skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this aspect of unit testing is largely overrated. True, it does stop people from writing something ridiculous, like a 1000-line method that handles a dozen different things. But it also encourages developers to go overboard in the other direction: creating endless, needless layers of abstraction, chopping logic into bits that are to small to represent anything in reality and doing dependency injection when it's not needed. It's important to keep in mind that ease of unit testing doesn't automatically ensure ease of use of your library in real code.

In short, it's better to think of unit testing as bug-prevention mechanism. Thinking of it as an ultimate design mechanism doesn't end up well.
Its a 1st, necessary step. The rest requires some end-to-end encryption of even the destination - and maybe a secure, anonymous DNS query reflector or some such.

Or I'm talking nonsense. But a secure ISP that is not capable of eavesdropping is a start.
Yeah, this has Kobayashi Maru written all over it.
Note I am not affiliated. See: http://www.tokbox.com/opentok/api
It might be worth defining some boundary conditions on what constitutes a valid player. "May not touch any other game classes/modules, except for this whitelist of methods" and "may not reimplement these methods" is a good start. As-is, there is so little direction that I'd argue that my player is valid per the letter of the rules. :P

Without those constraints, there are limitless ways to cheat, especially since it's impossible to actually hide functionality in ruby (obligatory: https://github.com/fxn/i-told-you-it-was-private ), so you have to have a set of meta-constraints in place.

Regarding proxying, why not just use the Forwardable module? Though, even if you did manage to hide the critical pieces from the Player, I'd just iterate ObjectSpace to find a PlayerProxy that contains a reference to my Player. :P
Aww, heartbreaker! All the codes are used. You'll just have to take my money then. I have a WP7 phone, but I havent shopped a lot of apps for it. I'll have to check it out, I'd love to see a comparison.

I'm a bit of a WP7 developer and would be interested in your comments on any gotchas you've experienced with MonoGame porting to iOS.
Instagram: From Stanford to Startup [video]
An "It Just Works" solution for email overload
They still want to enforce users to use "real" (for their definition of "real") names. As I write this, my profile is "suspended" because I didn't type my real name: "Your profile is currently under review to make sure it is in compliance with the Google+ Names Policy and User Content and Conduct Policy. Reviews are typically completed within a few days."

I also had to select "other" for gender, there's no option named "I just don't want to write it."

Yeah, sure:

"By focusing on you, the people you care about, and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know"

Context:

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/google-nymwars-redux/

https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Z...
Your post strongly reminds me of this:

(http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/why_i_ha...)

> He described how the writers would just insert "tech" into the scripts whenever they needed to resolve a story or plot line, then they'd have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.

> "It became the solution to so many plot lines and so many stories," Moore said. "It was so mechanical that we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us and we'd just write 'tech' in the script. You know, Picard would say 'Commander La Forge, tech the tech to the warp drive.' I'm serious. If you look at those scripts, you'll see that."
Again, you don't need to spill your secret sauce to share your idea.
Spelling "kidz" with a z is a pretty good warning of how awful it's bound to be.
Posted on SO:

Meteor has data validation already, though not user authentication.

The model is that the server chooses what data to expose for reading, and the server also performs the real writes against the database. The client only simulates the mutations. You can define your own mutations ("methods"), and have them simulated on the client or not. If access checks pass on the client, they still might fail on the server. The server can run additional or different code, and you can hide this code from the client by putting it in the "server" directory. If the method results in different side-effects on the server than on the client, the differences are synced down to the client -- exactly what you'd want.

However, in new projects, to make things easier for first-time Meteor developers, we auto-publish all server data. To turn this off, type "meteor remove autopublish". That is, auto-publishing is the default for new projects but not the default for meteor overall.
I assume since you mentioned Kolmogorov complexity, that you probably have an understanding of how compression works.

Why would you add the layer of indirection of running a compression algorithm over something, when it has to measure the same thing you're trying to get at?

Given a character '1' at the beginning of a password, how likely is it that '2' is the next character? Compression tools answer this question, but then they go a different direction with the application of their answer.

Also, if your password guesser guesses anything but '123456' as its first guess, it's suboptimal, since that really is the most frequent password.
No doubt the JOBS act, especially the 5 year rule on oversight, was written by lawyers. Oh wait, a lawyer is signing it...
Apple is quickly enjoying a dominant position in mobile devices that Microsoft once enjoyed with desktop computers.

This can't be true while Android is the dominant mobile OS, and Amazon is the dominant eBook reader.
I disagree that there is no benefit in passing tests that don't change your behavior. Those tests are markers to prevent you from unknowingly doing something that should have changed your behavior. That is where the nuance enters: is this a marker I want to lay down or not? Some markers should be there; others absolutely should not and just introduce noise.
9 year old's DIY Cardboard Arcade gets Flash mobbed: Video
Watch his reaction! Over $82,000 has been raised for his scholarship fund.
The analogy is flawed. Consumers don't get locked into a 2-year contract forcing them to shop at Walmart exclusively. If they did, and Walmart required, say, a cut of all DVDs purchased for play on a Walmart-sold TV, I think that certainly would qualify for restraint of trade. Target could push their DVD prices all the way to zero and shoppers would still be stuck with their Walmart contracts.

(edit for those not reading carefully: Saying that the contract is willful has nothing to do with the argument. Consumers do not sign contracts with retailers. So applying logic about retail sales is a flawed analysis. Doing things like leveraging the illiquidity of platform choice to increase prices in a way that would be legal for a retailer is not, necessarily, legal for a platform vendor. Apple has control over the market that Walmart does not. That's what the whole idea of "restraint of trade" is about.)
16 states file lawsuits against Apple, joining DOJ’s antitrust fight
If it were really purely functional it wouldn't even warm up. When you compile your code, referential transparency would result in your executable being nothing more than the final value produced by your code.
I agree. I didn’t say it would be easy, though. ☺
In fact, understanding “magic” is bloody difficult. It it weren’t so, then it wouldn’t be “magic”.

It’s also worth observing that Meteor is not presented as a “framework”. The comparison with Rails was introduced here, on HN. They say it’s “a set of new technologies”. I guess this implies loose coupling, which is a healthy paradigm when applied to components/modules/objects of a development ecosystem.

If only Meteor were nothing more than a proof of concept, it would still be mind-blowing.
"Raise the Crime Rate"
Uhh… none, seeing as any imperative program can be translated directly into a purely functional one by threading an implicit global state parameter around everywhere. Then it's just a matter of your compiler recognizing this paradigm (for example, Mercury does this).

Equivalently, I can write an x86 emulator in a functional language whose time per instruction is independent of the amount of memory used. Then I can just compile an imperative program and run it on my emulator without any asymptotic slowdown.

How, you ask? Either (a) my language provides me O(1) functional arrays (e.g. Mercury does this), or (b) I use an O(log n) structure (such as a binary tree): since n is bounded by the size of physically addressable memory, this reduces to O(1). (See also rwmj's comment about memory access times. [1])

The real question to ask is, what is the asymptotic cost of programming in a language without an O(1) array structure? (A property which unfortunately has falsely come to be associated with purely functional programming, due to early functional languages being merely naïve interpreters of the lambda calculus.) The answer to this question of course is likely O(log n).

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3828860
It's pretty comfortable, I read complaints about it being too tight. It seems to come packaged at the tightest possible level (mostly I think this is to save space in the box it comes in). It took me a few nights of fiddling to loosen it enough, haven't had an issue comfort-wise since the first few days.

I'd say it comes off maybe twice a month or so. Mostly I think this is me moving around at night but it hasn't caused me any issue waking up, I have a pattern where I wake-up around 3am to go to the bathroom (and/or let my cat out) so when it has happened, I notice I'm not wearing it and throw it back on when I get back into bed. I've never had it come off and wake up in the morning without it on.

The only other issue to be aware of, the software can be a bit buggy. I updated it last week on a trip and it killed the app (would open, but as soon as I put the headband on it closed itself). I ended up having to remove it entirely from my iPhone and pull it down 'clean' from the appstore. Minor, but I lost my settings which were pretty easy to re-add.

Edit: I forgot to mention I use to be a caffeine addict in the morning, starting my day with a mountain dew, and in recent more healthy years, switched to green-tea. I no longer drink anything other than water with my morning vitamins. This is probably the most striking thing I've noticed about waking up at the 'right time'.
I don't understand why this was down voted? Surely I make a good point? I'm sure there is a lot of amazing talent that don't spend any time at all working on stuff that other people will ever get to see beyond the domain of what they are working on?

Sorry I don't have a github account or a blog but I was too busy making sure Google search actually works.
Asus Eee Pad MeMo benchmarks come out fighting, other slates take note (video)
Nobody gets forced into anything. You agree to a 2-year contract when you decide to get a phone for ~$400 below market price.
Udacity Course on Building a Search Engine
Do you have an example of where city would clarify a zip code further? I'd expect large cities to be the case, but New York, NY seems to get everywhere, so maybe it's country roads? And state is certainly unnecessary, are there any zipcodes that cross states?
Nobody gets locked into a 2 year contract forcing them to do anything with Apple.

iPads are not sold on contract. iPhones come with a contract, but the contract doesn't force you to keep using the device - just the wireless service.

You can sell the phone and buy a different one to use with the same contract if you don't like it.
I can't upvote you enough. Too often programmers conflate "functional programming" with "availability of an O(1) array data type". The former does not imply lack of the latter, and (as you stated) lack of the latter does not imply the former.

The important takeaway I think, is that O(log n) approaches O(1) for all practical values of n.

To the downvoters: gee golly, would it hurt you to reply to my comment? If you think I'm wrong then say why!
Considering the fact that only legitimate way to get an app on the device is through app store, its more like your ISP demanding a cut from developers based on different features in web applications. ISPs are reduced to dumb pipes. It's time app stores go the same route.
Love it. It is a little easy to guess the URL of other peoples meetings.
> It's Apple's store.

Amazon's website is not Apple's store. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. do not sell books through the Apple App Store.

The analogy would be Walmart getting a % from songs bought on an iPod if the iPod itself was purchased from Walmart.
HAHA that brings back memories.

I would imagine most of the HN audience was born after those characters were popular.
Before OMGPOP Sold For $210 Million, The CEO Hired Back Everyone He Laid Off
[How To] Record And Share Terminal Screencasts Quickly 
Awesome shelr tool for plain text terminal screencasting!
I've been covered on Techcrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb, GigaOm, Lifehacker, etc., multiple times, and I can say for sure that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

Sure it's not as effective as long time ago when there used to be this thing called "being Techcrunch'd", but it's nowhere as ineffective as that guy pointed out. It doesn't matter if his original statement included the part about "techcrunch UK" or not. His argument is based on his limited experience of being covered on TechCrunch UK which no one even reads, and a little mention from a short story.

I wouldn't say "ditch the arrogant tech blogs because they're not effective", if I've never been really covered by one. If you get covered properly, it still brings in tons of traffic.
You're right, but for me another challenge was to try to circumvent cheating. If I see players that try to win by pure Ruby hackery I'd like to see if there's a Ruby way to make sure that hackery doesn't work (inside Game, Player, or PlayerProxy). Is there a way in Ruby to prevent a module from overriding a method of the class in which its included?
Microsoft buys it(now officially)

I wonder what the implications would be for Qt and KDE. I know Microsoft has made some Linux commits in the past (in regards to its own interests), but I can't imagine how it would justify actively developing a product which has no place on Windows Phone (yet?) and only serves to weaken Windows' stranglehold on the desktop.
You raise a valid point, and one that a lot of algorithm and data structure textbooks neglect to mention at all; seen purely from a practical perspective, things like locality of data with respect to CPU caches are probably more important than picking a slightly cleverer algorithm/data structure on any modern-day CPU.

This once again raises the more subdued or neglected aspect of "premature optimisation": blindly picking an algorithm that looks better on paper may in reality be much slower than a naive algorithm that better matches the characteristics of a computer.

Some algorithms are O(1) and you could easily be fooled into believing that they are, indeed, always better than their counterparts that're asymptotically worse than a constant-time; that may not be so, though, if the "constant-time" computations required for non-trivial inputs take longer than say a linear one.
Ubuntu Unity. 1920 by 1080 on a no-name LCD LED monitor. Launcher on left set to 32px. Browser in right half, terminal/Gedit in left half (use the shift-alt arrow key shortcuts to semi-tile).

Might consider a second 1920 by 1080 to get to 4 million pixels on the cheap
> I guess we will start seeing the Nokia MS partnership success going forward when Nokia really has a chance of adding value to MS products.

I doubt that. The biggest change was that the mobile devices turned from devices (that people buy and use, but rarely get 3rd-party software for) into platforms (that people buy to have access to 3rd-party software). The big difference is that there are not that much positive externalities for market share for devices, but positive network effects absolutely determine the platform market.

That's why Windows rules the desktop, and that is why Android will do so in the handset. I predict that all competitors will effectively be dead in 2 years, and only Android and iOS remain.
No matter what you do, you cannot not accept messages from people you have befriended...and those are never deleted.
I tried that out too, but it didn't seem to make it any easier for me to wake up (still felt sleepy/groggy). I decided to buy the Zeo since they had it at my local best-buy and I could easily return it. I honestly didn't expect it to work any better.
When someone sent me the '5Fri, 5Sat, 5Sun only every 823 years' email I sent a quick refutation and explained that there are just a couple variations of the calendar. It went something like this:

The first day of the year has 7 seven choices. It's either a leap year or it isn't. Also 823 is a prime number. Can you now figure out why this isn't true? (You can also prove it by looking at the calendar when you double click on the time in Windows.)

The person did not want to be enlightened and I was deemed a buzzkill.

The lesson I learned is to be careful when educating someone when it may take away that person's 'awe and wonder'. That is why atheists should avoid trying to reason away the faith of the religious.
"It's Apple's store."

But it's your device. When I buy a consumer product -- such as a $700 tablet -- why should the manufacturer (who happens to make enormous margins on it) get a cut of everything else I do on it? Why, if I bought a book in the Kindle app (which I can't do because of this problem), does Apple deserve a penny? I of course can't install alternatives outside of the App Store as Apple prevents it.

This is akin to GM demanding a 30% cut of all groceries that I buy and carry in it. Where else in the market is this sort of behavior tolerated? My television manufacturer demanding a 30% cut of the DVD that I bought. Etc.

A consumer could simply buy an alternative, but that is seldom as simple as it at first blush may seem. "Just use something other than Winodws" a million apologist would rant. That's why large companies get constant oversight.

This is where Apple's incredible success is going to, well, haunt them a bit. When they were the underdog, emerging from years of excellent products but little commercial success, they could get a way with this. As a $600 billion dollar colossus with completely unprecedented profits, however, the behaviors get more attention.
That one was actually on my initial list. I left it out though because I have just recently started working out regularly. But yes, so far I have been getting better night sleeps after my workout days.
The U.S. Government’s Top-Secret Town
I wonder how much money they burned to get that domain name. Overall, this seems to be a production that feels much glossier and slicker than other technology "debuts". Is this the new way to launch a technology? Razzle and dazzle the programmer into the latest cargo cult... :/
On this, I tend to think that many (most?) libraries, especially where they don't have extreme performance requirements, should have run-time testing. I.e., pre- and post-condition checks, or contracts.
Share your Facebook story as a video by Microsoft
I think part of maturing into an adult is realizing that future-you is not the same as present-you. Understanding that fact can help you solve problems like getting up in the morning; in fact the OP offers such solutions: Schedule an important meeting or event early in the morning that forces you to get up.

See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...
Doesn't build with the gold linker. Feh.
There was an interesting article on HN today about the "wholesale model" versus the "agency model". Apple is forcing the agency model down all publisher's throats - music, movies, books, apps.

The agency model lets Apple get a fixed 30% no matter what the price the publisher chooses to sell. The retail price is in effect fixed to the wholesale price, and there are no sales and no competition at the retail level.

The wholesale model is the publisher sets the price and the retail sells it for whatever they wish. So one store can offer New York Times bestsellers at 30% off, while another store sells them fixed price, and another store has a "buyers club" that gets you 10% off everything in the store.

The variable pricing model, wholesale, is better for consumers. The fixed pricing model, agency, is better for the retailers. It's the same for publishers since they get their wholesale price either way.

Apple is smart - they think this "sell it as cheap as you can make a profit" model is not for them. It's always been their model actually.
That is not exactly what is happening, based on how I'm reading this.

Apple is demanding 30% of any sale made on Amazon's website through Amazon's app, because it is an iPhone app. Amazon is not selling products through iBooks.
I already have an inPulse but this is so cool I just backed Pebble on Kickstarter too. I really hope the battery life is as good as you are claiming, because the 20ish hour bat life on my inPulse is currently the biggest pain point. Great work guys, I'm glad to see you progressing so quickly.

Any Kickstarter bonuses for the early inPulse adopters?
Hard Work is a Given, Luck is No Guarantee (A Lesson from YouGift)
Do you have any recommendations on a good stats book (easy to read/understand but not as low level as a "dummies" book)?
As a grain farmer, it is rare to see much happen around this farm before 11AM. Except, perhaps, repair some downed equipment. You pretty much always need the morning sunshine to dry up the fields from the overnight dew before they are ready to be worked in again.
Android vulnerability gives apps access to sensitive data without permission
The original article is very good: http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate
If you're looking to manage code smell, check out Code Climate - http://codeclimate.com. We use it as an awesome gut check for your code coverage as you write more code. It helps you see at a macro level: "Are you writing better or worse code over time?". Pretty cool stuff.
Successful Companies That Were Started in a Weekend
This blog has a strangely contradictory nature. The tagline is "Nature does not like or grant monopolies. Monopolies Fail", and yet the piece is all about how government needs to intervene.
Short answer: No. Nothing in Ruby is truly private, and even if you did manage to hide references to something, you could always find it in ObjectSpace. I could even undefine your Game class and replace it with my own (I reject your reality, and substitute my own!)

To get true cheating prevention, you'd have to do something like spawn off another Ruby process and use some kind of IPC to pass events to your "client" process and receive actions back to your "server" process. All canonical state would be held by the "server" process.

This is really the classic "don't trust the client" problem that all games run into. :)
What Would YOU Do?
"By contrast, all eBook apps from competing eBook stores — such as those from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and others — cannot offer an identical shopping experience. They are disallowed by Apple. Apple has demanded from each of its iBookstore competitors a 30% cut of any purchases made using Apple APIs for what is called “in-app purchasing.”"

Saying that Apple doesn't allow those publishers to sell books at all and then in the next sentence saying they do allow it doesn't help your argument.
Don't forget about the long-lost sibling-swarm of Africanized bees that is actually a jerk, but with a heart of gold (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JerkWithAHeartOfG...).
DELICIAS NORTE�AS DE ANTA�O