skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even more unfair than drugs, there are native abilities. Some lucky ones are born athletes, others… well. A good body is a totally unfair advantage. Yet this is not cheating. Similarly some people are just brighter, smarter and less lazy than others. They will breeze through while others must sweat tears and blood if they ever hope to enter college. This is even more unfair, yet it is still not cheating.

The reason dope is officially cheating in sports is because they are a breach of explicit rules. It is the same as removing an enemy pawn when no one is looking. You could perfectly have sports where the use of dope were permitted (I'm not sure I would endorse it though: it may have unhealthy consequences —oh, wait it did).

Now college entrance exams are about selecting students smart enough to make it through the curriculum, and make a worthy career afterwards. Ideally, you'd want to select those most likely to succeed. My take is this: any way to deceive that predictor is cheating. Anything else is not. By this analysis, nootropics are cheating only to the extent they deceive the predictor. My bet is that someone willing to take such drugs to go to college will probably continue to do so later (permanently or when needed). In this case, the drug doesn't fool the predictor, it actually helps being a little smarter in the long term. What would be cheating would be to take the drugs for a short term benefit, then never or rarely do that again.

Finally, this really is not a zero-sum game. Even if only an elite 1% take those drugs, even if it does make things even more unfair than they already are, those people may solve problems faster for the rest of us, so we all benefit. And boy do we have problems that need solving.

Starting with Death.[1]

(One last detail: nootroopics also have to work and not have nasty side effects. Personally, I'm still a bit afraid.)

[1] I work from naturalistic assumptions. For those who believe in an afterlife: imagine your soul being destroyed instead of living happily ever after. I don't want that either.
It can call into C easily: http://golang.org/cmd/cgo/
Thanks!

I've come to the same conclusions (regarding the quality of visitor) for the very same reasons. Very much just a cheap way to get traffic, but not the best quality at all.

Did the 'organic campaign' result in higher quality visitors at all, or just the same kind of people as before?
Doesn't work with Erdös number, in case any of you were wondering.
It's probably not addictive, but what if you become addicted to the lifestyle it makes possible?

Steroids are considered psychologically addictive for this reason.
The language seems in need of refinement to get significant performance in match of JVM JIT, not to mention c.
You spent the entire comment condemning the lack of experimentation protocol, yet your final challenge is the most trivial of all.

What conclusion could you draw from your proposed duel? If someone can't beat you in a standardized IQ test after ingesting 20mg of amphetamine? Or a cup of coffee? Or 5g of a racetam? Seems to me your conclusion would be "I perform better than you even when you're mentally stimulated". Okay, you're smart and awesome.

I'd wager that most people taking nootropics are looking for personal results in our ubiquitous struggle to ward off lethargy while spurring motivation and concentration, not to win some mental duel with their peers.
Virgin to reward most frequent flyer with free trip into space
> No, This Is Not the Best iPhone Ever

Yes, it is.

Apple generally doesn't bother to release a new version of a product until they've managed to make it significantly better than the last version, hence nearly every Apple product is "the best ever" version of that product. That earlier iPhones were "the best ever" when they were released in no way suggests that this one isn't also "the best ever".

And the fact that they finally replaced the dock connector is one of the things that makes it better. They've removed that constant tiny annoyance of putting it in the wrong way, they've made a key part slightly more reliable than it was, and they've freed up more room to make products smaller or fit more stuff (including battery) in the existing space.
"1 and 3 - that's their ages rather than their names"

Maybe it's still too early in the morning for me, but I laughed at that way harder than I should have. Haha, thanks for that.
>Modafinil. Stay away from it. The stuff is wickedly addictive and many people have experienced significant long-term side effects, especially if they try to go off it.

I have known quite a number of people who have taken modafinil, and none of them experienced more than minor side effects. I have several friends who stopped using it for long periods because they built a tolerance (tolerance != addiction), but none experienced withdrawal symptoms.

I used adrafinil for a while because it has the advantage of being unscheduled in the US, and I noticed weak tolerance building, but the only side effects I had were insomnia (while it was in effect) and mild headaches which went away with aspirin. The only reason I stopped taking it was that they revoked its approval in France, and none of the generics from other countries that I've found seem to work.
NYC approves ban on sugary drinks over 16 oz.
I was the same way. Then I got a case/battery pack for my iPhone for a conference trip.

Wow, now I just love the ability to flip a switch and get another 5 or so hours of battery life.

Sure it's practically doubled the weight of the phone but the phone is already so light that I hardly notice.
Go has FFI hooks with "import C", outside of that I haven't found anything (though Go's way looks much simpler than typical FFI setups at first glance). No direct access to C / C++ libraries like D does, though that's probably a good thing.
I question his motives because he recommends Piracetam daily dosage of 3 to 5 grams and said it may take up to 6 weeks to realize the effects.

I bought Piracetam on Amazon after someone here on HN recommended it, and for the past 2 months have been taking 800 mg per day. I often skip a few days and have not noticed any addiction symptoms.

I doubled my dosage one day, so took 1600 mg that day, and felt sick to my stomach. When I repeated the 1600 mg experiment again 2 weeks later, I threw up. I am 190 lbs 6 ft, YMMV but I can't imagine taking 3 to 5 grams.

Within a few minutes of swallowing a pill (800 mg) I feel more alert and without the jitteriness that caffeine brings. It seems to improve my general focus, writing, including programming, reading and speaking abilities. As with all self reporting you should absorb mine with salt.
That's a small use case compared to the whole language. The statement you disagree with is more true than your anecdote about one library. On top of that, all the network I/O is automatically nonblocking.
Why the World Need Hackers: Link Between Open Source Dev & Cultural Evolution
Well, I don't expect most programs to be re-written in Go, but I think in, say 10 years' time most new programs will be. By then Go's mature, fast libraries will be comparable to any of Python's (although C will have the kernel-level advantages still I think).

I think 24 months quoted in the article is optimistic...
This is a classic problem among engineers. The notion of bloat and cruft that goes unsubstantiated, and is really code for 'new and shiny'.

Older software projects offer more features, but that doesn't mean they're materially slower or worse in any objective way.

We use Rails at Pose to deliver JSON to over 1M users on either Android, iPhone, or our Backbone Web UI. It works well, it scales, and it's clean. No complaints.
The claim that "90% of people are deficient" is certainly suspect, considering that admission.
While pretty, I think tools like see[mike]code are a little more practical: http://i.seemikecode.com/

I think a conversation with someone as they code, rather than a reply of what they did, is an easier way to evaluate skill.
Which data structures have you personally been bitten by that lack of?

I ask this because I often find myself thinking I would want such-and-such a feature in a tool, library, etc, but unless it was implemented in response to an immediate need, when I actually add it I realize it ends up unused.
It's actually convenient, as ctrl-v/c/x and others are usually used in combination with the mouse.
Its a good opportunity to contribute!
Be warned that it doesn't work on all GS2 devices though.
App Store rejects WWII game over Japanese flags
>Warning Sign D3: Too Few Subjects
>The author advertising smart drugs doesn't describe any careful studies, so of course he doesn't mention the number of subjects in any studies. Most so-called studies of smart drugs have been far too small to have any statistical power.

Neither yourself, nor Peter Norvig suggested an appropriate number of subjects for tests like these. So I'm curious, what would be an appropriate number of subjects?
Not everyone has the grace and skill of Maddox; this person, trying to emulate Maddox, being one of them.
> there's essentially zero difference between the 3GS and the iPhone 5.

Are you kidding? I'm no iOS fan, but I think that statement is a bit ridiculous.
Do we not have 10ghz processors? My impression is that they exist, or you can at least overclock to that level, it's just neither reliable nor economical, and real workloads that require that much horsepower can by and large be parallelized, so the difference between quad-core 3.5 ghz and 10ghz is mostly academic.
Which makes sense.
The right hand was used for the carriage return on manual typewriter. Modern times, of course, most users of often have left hand poised on keyboard and right hand flipping between keyboard and mouse.
False dichotomy.

"All code has bugs" claim is true, but it doesn't mean you need debuggers in order to solve/fix the problems.

If your methods ARE small enough, and you have tests for OTHER cases, printing/console is actually faster (at least for me) than using a debugger.
I have a JS debugger in firebug, and I rarely use it (for pure JS, not just CoffeeScript output).
Show HN: Matches.js -- Powerful Pattern Matching for Javascript
go has momentum? I am not sure I would go that far.
Old joke:

How do you find an extrovert at the NSA?

He's the one looking at someone else's shoes
I wonder what the cutoff for notability is. It seems to work for big names but not bit part players. Oracle Of Bacon works with all of imdb, but I guess google can't use that resource...
For those wanting to learn more Go I recommend this online book: http://www.golang-book.com/
Are web technologies on the phone really the best way to empower users? Sure Firefox and Linux are open source(and I love them for that), but what about online apps? User does not have any control over the web page. If web page changes or disappears he can do nothing(and it can happen with no warning). Storing local copy of webpage may not be possible(because huge part of app may be on server side). Even proprietary desktop apps are better[1] because they do not change on each startup and you could always try to reverse engineer them. Web app also can store user data on server giving him no way to recover and it gives more spoofing opportunities.
Sure we can try to teach users about to choose open source web pages, or pages that can work in offline mode, but unfortunately most web pages does not fit these categories.

I'm impressed by what Firefox OS managed to achieve using web technologies, but I posted this as a warning that users may chain themselves to some proprietary webapp even stronger than to native one. Hopefully Firefox Os will force more webapps to provide offline mode.

[1] Of course DRM tries to take away this advantage from desktop apps.
The Chicken and Egg of Angel Groups
This is an ill formed problem.

If all you need to do is pick one random number, just pick one: 0 or 1. That will be to any level of proof just as random as any natural method one could devise for a single number.

If instead the question is about generating a series of digits, and making an argument about the randomness of thosee digits, that is a completely different problem, and one that needs more specification about how much random data is needed and what context against which that randomness will be evaluated.
This is an ill formed problem.

If all you need to do is pick one random number, just pick one: 0 or 1. That will be to any level of proof just as random as any natural method one could devise for a single number.
Good software takes time. Asking a new programming language to have "mature 3rd party libraries" is a bit harsh. You are, of course, correct in that the variety of libraries available in Go is more limited than older languages, but I have hope that it will change rapidly.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html
I did a brute-force 3D flight simulator without a GPU. It took 8 cores at 2.6GHz for 640x480 16 color. My users are stupid programmers. I don't think they can do better. You can't do better, either.

First, GPUs exist for a reason!!! Second, a bubble sort sucks compared to quick sort. I'm not interested in good 3D algorithms. I'm not going to do nasty special case code to keep from redrawing what hasn't changed in a 3D flight simulator.
In my case, resale value. People buying used Apple products are picky, so I try to keep my stuff pristine. This allows me to get top dollar when I sell it every year and upgrade.
Probably the most amazing thread on Quora
It's not about "mint condition". It's about not shattering the glass or otherwise destroying the phone if it falls onto a hard surface.
RedSnow 0.9.13dev4 supporte déjà iOS 6 GM
His point is that it probably doesn't matter for performance whether you're building in Python or Go, since neither language can make the kernel handle socket buffers and network events faster. I/O-bound programs in either language will have poll/select/epoll/whatever at the top of their profile.
Large portion of people use AdBlock? Citation needed. Again, the discussion is not about developers, but the general population.
So? What's your point?

The alternative is you buy a Samsung android phone or whatever and break it and end up paying the actual cost, which is normally $499 on the low end to $649 for the latest flagship phones.

A $199 replacement cost for a mistake I made sounds like a heck of a deal.
I would really like to read about the compact cassette design history. It's a really remarkable product in which you can appreciate a long list of trade-offs made by the designer(s).
Apple's new A6 iPhone 5 appears to be first ARM Cortex A15 phone
The organic was the same quality as the paid traffic. But my site isn't selling anything so even the quality of organic traffic I get from Google isn't very good.
> Are there a lot of apps using web views for their GUI?

No. [Edit: I'm talking about apps that use webviews make a native-looking app. Web apps don't qualify.]
I find quite ironic that a submission with such a title did'nt receive a single vote on HN.
I'd plan to add this functionality, in the meanwhile you can use this chrome plugin for youtube.
http://www.nikesh.me/blog/2011/05/repeat-youtube-video-autom...
I use one to make the phone less slippery. It no longer slides off my lap / out of my pocket / off my car seat.
Who cares how beautiful it is if it's broken?
Accurately measuring geospatial location via GPS, making a phone call, or playing a game is meaningful.

Starting with a definition like that, it's not hard to see how the author concludes that near-zero-energy computing isn't possible. But a more modest definition-- for example, of compute-enabled "smart" versions of already-existing products-- may make that vision possible. Thinking of sensors as a form of meaningful computation expands the range even more.

For example, I've seen switches that harvest enough energy from the act of pressing them, to communicate their change in status to the controlled device. Now consider coupling that energy to some logic. For example, maybe a single light switch dynamically determines which of several lights you want to switch on or off in the space.

The real barrier to "ubiquitous meaningful low-energy computation" is that the marginal extra energy for adding computation to an existing device must be small compared to the energy that device already draws. The classic example of this is automobiles, which have been acquiring more and more sensors and internal control logic over the years. As logic components get to lower energy consumption, why shouldn't those possibilities jump to other devices?

The following, related, analysis was posted to HN a while ago:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/08/how-low-...
Yeah, aside from the vastly superior screen, the vastly faster cellular data connectivity, the improved battery life, the smaller form factor, the vastly faster CPU and GPU, 2-4x the RAM, and the vastly improved camera, there's essentially zero difference!
Boo, I have a bit part listed on IMDB and it does not work on my name.
Why do you wear a helmet when you're biking? So you don't break your head.

If you find it hard to believe that anybody could drop an iPhone without a case and break it, you haven't met my wife. :)
I realize this isn't worth much, but I'll say it anyway. I personally asked John to write this article for my site. Why? He's a sharp fellow, and though the information is available, I wanted a clear, consolidated overview for my readers. John had no interest in including his name or website; I suggested it. I would rather a name behind it than some random anonymous guest post.
It depends, if your app is just a dumb UI that calls out to services then all the logic etc should be in the server, the UI code should just be displaying and a bit of caching.

Once you have built it in one framework it will be much faster porting it to the others. I know it requires 3 updates when you add a new feature but it's not a major pain and you get native apps running very fast.
Simple, but I like it. I wonder when we'll see a new Yahoo logo.
I love Ruby, but I have no love for Rails. Want to write a nice JSON API using something light and nice? Use Sinatra, pick your favorite ORM (even ActiveRecord) and go to town. Why mess with all the other Rails junk when you can have a simple app.rb for your sinatra app and just write simple little controller actions and you're good to go?

You don't need all the ceremony and structure of Rails and MVC to write a JSON api, you just don't.

Worrying about Rails' future and if it's still "winning"(for some definition of winning?) compared to node.js is silly and reminds me of how many Java devs had an existential crisis about the future of Java since Java 7 took a few too many years to ship.

Rails is a web MVC framework, that's it. It's not even the only or best web framework in ruby. Rails is not ruby. It is not designed to compete with node. Node is a totally different thing.

Compare node and ruby and that's a more interesting and correct comparison, but I've happily used both and neither one is going to "kill" the other any more than Rails killed PHP or Java killed C++.
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
-Amara's Law
Quite the opposite. All the punctuation is on the right side. I've got a split keyboard and not counting meta keys I count 28 on the left and 32 on the right side.
Is Google behind all this hype ? There isn't a day without a Go article somewhere.
The battery life is almost exactly the same.

All of the most popular apps still run on the 3GS, and run well, with the exception of a half dozen or so.

The internet browsing speed is effectively identical, regardless of whatever the specs claim.

The new cameras are supposedly slightly better, but probably not enough to be noticeable unless you've got a highly trained eye.

The only features that the new iPhones have are things like Siri and Facetime, which are largely gimmicks with no real use case.
I've never had a case on my iPhones (3G, 3GS), dropped them numerous times on concrete, and the only thing that put one out of commission was dropping the 3G in a toilet. Replaced it with a 3GS in 2009 and it still functions perfectly. Admittedly, it looks beat to heck compared to other folks' phones, but that ain't no thing. Never understood how Apple can sell so many phones if they can take the beating I give them.
Absolutely true for the core "phone" functionality.

4S/5 are easy to justify from a security perspective, and the retina display on 4/4S/5 really is a huge improvement over the 3GS. LTE in the 5 also is a big win -- I'm going to try doing VoIP over LTE (G.722) so I don't have to play with Google Voice anymore.

I am amazed that the 3GS supports iOS 6, though -- I wonder if it will support the next big iOS now that it's no longer being sold.
Cantelon's Law: if you put someone's name in front of an adage people will feel savvy when they quote it.
There was a post not so long ago on HN about prices of logos. I wonder how much they paid for this one (I hope not too much because I feel I could have done it: select a font, write ebay, color letters with colors of old logo).
Nintendo TVii Announced for WiiU
myBalsamiq is by far the most simple/cost-effective tool I've used for wireframing. Being distributed with version control was particularly unique and helpful, as far as potential competitors go.

As a random usability thing, they also handle renewal notifications without being annoying. I don't need an email every hour that my subscription is expiring, and the earth doesn't shatter once it does. If I decide not to renew, I can still download all the mockups I made when I had the subscription. If I decide I need to get back into the program, a couple clicks and I'm back in for $12/mo. Small stuff like that makes feel like they're not trying to suck every penny out of me, which is why I don't hesitate to go back to them when I need to.
Ebook :Backbone Fundamentals
That's if you can believe anything Johann Hari writes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_contro...

(For Americans - Hari is like the British Jayson Blair).
For small ad-hoc multi-processing servers that web shops are writing. Maybe, that seems like a good use case. Not as exotic as Erlang, and not a very demanding environment.

No big chance for enterprise or academia. And I believe that for ordinary "check this, forward that" backend programming, Ruby, Python and Perl will still remain staples, with a few percentage points shifting back and forth, as usual. Rails didn't end Python.

On the other hand, I wouldn't shed a tear if it would eat up the majority of node.js' marketshare.
Do you know if it works on an original Desire?
Apple wins preliminary sales ban on Motorola phones and tablets in Germany
I'll spare you the details but the only mishap I've had with an iphone ended, rather amusingly, with it swimming in the bottom of a toilet. After fishing it out (yes, it was a clean bowl) I vainly attempted to dry it in the Italian sun outside the villa I was staying in at the time. As you might have guessed the iphone did not make a full recovery, it was bricked. When I got back to London I took it into my local apple store and mentioned that "I was having trouble getting it to charge...". Full credit to the apple guy, without so much as a wry smile he ignored the tide mark that cut across the middle of the screen and said he'd put it through as a battery replacement. £50 later and I was walking out the store with my new phone.
Training beats hiring among enterprises seeking analytics skills, survey shows
We're WAY past the point where it is acceptable to pretend basics like map and filter are some esoteric functional thing. Every reasonable language has them, and no language without them is worth even considering.
It would be more interesting to check ngrames to see how frequently you must hit a key on the same hand twice. Qwerty was designed to prevent jamming typewriters, IIRC.