash, web browser, etc.)
Taking Open Access into Our Own Hands
That actually sounds reasonable -- you can log-in, decide which photos you want to share and delete the rest. Unless you don't like it using bandwidth or don't like google itself having access to all your stuff.
How about if my budget for negotiating contracts is $0?

If I don't have a baseline price and I am worried about licensing, I'm not going to spend time trying to fight for a budget to then spend time trying to negotiate a contract--I don't have time.

If I could dev without licensing worries, then I would fight for a budget for things like support and add-ons.

Also, may I ask why you put "writing code" in quotations?
H.R. 3523... C.I.S.P.A. Cyber Security Bill Worse Than S.O.P.A.
In Javascript it's either:

document.write("Hello, world");

or:

alert("Hello, world");

Two lines of overhead counting the script tags.

For all its faults (and they are many) I think I'd argue for Javascript as a first teaching language (maybe focusing on Crockford's "good parts", or maybe some variant like Coffeescript). Minimal overhead. Support for reasonably advanced concepts like objects and anonymous functions. Will run on just about any device the student (or his or her friends own) without having to install anything. Trivial to distribute your creations. Has actual employability value (this, I think, is sole reason Java has become so popular).

I don't want to get bogged down in the argument over strong/weak/dynamic/static typing -- but also don't think it's necessary for a beginning course.
Based on Phobos Grunt, decent means "on a par with North Korea". The vehicles actually have to get where they're going first.
Skyrim is Getting Kinect Support, Dragon Shouts Included
Coding is priority number five
I can't get my hands on this soon enough. It makes so much sense: we're moving away from the files and folders metaphor everywhere, so why not in the IDE too?
I'm on Chrome in OSX and it's also buggy for me, but um... in another thread, you said that it only works in Opera, Safari and Firefox?

Is it supposed to work in Chrome?
I disagree.

Instagram is not about making the photo production process easier. It's about making the photo consumption process easier, so that the photos you take get more attention from others (and you have more fun).

You could share your photos to Facebook or Twitter instead, but when users view their streams from those other sites, they're confronted with either a sea of text (Twitter) or a sea of mixed content in non-standard formats (Facebook). Catching up on your Facebook feed is impossible, so nobody does it. Twitter is a bit better because the posts are in a standard format, but still, reading tweets takes a bit of time.

Contrast this with Instagram. I'm following over 200 people and I can catch up on an entire day's worth of photos in about 5 minutes. Because it's faster to view an image than read a tweet, and because of the standard post format, Instagram is literally the fastest way possible for me to see what my friends and family have been up to.

To me, that's the real value of Instagram.
The contemporary approach: no new theoretical breakthrough? Pick an old model and throw more data at it.
I think a reasonable default for IP law is to assume something isn't protected unless you can convince yourself that the protection is necessary as an incentive to create. Computer programmers have demonstrated, time and again, that they need absolutely no additional incentive to create a new programming language.
I did indeed. I used to be the Program Manager for C# and VB in the IDE. :)

A number of the ideas presented here started brewing during my time there, but it took me a bit to figure out what the overall abstraction should be. I really love the drafting table parallel - it's especially interesting when you start thinking about what we can do with touch...
The implication seems to be that students with no experience can catch up with experienced students in one semester. Or perhaps that the experienced students have an advantage in perspective but not in actual knowledge, and the perspective can be taught in parallel with the knowledge at little cost.

These implications strike me as implausible. I think it would make more sense to create the for-true-beginners course with the expectation that the regular intro course comes after it.
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