skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yowch. That's a pretty extreme interpretation of the guy's words. Especially as you refuse to let him deny it by stating in advance that a denial would be false.
It's funny, because as a big fan of Python who has had to do a lot of CoffeeScript lately, I find CoffeeScript very similar to Python, and very readable. It's certainly more readable than JavaScript, when you don't get fancy. It's called "Unfancy JavaScript" for a reason.

Many of the issues raised in this article can be solved by "simply" not doing it (admittedly not always a real solution). Just because the language allows something to be done, doesn't mean it should be done that way. Our team has a styleguide that clearly explains good and bad practice, for CoffeeScript AND Python. (It's possible to do bonkers stuff in Python, too, just harder.) It includes things like: use explicit returns, especially when intending to return nothing; include parenthesis unless it's more clear without them (callback as arguments).

Yes, it'd be great if the language were more explicit and made it harder to do confusing thing. But, its core goal is being "just javascript", which prevents some of that explicitness. Also, the flexibility lets the real goal be clarity.

I find

my_object =
key: 'value'
fn: (response) ->
console.log(response)

to be more clear than

my_object = {
key: 'value',
fn: function() {
console.log(response)
}
}

because it doesn't have all the crap. CoffeeScript's whitespace syntax is even more helpful when those objects start getting nested. Plus, not having to deal with trailing commas is amazing. At the same time,

someFn arg1, arg2, ->
doStuffInACallback()
, arg3

can be confusing, so parens help:

someFn(arg1, arg2, ->
doStuffInACallback()
, arg3)

I try to not be "that guy" when it comes to CoffeeScript, but it's easily one of my favorite languages now. All the crap that JavaScript requires is just gone.
Thanks for the feedback! We'll clarify our copy. I don't know if you got a chance to see our video (available on our homepage), but it gives a demo of all the features of the product in action. We're also more than happy to give you a demo over the phone, if you'd like. Just give us a call at 213.784.0273.

Best,
Patrick
Even with this G+ looks like a social service for IT-related people. A lot of programmers I know use G+.

But other people prefer to stay with those social services where the most of their friends are. So happened it is not G+ but Facebook and other (e.g. VKontakte).

Just noticed.
Those last things feel wrong in coffeescript.
Honestly, what's more readable:

x = a ? b : c

or

x = if a then b else c

And for the last one:

function() {
// doing something
return this;
}

->
# doing something
@

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that I can do nice stuff such as callback?() and some other nifty tricks, but while I'm still having fun using coffeescript, in my experience it's not that great as most people make it up to be.
Your comment is completely factual but interestingly from the POV of a car driver (ie, classically north american).

Walking streets in north american cities is soul-killing compared to cities in other continents.
From the article:

>Russian scientists say the news is likely to change the shape of global diamond markets //

Now colour me skeptical but they admit to keeping it a secret to manipulate the diamond prices; what are the chances that they are overplaying the find for the same reason?
Thanks, but you didn't really explain anything. In what specific ways does it fail to scale well?
It's good to see that Android is improving in this area. And I say that as an Apple "fanboi". That said, it is unfortunate that the ecosystem still suffers from heavy fragmentation, so only a small portion of users will be seeing the benefits mentioned in the article.
I find it helps when you use short-circuiting. The returns are the first thing you see, making it more obvious what is going on.

myfn = (arg) ->
return 1 if arg is "one"
return 2 if arg is "two"
return arg.toInt()

This is obviously a little contrived with such a short method, but helps when you have stuff to do between conditional returns.
Well, the Casimir effect generates a tiny amount of negative energy, does it not? Maybe that's how they think they can test it in the lab.
This changes things a bit. It's no longer "I'm distracted because someone else is on their own phone." It's now: "I'm not getting anything out of this class and we're not accomplishing what we're supposed to be doing because my knucklehead teammates won't pay attention."

This is probably where some communication skills would come in hand. I have no problem with a quick "Hey, nilium, can we please just get this done?" or "Your hot date can wait for you text".

Granted, I've also been very lucky in having self motivated or self chosen teammates for most of my university group work.
> So when there's a draft, people should trust their leaders and submit to combat, not bothering to examine whether the war is just?

Avoiding the draft is a good test case that we haven't considered yet. It certainly meets my second condition, that people have a strong motivation to make self-serving judgments instead of correct ones. It also may meet my first condition: citizens who judge that a war is unjust probably can't claim to have significant information that their political leaders do not. (In fact, the political leaders probably have information that the citizens do not.)

However, I can see a third principle that this example brings out: does the other party in the case, the one which is being "cheated" (the government in the case of the draft, the professor in the case of the exam), also have a strong motivation to make self-serving judgments? Certainly that is the case for a draft: political leaders have all kinds of motivations to claim that a draft is justified when it isn't. So in this case I would agree with you that "cheating" might be justifiable.

I'm not sure the case of cheating on exams meets this third condition, although it could be argued that professors do have motivations, if not to purposely make exams unfair, at least to not expend a lot of effort making them fair. But professors also have motivations to keep students coming to their school, for financial if no other reasons, which gives them an incentive to expend effort to make classes and exams fair.

> The norms should be used only as a guideline for your own judgement, lest you become someone's pawn.

I don't disagree with this, but "your own judgment" is not infallible either. That's why I have been trying to find some principles that can help guide one's judgment. You appear to agree with this general idea, since you too draw a distinction between justified "cheating" and unjustified cheating. Your definition of "unjustified" is "if it's to unfairly gain an advantage over others", but that merely postpones the problem: what counts as "unfairly" gaining an advantage? That's what I've been trying to get a handle on.
That was my main problem with this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter You could simulate the effect using metamaterials probably, but you couldn't break the real speed of light with it because you don't have real negative mass.
Thanks for writing this Ben. It's a very fair and balanced assessment of both techniques.
White House confirms cybersecurity order in the works (thehill.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534477

Means nothing more than its a "leak", leaks are for spin as you point out, but thats not the issue. That's just obvious.
Mhh, given that G+ hsa an awesome photo community, and the awesomeness of the Nik Tools (love them)..
Hopefully they build that stuff into picasa and make it free for all!!
Something that also doesn't carry over this interesting approach is the land area. Paris is only 105.4 km2, New York City is roughly 7 times as large, Berlin 9 times and you could fit 50 Paris inside Istanbul as a whole. Those tiny segments are really, really tiny - they don't have the time to be oddly shaped over just a few dozen meters ;)
Means nothing more than its a "leak", leaks are for spin as you point out, but thats not the issue. That's just obvious.

Confirmation:

White House confirms cybersecurity order in the works (thehill.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534477
wow this is so big it makes my head spin.. most def the new ms08-067
Integration with Olark - smart.
Introducing the Command Bar
Wouldn't high end mandates just lead to the low end being dominated by forks?

Wouldn't that be worse for (1) customers, (2) android's reputation and (3) Google?
I personally find that I end up reading more lines of code than I need to.

When scanning and I see

If (condition) { perform_some_action(foo, bar, baz); }

And I know condition is false I can ignore what follows but

perform_some_action foo, bar, baz if condition

I now have to stop and parse the entire line. But not only that, because it can appear at the end I need to parse every line to make sure I don't get caught by some if or unless. Short lines are easy sure but it's still annoying to me.
Looking at github's top languages, it sits at #11. I thought it was higher than that, but it's still nothing to sneeze at.

Maybe saying it's widely accepted isn't entirely appropriate, but it certainly is gaining a lot of traction.
I wasn't alluding to affiliate revenue. Rather just an easier experience for users.
Actually the Casimir effect just reduces the "ambient" pressure, it doesn't create negative pressure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

Edit: Whoops, looks like it might work anyway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#Wormholes

Edit2: Actually I think that contradicts this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole#Raychaudhuri.27s_theor... which makes more sense to me. Unless you have already curved spacetime, a Casimir effect is not enough to stabilize a wormhole.
Interesting idea, I wish the article mentioned how the creator tested it, and whether he found it helped him. Maybe even a video where we see him speak using it.
How iOS 6 and Apple's IFA affects mobile app developers
It really depends on you relationship with the person, doesn't it? If it's a casual acquaintance, or even if it's a good friend who is known for being emotional, why should I expose myself to their potential anger when I say their idea sucks? I can be as careful as I want with my tone of voice and picking confrontational, constructive language, but there's still a chance they'll take offense and blow up at me.

What's in it for me? If someone wants me to think hard about their thing, and make a serious effort to communicate my thoughts about it, they have to earn it with trust. It's their own responsibility to research their idea and get honest, informed opinions about whether it will work or not. It's not my responsibility to be their mom.
The way software is sold right now is inherently broken. You pay for it before using it, so companies justifiably spend their efforts on developing new whiz-bang features to get you to attract you to buy something new, rather than fixing and rationalizing the features that already exist.

I have a hunch (that's all, though) that if there were never any up-front purchase cost for software, and instead it was all, say, monthly-subscription-based, that there would be a bigger focus on quality. "Hmm, frustrated users are cancelling their monthly subscriptions because sync doesn't work? Well, maybe we should work on that instead of adding glossy cover flow..."
I see them now. I missed them because they don't look like scroll bars. I don't even know what 2 finger scroll is. I usually scroll with my mouse wheel. To scroll horizontally, I click the middle mouse button. These scroll bars seem not to support that.
Don't you feel that "Screen-Sharing" is a bit of a stretch? I don't see where I can share anything other than the current browser window's content.

This would be confusing for the client and the end user trying understand what they are agreeing to.

A more appropriate title would be something that would allude to the fact that really you are just sharing the page the user is browsing.

Am i wrong in this assumption?
www.google.com/chrome dont leave 127.0.0.1 without it.

I find packaging up 0-day's into point-click downloads for metaspliot and the likes akin to giving a small child a loaded gun, but thats me I guess. Will only encourage the digital-vandals (media calls them hackers, bless).
This appears to be the original paper: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2011001... and follow up: http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/daydreaming-beyond-the-sol...
Got to start somewhere if we want a shiny starship
Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 must die or kittens will die
It's comical/ironic how difficult that site is too browse.
Uma viagem no Delta do Okavango - Botswana
Allan Jacobs' book Great Streets contains dozens of this type of map, not chopped up, but showing the street systems all at the same scale. It's absolutely fascinating to compare 'Cisco to Houston to Paris to Venice. A highly recommended book. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B-Jacobs/dp/026260...
I think as we get more interesting and engaging tools like the smart phone, we're going to have to do a lot more reflection on how our tools shape our habits.

Like a lot of HN readers, I recognized the potential an always-connected pocket computer had pretty early on.

Perhaps unlike many HN readers, I didn't actually buy a smart phone until this year (though I've had dev loaners for a project or two). And part of what drove this decision was a recognition that over the years, I've been turning into a infosnacking net addict. Did I really want a device that makes always convenient in my pocket, even though it would offer a world of convenience?

This February, after reflecting on what habits I might want a pocket computing device to shape, I finally bought a used iPhone 3GS. I'm cautious about feeding a gaming habit, so I didn't put games on it. I know that I wish I read more long-form stuff, so I loaded it up with eBook apps, and then Readability for digesting longer articles I might note but want to tackle later. I know I wish I experimented with music apps, so I picked out a few simple ones.

And most important? I haven't added service on it yet. This way, I can't use it for infosnacking anywhere.

The hope has been that I'll learn to connect the device with activities I consciously choose as positive uses of my time, and less with responding to the feeds and firehoses of the nets. So far, the experiment is promising. I'm definitely reading more.

Though I did eventually install Words With Friends. :|
VIDEO: The Making of Mr. Viral | Toronto Standard
all those crooked, lopsided, curvaceous streets, going off in so many directions, I can't help wondering, what would it be like to wander there?

It would be like the suburbs in the US. Houses are all on cul-de-sacs that wind around and eventually join larger streets which eventually join arterial streets. Pretty much like the map of Istanbul they chose.
Yeah, probably. The most infuriating is that I own a nook color, and a B&N account, but I can't buy a digital book from them at all. Madness.
Hi!

Phyzixlabs and appynotebook are the same, just different presentations for different audiences. The App store is built in regardless of the site you login from.

Phyzixlabs.com would be more of a sims portal where as appynotebook would be the main website.

I do in fact want to make it free software. I would absolutely love to get in touch with other hackers who are willing to help.

Even if you can't hack, feel free to spread the word and refer other hackers to me. Also if you have App ideas let me know. My contact email is in my profile.
That all sounds far less organized than what we work with in my classes. It's mostly open, but you shouldn't interrupt folks, nobody should need to shout, and you should give room for others to speak. I've only seen people shift around when multiple workshops were going on, usually resulting in small groups working on different pieces, but that's fairly rare and I've seen most instructors abandon it after the first try due to the amount of noise it produces and the tendency to drift off into discussing daily life and such.

It all sort of operates on the idea that you're actually a nice person, capable of behaving reasonably, and discussing things like an adult (or how we believe adults should discuss things even though this is rarely the case). The idea is to ensure the other person wants to return to what they made, and it's enough for one person to treat the work poorly (perhaps in showing they don't care by focusing on their phone) to bother someone, especially newcomers to workshops.
Lifx: A smartphone controlled LED lightbulb
I think the parent commenter was merely stating that a large portion of Office users realize that what they're doing isn't "serious" - despite it being critical to their uses, it's something that doesn't require the full power of a desktop Office suite (and thus can be done without Microsoft).

Fact is, even Surface won't be as mobile as something that fits in your pocket - and I seriously doubt Microsoft can or even wants to make (perhaps a stripped down) Office into a $10 smartphone app.
Warning: A/B testing will hurt your SEO ranking
So wait a few years and find them all closed? Jwz's experience: http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
The big point here: less characters for the same logic is not always better. Saying that you need less characters to write function x in coffeescript compared to javascript doesnt mean it is better.

Its all about syntax and semantics. Code from languages with a small and consistent syntax, one-way-to-do-it, and a easy semantics are easier to understand than languages with a lot of semantics.

For example, Scala is cool. But also overly complex. The same holds for C++. But languages like clojure are very simple to grasp and the semantics of these languages are very small.
Engage.
And to mention the obvious:

Apple.
Your last paragraph confuses me.

So you had jQuery experience and were inhibited by working on a MooTools project. I get that, makes total sense.

But then you say that switching to CoffeeScript may seem like a better long term choice but "in reality it is not so much."

Surely MooTools would've been fine for you as a long term choice.

Yes, there is a penalty to switching. Whether it's jQuery to MooTools, JS to CS, whatever. But that doesn't make it a bad long term choice.

Also, CoffeeScript is more than just saving keystrokes. That makes it seem like it's all about initial up-front cost savings. Instead, it's about having shorter, more expressive code. That pays dividends for the life of a project.
How can I be sure that the Kindle version in Europe isn't DRM laden? I won't buy any DRM-laden book under any condition. Well, hard cover is fine, but I already have one and a half room filled with books, I'd rather stop buying dead tree once and for all.
I'm a hacker news user, and I have a cheap phone with a 320x240 single-touch screen and keyboard. I don't see what's so bad about browsing the web on it, I can certainly access HN fine enough.
Model-view-controller. Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93cont...
Aozora Alliance Bank Ltd Market Data.
Postfix conditionals are pretty nice for conditional statements that are particularly unlikely to happen. Imagine, in a function body:

read(file)
write(file) unless terriblyUnlikelyThingHappens
return results

... it helps to keep the expected main-line flow of your instructions reading smoothly -- much the same as the way you'd tend to use it in English. Doing it the "normal" way instead:

read(file)
if (!terriblyUnlikelyThingHappens) {
write(file)
}
return results

... makes it a bit more difficult to follow what should be going on in the function.
Ask HN: Are there any fun games found on the iPad or iOS that teach programming?
I have two younger cousins who are extremely interested in what I do -- building webapps. I've taught them how to make simple static pages. I think they have the capacity to learn much more, but I can't always be there to show them new and exciting things. They're glued to their iPads.

Anybody here familiar with applications designed to teach the younger generation, in a fun way, how to program and/or the fundamentals needed to think like a programmer on the iPad?
There are serious issues on an extremely frequent basis with Windows and all it's applications. Whether it's the OS, Office, or IE, it's rare for there not to be critical updates on a monthly basis. This month was the first time in four years that my team had the option to defer patching til next month.
This is a pet peeve of mine and I think the problem extends past "You're Doing it Wrong" titles. I haven't been reading HN long enough to know the trend but I will say the current state of blog titles is pretty bad. Taking a quick look at the front page one may be surprised to find out that: Hardware is Dead, You're Not Listening, Actually YOU Don't Understand Lexical Scope, and Everything's Broken and Nobody's Upset. Give me a break.
This was done some months ago http://opensignalmaps.com/reports/fragmentation.php
Perl is a great example because it is an amazing language with a horrible reputation that it mostly deserves.
iMessage Service Goes Down for Many iPhone Users
Show HN: Quick hack for quickly testing markdown
Weird: clinking the link reliably BSODs my box. Win2k, Opera 12.02 or Firefox 11.0! I remember seeing the same thing last week with the original article, and wrote it off as a fluke. First hard crash I've had in months.
> If you have to take the time to learn how to read something, it's not easily readable.

What? What language can you read without knowing it first?
Plug for Brennan's plug: This book is amazing. I've increased rates by +$30/hr with the advice in this book. If you send invoices to clients BUY THIS BOOK.
Google hashdump...
Microsoft seeks patent on smacking phone into silence
Or, to restate this and amplify it a bit, Lisp syntax is hard to read because most people are unfamiliar with it. This isn't -- or should not be -- a problem if you need to learn to read a language in order to use it. (This is orthogonal to whether you want to learn it in the first place, or whether you "ought" to.) It is a problem if learning how to read and write the language isn't enough.

The point TFA raises is that people who're familiar with CoffeeScript syntax may still make mistakes resulting in completely erroneous but valid code. Yikes. And the inherent nature of whitespace or indentation makes the problem harder to detect by cursory inspection.

I have no strong opinions about CoffeeScript, myself. I just thought this was an interesting distinction, and a rare case where syntax makes a significant difference.
But then you have to think everytime whether you should put parantheses there or not. Is the code readable without parantheses? Should I put them there in case someone reads the code in a year and doesn't know about the problem domain ... ? It is not much, but it is extra cognitive load that is wasted.

It's akin to programming C and everytime you write a function, if statement or for loop you have to ponder whether it looks best to put the opening brace below the line or at the end of it. I hate reading code with an inconsistent brace placement style like that.
Oh, I see what you did there :). Have an upboat.
For more discussion of this feature -- see yesterday's conversation on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/zx137/coffeescr...
It's like an over-designed tumblr theme. My eyes don't know where to go, it feels claustrophobic when a story is open, the white headline is almost invisible against the main photo, navigation is all over the show, and I'm distracted by the secondary stories' photos so much so I don't read the headline and just keep scrolling.

It's beautiful, but functionally it really needs simplifying.
Warp speed is only 1/10th the speed of light.

As far as some news about faster than light travel, refer to:
http://xkcd.com/955/
Totally buying one.