skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Biggest problem with Chrome plugins for HN is they clash with existing ones (from my experience) eg http://hckrnews.com/about.html
It's not actually the difference to pi that matters, it's the "quality" of the approximation, as described in the article. You can always get better approximations by using larger denominators, it's just that some approximations are, given the size of the denominator, unreasonably good.

355/113 is one of those.
Yep, and the reason they work so well is that everybody has the exact same model laptop.

I couldn't care less what the standard is, as long as it's a standard and everybody uses it. 400-pin docking station connectors are not standard, and pity the fool who tries to change that.
The "feature" is a simple crud application for job postings on their corporate website. How much re-factoring and testing is necessary?

I doubt the code would need to be re-used in their main product, and why would you need anything more then user testing?

I doubt the co-founder is now prancing around talking about how coding is easy. She spent 36 hours developing a simplistic feature that would take an experienced developer less then a day.
Going through school, I felt like I received a ridiculous pro-european level of propaganda, as though every innovation that was worth anything came from that continent. And the propaganda worked. Even though I now know better, I am still a little surprised when I hear of a technological marvel that non-europeans came up with.

Basically, you are right. Just about every civilization has produced startlingly clever innovations for their environment. Saying Chinese are clever or Europeans are clever, or Africans are clever, is a bad way of looking at the world. But I don't mind pro-other-continent bias so much because I feel like all it's doing is helping to provide some balance for the pro-europe bias I was raised with.
So, who really did invent the Internet?
Supersonic biplanes: More fuel efficient, quieter sonic booms
The CSS WG wanted that both the <angle> and the keywords to be consistent: both are indicating a direction now. The 'to' was added in order to let the old and new syntax coexist during the transition time.
'with' gets better with python 3.1
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2674
Session Fixation and Hijacking - Basic Security Part 6
Exactly, my stance on software patents is that they do not necessarily cover the coder's method, it creates an entitlement to the result. Almost every software patent I've seen doesn't mention specific code, it just covers the result. Meaning no one can ever come up with a similar system without the threat of being sued for patent infringement. So, even if someone had a better way to make a similar system, they more than likely will get sued. "I have a patent that covers software that checks licenses over a network; therefore you can never make software that checks licenses over a network without paying me money." How does that allow for someone to do "something else"?
> I don't think it's a huge attack vector to plug in untrusted monitors.

Yet. Give it a couple of years. The monitors are really smart now - many of them running code and have flash memory. The attack won't be directly by the monitor - the monitor will have been infected by malware earlier ... say, by an infected computer ...

Our devices are getting too smart, and our protocols getting too trusty, for our own sake. (Although I'm sure governments and other law abusers like the RIAA are raising a glass to each of these "advancements")
Clever. It's like CAPTCHA for programmers. It wouldn't be much more difficult than the current registration process.
In 25 years, the kids will still be trying to decide which approach is black-and-white "correct", while the experienced will still be using a blend of styles depending on the given problem.

Eliminating side effects sounds brilliant until you start interacting with filesystems or networks. What, you can't memoize those ops or split them across a pmap?
Seen this? http://hackerfollow.com/
If Vmware would offer Softwareraid with esx(i) i will consider it for my customers
The narration is not needed for the story, is jarring enough that it brings you out of the movie, and is done very poorly by Harrison Ford.
I actually learned to type mostly by playing text based games (muds [telnet elephant.org]). Having to type fast enough to not get killed by the monsters helped me learn. Of course alot of players just set up scripts or triggers in mud clients. I mostly used straight telnet to play.
http://roundabout.io
Denventory Founder Austin Kelly On Self-Funding, Outsourcing & Bears
There’s a startup in Arkansas that insurance companies wish didn’t exist and it’s protecting homeowners by providing them proof of record of their assets.

It’s called Denventory and founder Austin Kelly has created a way for homeowners to keep a home inventory online.
That's a good reply. Number 3 might work really well.
Logically you'd split every time, it's safer and guaranteed. However the expectation that someone else is going to steal so you steal makes twisted sense in a 'if I can't have they can't have it' way, which is human nature in children through to adults.
Would be much cooler if instead of dismanling the traps they moved them to the paths that hunters go through to check if anything got caught.
It got out of hand, but it's still a rather nice paradigm if you're actually simulating a system or designing a GUI. Teaching it as the One True Paradigm is certainly bad, but it certainly has its uses.
When I was freelance I was lucky enough to get paid on time. Every time. I attribute it to the communication I had with the client. I would speak or email the client everyday I was working on their project. When it came time to invoice them I would simply send out an email.

Communicate often. It helps.
From what I hear I'd place the average for a solid experienced dev at around 40k-60k Euro per year with a pretty wide spread [1]. It's hard to tell though, I might be living in a bubble :)

[1] 3+ years, at least one larger scale project. Knowledge of more than 1 programming language
Interesting story. Makes me want to pickup an old project of mine too.
Everyone knows that ruby is ~10 times slower than anything else the question is how the expressiveness compares.

Of course the amount is code is going to be greater because you are more explicit about types. I program in ruby for a living and do some C# as a hobby so I know the differences..
True, I didn't do the quality measure they talk of.
I was just fascinated by:

"For example, use any scientific calculator to compute cos(355) in radians. The oddball result is due to the freakish closeness of 355/113 to pi."

And wanted to see what else would fit this criteria...
Other comments in the thread seem to fit what I'm seeing in job postings and from word of mouth. 50-60k EUR gross, maybe you can do better, maybe not. I could be totally wrong though, as the poster above me just said 40k.

If you want to make a ton of money as a programmer, the US is still where it's at IMO.
Welcome to software patents.
The Rise of the Junkweb and Why It’s Awesome or At Least Inevitable
What would you choose ? MIT's 6.00x or Hardvard's CS50x ?
MIT's one looks more mathematical oriented, and probably a bit more difficult but better quality (I've seen some of the Python videos of MIT's OpenCourseWare)

CS50 looks more "fast paced" as it teaches you several paradigms, but I'd rather learn more C than Python.

I can't make up my mind. I've programmed a bit, in Python, C and now a bit of C++ (Also a bit of Haskell) but I never took any kind of classes nor studied things like Algorithms or Data Structures in deep.

What would you choose ?
The Opportunity Backlobg
10% a week interest is forbidden, by law, in my country.
This is a good story that any website worth while goes through. Definitively a good read.
I've been a huge fan of Talentopoly for a couple years now. Even as a low-level still-learning developer, it's been invaluable. The Job Boards idea in a more 'intimate' setting seems pretty brilliant too. Trusted people sharing trusted job opportunities (to a degree). Good stuff Jared.
Incorporated in January 1977. They became the great marketer in the last few years so what is the suggested concept the article makes; that the 3-point marketing philosophy will have no large effect for 30 years and then boom, instant great market leader?
Glossary of Scrum Terms
Food Tech & Media a $1.5 Billion Industry, Research Says
> Perhaps you wanted to use a different link? This one says that it [ruby] is ~10 times slower [than C#]?

The link is correct. See the "code" section where Ruby has 2-3x less code. I won't disagree about Ruby being much slower than C# and Java. Ruby slow[er]ness has to do with it being dynamically typed, which also makes it expressive. If you are after something which is more expressive than C# and faster than C# see Scala on the JVM:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=al...
Leveraging Your Social Media Budget
Great story, I don't feel so guilty now :)
Thanks, glad you liked it
The first open company
> HTML tags are meant to be semantic.

I totally agree with this and gave my own detailed explanation of the difference between semantic and non-semantic HTML here --> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4284054
Wow this is so cool, I'm adding this to my .bashrc as well! Thanks for the tip :)
Google spent 8 times more on government lobbying than Apple in Q2 2012
I'd really appreciate better pricing (e.g. risk free, pay after you succeed, etc..), at least for Android platform.
While they are both "single cable" solutions, their differences give them different uses. Currently there are lots of cheap USB gadgets, and you probably have lots of USB cables floating around your house. Thunderbolt uses active cables, which means the cables contain hardware to code the signal specially for that cable. This allows much better guarantees of throughput, while making cables much more expensive. With this in mind, I think we are likely to see thunderbolt used in more 'dedicated' scenarios, like removable harddrives, displays, and printers. Daisy chaining means you don't need many ports either.

On the other hand, USB cables are cheap, but have less guarantees on throughput. In fact, since many ports could be on one hub, you can't even use all ports to there maximum potential. USB is likely to stay in its current position for the foreseeable future though.
Startup News: Shop ‘Local’ Edition
You can easily generate all fractions in lowest terms within a disk by using a recursive Farey sequence generator.
Garbage collection is actually a lot easier with 64 bit pointers, since the odds of a random collision between pointers and non-pointer data goes way, way down. And because the ratio of memory in use to total address space goes down.
When will we give less importance to all these expert's opinions.

All type of Experts (finance, education, media ... you name it) have their own opinion that they think is correct and is applicable to all and people will behave according to the expert's prediction. But in reality, the common man behaves differently.

Media hype or not, Khan's videos were watched and enjoyed by more common men even though these experts might find it uninteresting.
Ask HN: What frustrates you most about online learning?
Hello all,

I've been exploring an idea lately and wanted to get your opinion on this. I think it's clear that online learning will transform education as we know it. There are many benefits to the coming education model (notably, cost of learning approaching nil) however it is not without it's shortcomings.

So without any prompting or conditioning, I'm curious to know what frustrates you most about learning online today. Are there aspects of traditional learning that have been left behind?
Improving people's lives can take many routes.

I do agree that "infrastructure can only be as useful as the applications they support" but I disagree strongly that "there isn't much point if it is just for our own edification". Advances are built on top of each other and some of them can seem obscure to the lay person. If no-one were pushing those boundaries we might not be in a position to discuss whether 'facetagram' is more impactful than 'instabook'. In that way, I'd argue that infrastructure is fundamentally more important due to it's multiplier effect (consider what EC2 has enabled).

I believe Marc Andreessan once said that Netscape wouldn't have been possible were it not for all the technology/infrastructure that went before it. He likened it to the icing/frosting on the cake. I can't seem to find the exact quote now though.
I can't tell from the post, but is the <angle> argument for linear gradients still optional? Ie. is the following still valid?

linear-gradient(#fff, #eee)
I used to think that too. But I just measured my ExoPC slate (Tablet, Atom N450, Pine Trail chipset); It draws 0.1W while suspended, 9W idling with screen off, 13W idling with screen on, and 18W with screen on and 100% CPU.
WellsFargo Ignores Case Sensativity on passwords
To everyone who has a WellsFargo bank account: Call up their online banking and talk to a representative and ask for a FREE RSA token to add 2 factor authentication to your bank account.

Wells Fargo DOES NOT respect case sensitivity in passwords. ABC123 is the same abc123, your password strength is getting cut in half. Call and demand a free token - # is 1-800-956-4442 . Go to Account Services -> My Profile -> Managed Advanced Access and order the RSA token. Once you do tell them you want the charge waived.

After calling them and getting a call back from their IT department, they are aware of this and have no immediate fix planned.
The word for that is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion , and it's interesting that it was a core component of Xanadu (see the Wikipedia link there).
Just because they have no right to use the software, doesn't mean you can act maliciously. If they have no right to use the work, just ask for an injunction -- a legal kill switch.
The key to freemium monetization
> instead of the 13.8v ports we currently have in cars.

That's a bit too much precision for that standard. It's only ~13.8 V when your car is running and the alternator is charging the battery. When the car is off, it'll be 13 V or slightly less.
Fair point. Thanks for pointing that out.

> "While there are some great JVM GCs, I wouldn't walk away with the impression that the .NET folks are behind by any means.	"

Can the .NET GC provide deterministic real-time collection pauses? e.g.:

http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/java/oracle-jrockit-re...
As a first impression from viewing the site, I didn't understand what it was offering. It mentions social sharing, but it wasn't until I read over the copy a few times that I actually understood that your service will takes new content from a website and post links to that content on social media sites and newsletters. I agree with what other people are saying, try to make it clearer what you're offering.
It is worth the price if you need the features. If Running a few VMs on a server there is no reason to pay 6k for vSphere.
Exactly. Not taking advantage of what you can do - and how easy you can do it - in the code right away just means more time wasted. Once you get the basic layout out, all Photoshop is good for is finding the colors you're going to use (which a lot of times, tools like Colllor in addition to preprocessors with color functions can supplement) and quickly prototyping something just to see it (which is easier in Illustrator, anyhow).

With things like this and CSSHat, I fear that people will use these tools not to learn from, but to immediately sell themselves as devs and further worsen the state of an industry that's already lost its passion for the combination of art and experience by cutting all corners possible.
And the patent abuse continues...
Another citation from 4 years ago for good measure: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/java/oracle-jrockit-re...
Gon v4.0.0 is out with gon.watch feature
Aurasma - mobile library to create AR apps
Thanks for mentioning this! I'll take a look when I have some time.
I'm "ok" with that, it's a property of non-overridable equality tests, where arrays are "standard objects" (with natively implemented lots of things, but still objects) rather than built-in magical special cases of the language (although there are still things done by arrays I don't think you can do without recent extensions to the spec, such as

js> var a = []
js> a[42] = 3
3
js> a.length
43

) as opposed to e.g. Go where a few blessed types have access to features Go users do not have any possible access to.

It bothers me significantly more that

[1] == 1

does not return false in JS. Although the rules through which this is reached are clear.
Rules for startups: Startup advice compiled from 50+ Best Entrepreneurship Books
Pdf version costs only $5.

Books summarized inside:

Entrepreneuring - 16 books
Selling - 9 books
Pricing and Profiting - 3 books
Branding and Marketing - 15 books
Online Marketing - 7 books
Web Development - 3 books
Managing Basics - 5 books

At the end, you will find useful quotes from popular writers on startup topics, including Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and my favorite, Paul Graham
Well... I just hope it gets cheaper and/or licensing becomes easier.

At work, among our infrastructure are just two servers that I really want to get FT working on... the foundation packs don't seem to cover FT, so, it is a jump up to two server licenses + 1 VCenter license at over 10k in total!

There is such a jump from their starter kits to the full thing if you just want a couple of features!

...Don't even get me started on their USD <> GBP exchange rate! - http://i.imgur.com/KWOHH.png

Looking in to Hyper-V right now...
I think it's the sheer variety.

For example, at one point in my life I worked 8-hour office days and 8-hour evenings as a bartender. I was astonished to discover I could do this for months without getting exhausted at all, because they used completely different parts of my brains, with virtually zero overlap. Office work was intellectual, bar work was physical and social.

I personally can't do truly effective, intellectual coding for more than about four hours in a day. After that, it exhausts me. But I can happily deal with meetings, or project management, or marketing or whatnot. So because startup founders can often divide their time up into blocks of entirely different tasks, it makes sense they can work effectively over longer hours.

Note, I'm not talking about being interrupted all the time, though -- I'm talking about 4 hours of coding, 4 hours of meeting, 2 hours of product, 4 hours of marketing.
Get Curious - Mars Rover
Pushing a wheeled cart allows for more control but can obstruct visibility. Pulling one can lead to back problems.
Not just that, but at $1500 per seat for MonoTouch and MonoDroid it is way too expensive.
Closed for Business
My favorite illustration of the reason why OO and FP each have their strengths is the expression problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_problem

Briefly, functional programming is good at one use case (adding new operations over the data type) and weak at one use case (adding new data type variants), while OO is the opposite (adding new data type variants is easy, while adding new operations is not). You have to choose between OO and FP based on which notion of extensibility is more important to you for the problem at hand (unless you use the relatively exotic solutions of multimethods or the generics trick that Wadler originally proposed).

My takeaway is that OO and FP both have their time and place, and the pragmatic programmer will learn when to use one or the other instead of choosing one camp and bashing the other side.
The more customers or partners pay when funding a custom development or implementing a solution, the more interest they will have to make it succeed. If only not to look like an idiot to their boss or management peers. Whereas if something is 'free' it can be quietly swept under the rug much easily.
Interesting story
Amelia Earhart: Expedition returns without evidence
Yes, that works in my Firefox 16.
Since a true machine charger would have its data ports wired to ground, couldn't you make simple adapter that ensured that was the case? Then security wouldn't be an issue?
It's fantastic how these people were able to play the metagame like that.

I suspect that if you caught on to this, the best strategy would in fact be to impersonate the Southampton players, mimicking the ten-move dance, and then perpetually defect, assuring the best strategy against either the "always defect" or "always cooperate" players.
This is a submission of the original, of which this ...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4284974
... is a blatant rip-off.
Project Management Challenges around documents
I feel this is how all charities should be run.
Hopefully they decide to deal with it in the standard and make data blocking (or power-only if you prefer) cables feasible.
I wouldn't say it violates the premise of The Selfish Gene. The question is, can the animal easily distinguish between members of its somewhat close kin and one it isn't closely related to? Without this ability, any animal that looks similar enough would be subject to behavior attributed to kin-altruism. For a lot of animals in the wild I would wager that they lack the ability to discriminate between close and distant kin.
A lot to ask from a small, relatively new company. Xamarin already offer a free trial version (fully functional except deploy to emulator only) and a 30 day money back guarantee after purchasing. You also get a year's updates for free.

Edit: what is "risk free"?
Now submitted in its own right:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285956
Apple to attend Black Hat Security Conference for the first time
Don't worry, I was only quoting the titles of the tips.

The explaination and screenshots on your website made this fifth tip very clear to me !
Does Java's license still forbid its use in medical equipment, aviation systems and nuclear facility control?

I imagine then that the licensor can put what ever terms in the license that they choose. I'd like to watch, though, as you go about enforcing a "No War" license on somebody who is prepared to wage a war.
Employee #1 at Yahoo on the future of education
PDF Image Extraction using Saaspose.PDF REST API and SDKs
Ask HN: Continue building or move on?
I've spent the last few months working on the MVP of an idea and could use a bit of outside perspective on whether or not i should find a developer and continue moving forward or move on to other things.

http://showw.me/noah

The goal is to unify your online services in such a way that allows emphasis on content rather than the platform so you can engage in just photos, videos, articles, etc regardless of service.

1. activity feed across all services: everyone's activity all in one feed filtered by content type. (built)

2. public profile: your posts all in one page for family and friends to see what you're doing or even employers to see what your activities. (built)

The product roadmap could easily keep myself and one other person busy for another 6 months as various (really cool) key pieces of functionality are added in and the existing site gets optimized.

Feedback is hugely appreciated as i'm at a cross-roads and non-biased opinions will help me decide. If there are questions about concept, features, or revenue i'm happy to chat.

- @noah_lucas
What you propose wouldn't be "risk free", it would be simply transferring your risk to Xamarin (they have to develop and support users that don't end up paying).

Xamarin puts out a quality product, they should charge a price for it relative to the value it can bring a MOTIVATED developer. And if we want to use it we should pay for it. I don't want to wake up tomorrow to see that they dropped the price to 5 bucks hoping to win on volume only to find out soon afterward that Microsoft paid them 25 million to stop development.