skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Google Chrome has 310 million active users (according to Google at their I/O conference in June). In the Chrome Web Store, AdBlock is listed as having 9.3 million users, and Adblock Plus is listed as having 4.9 million users.

Mozilla Firefox had 270 million users in 2009, and presumably has less than Chrome's 310 million now (given their smaller market share). Adblock Plus is listed as having 14 million users on Mozilla Addons.

While it's entire possible (and indeed, likely) that these numbers are not completely accurate, it's also unlikely that they are outside of the ballmark (so to speak). For example, saying that Adblock usage numbers are off by half (that is to say that the usage would be closer to ~30 million than ~15 million), it would still only mean that 10% of Chrome and Firefox users choose to utilize the most popular Adblock choice(s).

It's true that 10% or even 5% of users can be considered "a large portion" (due to the unquantified nature of the statement), but it also would not form a strong basis for confirming the assertion that "No one seems to mind that Google searches contain more ads today than before" (on the basis of Adblock usage by the general population).
It's worth reading http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentia... to get some idea of the motivation behind including less.

If you believe that our software systems are increasingly complex and that some aspect of the problems we're solving are essentially complex, then the strongest path towards simplicity lies in minimizing complexity incidental to the problems we're solving. One facet of programming which routinely introduces complexity is our tools, particularly our programming languages.

I believe both Rob Pike (and the Go authors) and Rich Hickey are both motivated in part by this impulse or a variation on it. They chose very different ways of addressing the problem, but Clojure and Go are a lot more similar than you'd think.
Are you smarter than a 10-year-old?
Idea: a Go HTML GUI toolkit designed to allow writing a GUI in real Go code without thinking about html, css, ajax, etc. It just abstracts that stuff away, providing a much more standardized/typical GUI programming experience, all the while running a web server and generating HTML on the fly.
No, the layout was supposed to be optimized to prevent jams while typing.
Nintendo Bets on TV App to Sell Pricey Wii U
I said exactly the same thing at the time. The Merb merge felt like it had a lot more to do with politics and ego than engineering. Unfortunately two years is a long time in this world.
What does management want anyway? Do they want a black box with a well defined interface? What other options do they get?

It seems to me that this question depends very much on the kinds of commitments management is making. Which in turn depends on whom they are making them to. If it's to a customer that has some hard requirements, enumerated in a contract, and providing those is the source of money, then management's focus is (and should be) executing those requirements. Which would seem to imply that a black box is just fine.

The problem is not the desire for a black box approach, but that boxes fail. Management is risk averse (and their risk aversion is what keeps your paycheck coming, in theory).

(Actually, black boxes are creeping into software development all of the time. For example, there's no reason to not have fast PSD-to-HTML turn-around anymore. That process has been black-boxed. Not shrink-wrapped, but black-boxed. Yes, there are still quality variations, questionable use of excessive markup, etc, but its not bad.)

Anyway, I just question your tacit assumption that management wanting a black box with a well defined interface is a bad thing. It seems like a reasonable goal.
The following features make Go as the "go-to" language for me:

1.Coroutines, Channels and Select: Concurrency with built in synchronization and communication is accessible(especially if your are new to concurrent programming) enough to handle "most" of the grunt work.
2.gofmt: Formats your code for you. No more debates(procrastination) on that.
3.godoc: Generates documents. No more looking for the best 3rd party tool and wasting time.
4. Defer and Close: Helps you to do better post-operation tasks i.e better resource management.
5. Error Handling: Multivalue returns.
6. Type Hierarchy: No type hierarchy exists in the conventional sense.
7. Slices & Maps: Just two of them, and that's why I love it.
8. Brevity and Readability: Clutter free syntax. WYSISWYG language.
9. Philosophy of Exclusiveness: This is most important non-feature which makes Go different and exciting. Go's vision is to be an exclusive programming paradigm rather than being an inclusive one. In this Google I/O video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sln-gJaURzk, Robert Griesemer speaks about an incident that how in a "D" programming conference, the developers intended to include a new programming paradigm in the future. This is what sold it for me as I care more about how the language will grow instead of what new cool features will come in.

Performance is a contentious issue. In an ideal world, performance would just depend on the platform and the language, but in reality it also depends on the skill and idiosyncrasies of the programmer. For me, that is a non-issue.

Quick Reference to Go talks: http://code.google.com/p/go-wiki/wiki/GoTalks
I was at a dinner event in New Zealand, started talking to this old guy about random topics, and as it turns out... he has an Erdös number of 1. I was definitely a bit floored as he started to describe what they worked on (in person at one point), especially as most of what he spoke of went right over my head. It was a pretty neat and random thing to experience.

As for a "Bacon Number"... I'm giving myself a 1. I actually have a plate of bacon sitting right next to me, and that's the bacon that matters the most.

EDIT: As per jerf (good catch!), I can confirm that I am not actually bacon. I changed my "bacon number" above from 0 to 1.
Is this generation any different than the generation of moronic programmers raised on Java?
Aliyun is not a fork of Android. It is China's home grown cloud based OS based on Linux. http://www.techinasia.com/alibaba-aliyun-investing-mobile-os...

The name Aliyun: Ali is Alibaba, Yun is cloud in Chinese.
The Invisible Interface
I'm not sure what is funnier, the clue less apple users who can't figure out this device is the same as the one in their pockets or the anti-apple rage bots in thenextweb comments.

It's like watching a parrot attack the parrot in the mirror.
Object/Relational Interlude: Messaging in PostgreSQL
I think a far more likely senerio, and probably more likely is that our everyday movements will charge much like the shake flashlights you see from time to time.
It's not satire
It's not complicated; it's too obvious
Lightning is just a redo of the 30 pin dock connector. It's STILL a 30 pin dock connector.

The point of a 30 pin dock connector is to make it so it's easy as hell to make 3rd party accessories for the devices, which you'll notice are legion.

The adapter is the right choice. It's not just a charging port.
How to deal with iPhone 5 screen size?
The fact that JavaScript would break on networks that transparently rewrite JavaScript is a feature, not a bug. If hash codes were implemented by all major browsers, those networks which tamper with JavaScript would have to stop doing so pretty damn quickly, or face a lot of angry customers.

As it is, I think customers would already be angry if they knew that their network provider was rewriting code that will be executed on the customer's computer; anything which makes this more obvious can only be good.
My experience is similar but with a key difference.

The sales team often consists of a sales guy who has barely seen the product (as you said) and a "systems engineer" who should not be confused for a developer. The engineers are often technically skilled members of the sales team that are experts at deploying the product and using it in customer environments. That said, they often have development skills (from previous experience) but they are certainly not getting their hands dirty with code in this role.

The "suit" co-founder of a start-up should be playing the role of a systems engineer and the account exec rolled into one because the "technical" co-founder rarely has the right personality/sales experience to be involved in sales.

Obviously, if you do manage to find a technical co-founder who has the systems engineer skills then you can change up the roles a bit but, in my experience, such people are incredibly rare (even in successful start-ups).
So you're going to INSERT directly from Javascript? Seems like potential security issues but back on point..

Check out dropbox.js blogpost: https://tech.dropbox.com/?p=345
Even better seems to be Firebase which touts itself as "Dropbox for your app's data": http://www.firebase.com/how-it-works.html
For the curious, WhatPulse is an app you can download that will keep track of your keystrokes (I'm sure there are others that do the same)
Sounds like a CEO who needs to be reminded that he's also the janitor.
HelloFax / HelloSign (YC W11) is hiring a developer. Solve the paper problem.
We're looking for a really smart developer who gets things done.

About us:

- There's a theme of making really frustrating processes elegant. Dropbox does it for storage. Airbnb does it for rentals. We're doing it for document signing and document management.

- We already make money and we're growing fast.

- We have amazing advisors, including Garry Tan from Posterous.

- We mainly work with PHP (Symfony framework), but we're open to other languages. Some of the other tools we use are beanstalkd, memcached, and jQuery.

- We are passionate about solving a real problem that millions of people deal with every day.

- We love our users. We will spend hours to save them clicks and seconds.

- Our users love us. Check us out on Twitter.

- We are based in San Francisco.

- We're a senior team. Most people here have built companies before.

- We ship early and often.

About you:

- You are an all-around web developer. That means you're comfortable with PHP, MySQL, JavaScript (jQuery), HTML, CSS.

- You can show up for work every day in San Francisco, or can relocate.

- You care about our users and take pride in your work.

- You enjoy brainstorming (especially when it involves drinking company beer).

- You love finding bugs in open source libraries (and patching them).

- The only thing you hate more than Internet Explorer is fax machines.

- If you are knowledgeable about sysadmin work, that's a plus.

What we offer:

- Competitive salary, health care, a sizable equity stake, and relocation package

- A ground-floor position at a real startup. Work with us for a few years, learn the ropes, and then take what you've learned and start something yourself. We'll help you make it happen.

- Your choice of computer, chair, and monitors.

- Hard problems. We have some big ideas around OCR and machine learning and we need help turning them into reality.

Email us at jobs@hellofax.com and put "Paper Be Gone!" ...or something else catchy in the subject line :)
Biggest gripe I had with rails is its learning curve. I have started to read Michael Hartl's impressive tutorial book but gave up when I started to deal with errors related to gemfile dependencies (if the versions do not match with the tutorial the expected outcome does not happen at best or you deal with errors at worst). I have bought Agile Web Development with Rails and thinking to start again because it is really new and I don't believe I'll encounter any problems. What do you do when you encounter such errors by the way?
I'm with you. Accidents happen, but most can be prevented if you just treat your expensive device with care and respect. I find that people really don't like that advice, though!
The point of the 30 pin adapter is to make it easy as sin to make 3rd party components.

The rewiring to go from the old 30pin to the new lightning doesn't appear to be very large.

To go from analog/multichannel digital to USB is a relatively large change.
Blueprint on iPad if you're talking about iOS. Not sure for Android.
It isn't an obscure claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis
I don't have small children, but I also apparently don't have any motor skills. I spent the money on an OtterBox for my phone and it's saved me from a cracked screen at least a half dozen times and from minor damage much more often than that. The down side is that my phone looks twice as large, but it's well worth it.
You're joking right? It's a Sun newspaper, a shitty sensationalist tabloid rag in every country. Other newspapers rely on journalism, they find tits and anger will suffice.

You might as well argue that those who think the Daily Mail is stupid are suppressing free speech and re-enforcing their echo chamber. You would look like just as much of an idiot as you do now.
So much for Google touting android being open...
I came to post this. Seriously, why is this necessary? Are they trying to provoke a lawsuit?

I get that green is usually associated with starting a call and red ending a call, but why? Why not blue or purple or orange or yellow or black?

Good point on the angle. But why even use the same handset icon? You could use a candlestick phone, a wall phone, a rotary phone.... for fuck's sake, you could use an icon representing the phone itself.
numbers = map(numbers, func(n int) int {
return n * n
})

for i, n := range numbers {
numbers[i] = n * n
}

Sorry, but I do not see a difference in the order of assembly language vs. high-level language.
500 Startups is now accepting applications on AngelList
heh. running specs requires to boot rails, starting the console, switching branchs, reviewing code, etc...

rails boots fast if you have few files but when the project is big it is a pain, it takes a lot of time to boot and it's not fun. That's why the article says rails is "a day job".

I just hope the rails team don't think like you.
NYC bans big, sugary drinks at eateries, theaters
On my Debian Sid ThinkPad I've been primarily using the framebuffer console for years now. Setting up custom colors and fonts makes a big difference. Ctheme [1] is handy for making up color themes and changing them on the fly, but this [2] approach makes the colors more persistent. For fonts, I tweaked the SGI Screen fonts to my liking [3]. For viewing PDF files I found fbpdf [4] to be vastly superior to fbgs. The author of fbpdf also created fbpad [5], an alternative to fbterm. I've not tried yet fbpad yet, but the last time I gave fbterm a try I found it sort of took over every VT or something like that...hoping fbpad improves on that. Haven't heard of Terminology, will have to give that a try too. I'd be curious to see comparisons around scrolling speed and power consumption for the fbcon terminal, fbterm, fbpad, Terminology, and an XTerm/UXTerm running in X11.

In addition to tmux, Vim, Mutt and zsh, two other must-haves for me in this sort of environment are ncmpcpp [6] for music and Vifm [7] for file browsing. Note that vifm is quite actively developed (I believe there'll be a new version out in the next month or so), and the older version in the Debian repositories is much less feature-rich.

When I need something more I'll switch over to i3 running in X, but depending on the needs at hand, I've found it's possible to do quite a bit without turning on X11.

Something I've been wondering about...would it be possible to run an fbcon environment like this alongside Mozilla's B2G? I'm thinking of small, inexpensive, low-powered ARM devices where you could toggle between a full-featured modern graphical web-browser and a fast, powerful text-mode development environment.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/ctheme/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4413794

The colors I use:

echo 0,152,96,144,72,128,88,168,48,192,112,184,96,192,120,160 > /sys/module/vt/parameters/default_red
echo 0,32,112,104,92,104,104,160,48,96,164,144,128,96,164,180 > /sys/module/vt/parameters/default_grn
echo 0,32,48,80,144,176,104,144,48,96,96,80,192,176,144,176 > /sys/module/vt/parameters/default_blu

[3] http://b79.net/fields/comp#mono-bitmap

[4] http://repo.or.cz/w/fbpdf.git

[5] http://repo.or.cz/w/fbpad.git

[6] http://ncmpcpp.rybczak.net/

[7] http://vifm.sourceforge.net/
I will sell my iPhone 4 for $200-300 to buy the new iPhone 5.

I can do this because I preserved it in mint condition.
I've seen several studies related to use of Piracetam in children with Down Syndrome as well, leading to a statistically significant IQ improvement.

Problem is that I don't believe intelligence always works this way, e.g., if having less of Y causes lower than average IQ, it doesn't imply that having more of Y will raise IQ in subjects with average/above-average IQ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size#Required_sample_si...
How did they do that?
Failbetter Games (http://about.failbettergames.com/), the people who made the excellent browser-based story game Echo Bazaar/Fallen London, recently released their toolset ("StoryNexus": http://www.storynexus.com/) in open beta for people to build their own story games with. And while it's a hosted application, they explicitly disclaim any ownership right to IP you create using StoryNexus, so you can build worlds there without worrying about problems taking the setting or characters to other media down the road.

Unfortunately, in my limited experiences with StoryNexus so far I have found it to be damn near incomprehensible to use. Hopefully they will clean up the interface and streamline the design process somewhat before calling it 1.0.
30pin dock connectors are designed to allow easy connections to the device by 3rd party devices (and to allow the collection of licensing fees from them, which are unlikely in the event of using a standard connector).
500 Startups Accelerator Is Taking Applications For The First Time via AngelList
Battle lines drawn in the war on Java
Oddly enough, Cray recently sold their interconnect tech to Intel [0]. Intel seems to be planning to integrate it on-chip down the road [1], which seems to leave Cray serving as a somewhat quirky system integrator longer-term.

[0] http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012...

[1] http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-09-10/intel_weaves_strat...
i'm planning to implement a play queue where you can see/save/share all the videos you've played. From there you'll also be able to go back.
Dynamic Programming in Python: Bayesian Blocks
University of California Sues Facebook, Wal-Mart Over Patents
It's a free country. If you're asking for medical advice, you are welcome to come to my clinic.

> Have you actually done any of the drugs Saunders did?

Please re-read my post.
Currently, yes. Though I understand recently there was a preview window where some devs were given write access, which I (hopefully correctly) assume to mean that it's coming soonish.
Yeah, the reason I take Adderall is best summed up by the difference in my college GPA that occurred after being prescribed Adderall midway through. (Not to mention all the depression-like symptoms that came from underachieving constantly and knowing it and wanting to change that on my own but failing over and over.) And in the years since then I've gone a few months at a time without it to try to see if, now that I've got more interesting jobs, I still need it to focus. Sadly, it seems like I do.

But there are tricks to it. It has something of a threshold for me: after a certain level, higher dosages don't seem to help any more (other than the first day or two right after the switch), as my body builds some tolerance. The just make the side effects worse. And the side effects are unpleasant at best, even at the relatively low dosage my doctor and I have gotten myself down to. I would absolutely not take it regularly if I felt like I could get stuff done at a sufficient level without it. Some people need their coffee, I need something a bit stronger. Sucks, but I'm stuck with it for now.
I've been outted -_-

Seriously, though- I agree with the last few paragraphs, but I think there's a "to me" that's missing throughout this article. Anyone working somewhere solely for the ping pong (outside of professional table tennis players I guess...) is probably making a mistake. But a break doesn't have to be a distraction.

When I'm deep in a dev problem, sometimes I need to take a break to digest a problem. At my last job, I didn't have a place to do that. Sitting quietly in the break room was considered strange, and I shouldn't have to make-believe I'm programming to take some time to understand an issue.

The office we're in now has a common area where I can talk to someone, sit quietly, play a casual game of ping pong- and then get back to work. I recognize many people don't want to mix work and play, but shouldn't they recognize it's okay if I do?
By the way, Balsamiq could be killer on the ipad. It already has a fun and tactile feel that fits the ipad perfectly. To Balsamiq: imo, you guys should just ditch flash and use your vision to make something much better in c/obj-c that includes lots of mobile and tablet components in addition to web. You'd have a ton of customers.
I also got the email and noticed the same errors that were mentioned here. I tried to fix it to how it 'should' be, but it still doesn't seem to be working. Has anyone else gotten theirs to work? Here is what I have:

// post back to PayPal system to validate
$header .= "POST /cgi-bin/webscr HTTP/1.1\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
$header .= "Host: www.paypal.com\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Length: " . strlen($req) . "\r\n\r\n";
$fp = fsockopen ('ssl://www.paypal.com', 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);
Seems like he was hell-banned for this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253243
Could you send a signal to pause X so that it doesn't cause wakeups?
Thanks for the feedback Brian. Glad to hear my UI is self-explanatory, I've worked hard on it :)

There's a x on the top right of every guider to end the demo. Did you just miss it? Is that not obvious enough as an "exit tutorial" button ?

Will look into the bug, I added the "What is your email address?" question very last minute after some initial feedback.
I feel like the craziness is only just beginning.
Someone should do an "Ask PG: Have you ever used "smart drugs"?
Hey, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

Stimulant psychosis is unrelated to long-term permanent cognitive impairment; it's temporary, for example.

I was hoping to find out more about the medical basis for the "permanent gradual decline of mental abilities" assertion, because it seems hard to believe that our current knowledge of the human brain is sufficient to make such a broad claim with any degree of accuracy.
Is MS building a C# on JavaScript runtime?
MPW's unification of a command shell and an edit window took a little getting used to, but it was really, really useful once you learned the single trick. (Not to keep you in suspense: the ENTER key just inserted a newline, while COMMAND+ENTER executed the current line, or whatever was currently selected).

To this day I miss this ability on command shells. On Windows there is lame cut-and-paste (and it's disabled by default). It feels like cement galoshes, all that dead text just sitting there on the screen, useless and flat.
I'm in the same boat. I whole-heartedly agree that production secret keys, passwords, etc. shouldn't be checked into version control as plain-text.

Even if you use environment variables, you need them stored somewhere (a secrets.py file, a .env file, a upstart script) so they get onto the machine at startup. At the moment we're kicking around GPG encrypting the data and only decrypting it on the machines that need it.
Looks like Pi is still ahead, in the Tau vs. Pi arms race.