skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm pretty sure the PSD format chucks are based off IFF spec from 1985

http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/2d/IFF.txt

Things were padded to 4 byte boundries because the 68000 processor would crash if you read an unaligned 32bit value. So the length of the actual data was what you find in the size field of each chuck but each chunk is padded. That way you didn't have to work around the 68000 quirks and read a byte at a time.

I wrote a psd reader in 93. It wasn't that hard and still works today. Maybe I chose an easy subset. It only reads the original result (merged layers) that gets saved when you chose to save backwards compatible files in photoshop.

http://elibs.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/elibs/trunk/elibs/li...
On Private Software
Fear of math makes your brain hurt
Clarity - Responsive Web App Dashboard
The data probably comes from here:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastall.shtml

The final step was transforming into this JavaScript file:

http://callum.com/sandbox/webglex/storm_tracks_webgl/js/stor...

The process likely involved reading an XML or CSV file from one or several datastets and generating that file.
As someone living here for most of his life, yeah, Singapore has become very expensive. Doesn't help that inflation has been around 6% ~ 7% per year.

The .gov here has been playing with the exchange rate (rather than interest rates) to help out but it really hasn't really worked out.
Prada online shop
API KPIs Should Be Optimized for Developer Success
I am unable to open this page since 4 hours now.

404: PAGE NOT FOUND.
'http://solidsmack.com/3d-cad-technology/this-digital-10-finger-keyboard-of-the-future-is-simply- brilliant/%3Fcf_action=sync_comments&post_id=24747'

Oops! Looks like we're missing something here...
I've noticed how prevalent the New York Times is on /r/TrueReddit too. I don't think there is a complex answer. The answer to me that is most likely is the simple answer that the New York Times often has quality information and therefore has its articles shared and voted up more.
Opinionated Scala (video)
I'm wondering where is AMD's counterpart to Intel's Xeon E3-12XX? ECC RAM, AES NI and a low price point and hopefully not too high idle power usage should make an attractive CPU.

On a side note: does anyone know what happened to the "Zurich" 32XX Opterons?
Singaporeans are supposed to be near native English speakers because English is supposed to be our first language... but obviously not near enough.
You should read about the Toyota production process which showed that for more complex operations that was not the case.
I'd say your variant doesn't work because there's a hierarchical relationship between white-collar and blue-collar workers (one is hired by the other). This is not true for frontend vs. backend engineering in my experience. They are supposedly equal peers.
Who's the moron who hates women? If you are saying that because he is pro-life, then most women hate women because more women in America identify with "pro-life" than "pro-choice" when given the option.
Could you not think of this as a networking problem. Say you have 10 users with more than 1 million followers and there are 100 million twitter users, what is the probability that some of your other users are following them?

Perhaps for some of the accounts that do not use much credit to search for followers, you could also search for those who it follows. Then on your backend, you can see if this subset exists within a previous list of followers of a big user.
Ask HN: Thoughts on private versus government spending (for growth)?
What does HN think? I've put my answer to kick off discussion; as a comment.
These are basically my thoughts on the subject - as naive as they may be; I'm looking for greater enlightenment. I start by claiming/assuming that growth is one of the best ways out of the woods for the US economy.

Without taking a stance on either candidate; I'd like to point out that economically; the correlation between tax cuts / tax increases v.s. growth is weak; except for the extremes - and for the following reason: It's all about who'll spend it faster. If the government spends that money; the economy will grow. If the people who got the tax cuts spend that money; economy will grow.

With that in mind; let's look at the American case. Currently, US companies are sitting on top of > $1.5 trillion in cash in their US accounts. I applaud their decision not to spend this in face of weak demand. If you build another factory you won't be able to sell the goods.. etc. Thus - if we give people with high income / companies more cash through tax cuts; it is unlikely that they'll invest this to create jobs; mainly due to weak demand. They don't currently lack the money to invest; they simply think the returns don't justify the investment.

On the other hand; if the government were to just pay down debt in the short term with the money it would keep right now; this wouldn't help the economy much either.<p>The income of the middle class of this country has been declining in real terms for the past 30 years; which is killing demand everywhere. They need to be able to buy all the stuff companies produce. The middle class needs a tax cut & higher incomes. If there will be a tax cut; it should go to the middle class; because they'll spend the money.

Also, I'd like the government to keep some of the money and spend it. I'd like this to be spent in education; infrastructure; and science - areas of high return in the long term as well as the short.

I'd like the government to invest in upgrading the national infrastructure - bridges, roads, rails, energy distribution.. which means the companies getting the contracts get a lift. They will need and will procure everything from welders to bricklayers to cement .. The whole construction sector benefits.<p>I'd like to see NSF + NIH spending to increase. This is an investment in the American military so it can keep its technological edge. It is also the lifeblood of the technology and biotechnology industries - the crown jewels of the American economy.

I'd like to see investment in education; because many low-skilled jobs are not coming back. In the long term; an investment in education is the best indicator of macroeconomic success for a country.

So - it's not about tax cuts v.s. government. It's about a) who gets the tax cuts, will they spend it? b) how will the government spend the money? I'd like to see the candidates talk more about that.﻿
New Cool Presentation App for Win 8
Tired of boring and too long presentations? We are. Therefore we have developed a new great interactive presentation app for mobile devices called SlideIdea. SlideIdea is a new presentation tool especially designed for mobile devices. With SlideIdea you can create a presentation wherever you are and easily play it using our tools that help the speaker convey information seamlessly.<p>The unique features of SlideIdea are the sharing and interaction features that help speakers and audiences to communicate and get closer together through the use of mobile technology. The interaction features include a poll function where the audience can respond to questions through their own phone, pad or browser. There's also a Q&A message board where the audience can send questions or comments to communicate with the speaker smoothly. With SlideIdea the speaker can submit his slides to share which the audience easily can download to their own SlideIdea library in their Phone, PC or Pad and follow the presentation on their own device. The speaker can upload and share his/her slides freely on our website and through other social media. We have had the same presentation tools for decades with very few changes in the field. The problem with existing tools is that they are not suitable for the new mobile and technology advanced era. SlideIdea is a tool that is suitable for business people, teachers, professors, conference speakers etc. who uses presentation tools daily and is looking for a more innovative and smooth way to engage and interact with their audience to get their message across. SlideIdea has been recognized by Microsoft as one of the best Windows 8 apps in China and will promote SlideIdea as their top excellent productivity app in the Windows 8 store.Download a free trial version here: www.slideidea.com/company/store
nice point. I first read the article as:

I'm sick of the distinction between Surgeons and physicians.
The surgeons think they're hot shit because they solve the big problems. They know how to cut. They look down on physicians who never get their hands dirty and don't know how the body is put together. They get up in the middle of the night to save lives, and sacrifice their own to make this happen.

The Physicians think they're hot shit because they're the closest to the patient. They are masters of social interaction. They look down on surgeons who think that the answer to everything is to cut. Surgery should be a last resort, not a first.

Over-specialization is the curse of our profession. Stratification breeds condescension. bla bla
Guys, there are bunch more great dashboard themes out there that are also built with Bootstrap and are responsive.

(Disclaimer: this one was designed by me)

http://themeforest.net/item/clarity-responsive-web-app-admin...
Really cool stuff there,

Does anyone know of similar project that are built with the Android's UI in mind? It seems like almost all of these kind of projects are built with iOS' UI in mind... wonder why..
so estimated time for 1Billion is around Nov 8, 2012 12:30 GMT.
Nielson: http://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/the...
WordPress Developers: What Should I Make A Plugin About?
I am new to bootstrap: what does it need that gh pages don't support?
I disagree too.

I've tried many a time over the years to do good front-end work (especially where web apps are concerned), and I've concluded that I suck at it. Really. The things I find appealing are entirely orthogonal to the rest of the world, especially that cool school of UX engineers. I'm generally content with synchronous http requests, and adding Ajax is always an afterthought.

As a result, I stopped making crap websites for people. I started making nice backends, and who doesn't love a nice backend(?).

Everyone (especially me) is a lot happier when I'm not breaking the look and feel of a site/app/application/product, and I'm a lot happier when I don't have to care how it looks. I'll provide an API, and some other person can make it look good. That's the way the world works.

Asking everyone to be a full-stack engineer is a nice pipe dream, but consider the same in other professions. You'd be asking neurosurgeons to know the same level of detail as dermatologists, and vice versa. You'd be asking a Professor of Particle Physics to understand tertiary protein folding (as his biological counterpart might).

There is no such thing as "overspecialisation", only oversimplification of the job at hand.
انتهاي هستي
NetApp Launches New Mid-Tier Storage Arrays
More bad news for Intel
I got this on the ZX Spectrum, and it came with one of those plastic converters. There would be a code on the screen and you had to put the plastic thing in front of it to decode the image and type in the letters. To stop people from pirating the game by making a tape to tape copy of it.
WSGI Tutorial
Front end developer should rather work on his designer skills rather than backend stuff. Not being able to design cool interface makes frontend dev boring to work with.
Total noob question here

how do you use admin template like this..say for a PHP website on a VPS? How do you "connect" the templates with the data?
Been googling for a while but to no avail. I would really like to have something like this as traffic monitoring and customer support interface
The vastness of the universe in the original Elite had a wow factor, but really didn't serve much purpose in the game.

Much more important was the trading aspect.

Some systems were safe, and law abiding, and had police ships. Some were criminal, and had pirates circling. Many goods were common across them, but you could buy narcotics and slaves from criminal systems. Your behaviour affected how other ships would react - trading slaves was profitable, but you'd be attacked by police and pirates. Attacking other cargo ships (to capture their cargo) would turn you criminal. Attacking pirates would make you more law-abiding.

You could find two systems and find the right product to buy-low, sell-high.

There's more in common with games like Fallout 3, although fallout 3 didn't really have a good trading system.

(All the above is from memory. I have no doubt made mistakes.
Our bicameral legislature is dysfunctional in the US. The Senate and it's 60 votes to pass a bill filibuster rule make change too difficult.

The Senate does not represent the country well. California has two senators, so does Wyoming.

The next two years will be gridlock. It's unlikely Democrats retake the House and get sixty seats in the Senate, so divided government is what we have to look forward to.

The Senate is a strong architectural advantage for Conservative politics in the US.

This situation is unlikely to change. It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate and that is nigh impossible in the US.

Because of this big change only happens once a generation or so.
VMware ESX source code leaked
Minecraft and Frontier EliteII conveyed pretty much the same feeling of absolute freedom, yes. Of course, Minecraft was based on a completely different premise - changing the world instead of exploring it.

It can be argued that there has always been a contrast between procedural games and handcrafted games, a contrast that has followed us since the dawn of game design. Procedural tends to mean lifeless, Handcrafted tends to mean depthless.

There is no longer a clear distinction between the two, though. Games tend to include procedural elements and interweave them with handcrafted ones. Procedurals are generally used to provide a longer game experience, while Handcrafts are generally used to convey a story or a designer's cut of fun.

A recent example could be Diablo 3. This is at the core a Procedural game. The game has been divided in acts, chapters and quests. Each quest ends with a handcrafted challenge, each chapter ends with a handcrafted miniboss fight, and each Act ends with a handcrafted "act boss" fight. Everything in between, including the fights, the rare monsters, the champion monsters, the stage layout and of course the loot, is procedurally generated. The designers have a set of game rules that dictate how and when this or that monster can spawn, how it looks like, and how, when, and what kind of loot it can drop.

For some players, this extends the game's depth and the fun they can get, from a dozen hours of handcrafted content to hundreds, possibly even thousands of hours of procedurally generated entertainment.

Another great example would be Skyrim. Again at the core, the Elder Scrolls series is procedurally generated, but with a twist; in Daggerfall, the third episode, they pushed the envelope to its limit with a really humongous generated world, of a size that only Elite games could surpass. With time they realized that they went too far; they had to restrict the procedural aspect and resume the handcrafting. Using the procedurally generated content as a mold, they could "paint" the game on top of it to make it feel more lively, possibly more epic with each following iteration thanks to a better engine and of course a bigger budget.

Then there's the opposite line of game design - those that start as Handcrafted with increasing amounts of procedurally generated elements as the franchise advances. The Dragon Age series is widely seen as taking this path (a mistake in my opinion).

For some other games that are pretty much only procedural, check The Sims, Sim City and their ilk, Dwarf Fortress, Audiosurf, NetHack of course, the Civilization series, etc. The whole line of EASports games could also be seen as procedurally generated as well depending on your point of view. "God Games" such as From Dust are also generally procedural.
How exactly do you make this distinction in this day and age?
Appy Admin Theme
I guess this isn't supposed to be launched yet
Most of the addons are missing from this, notably NewRelic
There will always be a lot of people who have spent their time focusing only on one of the two.

If you have put in the same level of effort, he/she will have twice as much experience as you in which ever of the two they have chosen to specialise in.
Looking at Software from the perspective of other engineering disciplines, I certainly wouldn't say that I see any over specialization. My dad, for example, is a structural engineer, with a PhD is fracture mechanics, who has spent most of careers specializing in cracks in welds and for the latter half of his career sub-specializing in cracks in welds in underwater pipelines. And even with all that specialization (and probably because of it) he has more work than he has time to do and is very far from being irrelevant.
I agree with this, but for a different reason.

Having specializations work for developers, not against. Consider all these technical lead sort of job openings in start ups asking the developer to execute everything from being archetecture to test/development to deployment. If you want to subject yourself to this, by all means, but keep in mind that there are developers who just want to go home at 5.
So your mantra is "screw your existing customers"?
Very nice. Do people have links to good basic WebGL tutorials?

I'd love to be able to draw some shapes and stuff...
I'm familiar with it, I see people confused everyday, myself too sometimes. It's a nice myth that you can just get somewhere and everything will unfold naturally. You'll always have to learn how to communicate your intent to a system, and for each implementation of this system it will be slightly different, be it a subway network, a word processor, a stove, or even a pencil.
FWIW, I appreciate the intent to group things (e.g. logging rather than having to read all) but I do _not_ understand why the description is now invisible (needs hovering) and why it's completely unaccessible for the featured ones without navigating away.
There are two main arguments against government spending. The first is that governments tend to spend money much less efficiently than individuals do. There is much truth to this; if you think about market efficiency with distributed buyers and sellers, all trying to maximize utility individually, vs. purchases made by consensus--whether its textbooks or social spending like welfare--where there is a principal agent problem. The mantra goes, very few people spend other people's money better than they spend their own. So whereas the money might very well end up in the pockets of contractors who hire workers and create jobs, these jobs don't necessarily have to be productive. It was Keynes who gave the example of the government paying people to dig holes and fill them up. Certainly, this would be government spending that created jobs, but would it be good for the economy? If you take a labor theory of value, that the wealth of a society is the sum value of the goods and services the society produces, then that isn't the case. It is also apparent from a historical perspective that command economies are far outperformed by free ones. People simply work harder and produce more if they are working for themselves and not for others. This generates more value which generates more wealth which generates more growth, prosperity, and jobs.

The second argument against government spending is that there really is no such thing as government spending. The government doesn't have any money on its own; it only has money that it borrows through debt, raises in taxes, or creates via inflation. For the government to spend money in the economy, it needs to get money from the economy. No additional value is created; the cycle is only perpetuated. Frederic Bastiat, who developed the notion of opportunity cost, said it best in his essay That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen. It is easy to see the benefits of government spending when it arises (contracts going to construction workers, teachers, etc), but much harder to see the tradeoff of where that money is not being spent; for instance, money that would have circulated through the economy had it not have been paid to the government in taxes. The exact example he used, in fact, was of a natural disaster sweeping through a town and destroying buildings. Arguments will be made, he said, that the economy will be helped by the jobs necessitated by the cleanup and rebuilding. But these arguments ignore the money that would then not be spent on the economy had the disaster never come through in the first place. The fact is, a natural disaster destroys value, and that's that.

So a general rule of thumb is that public spending is not really good for growth, and anything that can be taken care of by the private sector should be. There are obviously public goods that cannot be efficiently managed privately, like roads and bridges, but these make up a fraction of the actual government spending today on growth. In general, increased public spending does not create growth, it merely recirculates money through the economy much less efficiently.
This defeats the "shorter distance in a cube" issue.
If a wise programmer decided he needs a serialization format, would he deliberately include in that format all the crap so vividly pointed to by the article?

No.

He will think of the "serialization format" as an interchange format between two different instances of his program. One process first writes the data file and another process later will read it. He also knows that sooner or later the "serialization format" needs to talk with different versions of his program, not just different running instances.

AFAIK, the Word .doc also started (and unfortunately continued) as basically a not-so-designed memory dump of the in-memory OLE data model. It's a format that more often than not has infamously stumped its own implementation as well. (Over time, OpenOffice has saved quite a lot of .doc files of Office users.)
I find that using that two finger combination for backspace is tedious, particularly because there are no arrow keys to correct errors without repeatedly pressing backspace.

Speaking of "discouraging use of the arrow keys", Imagine using ASETNIOP with vim: Despite the combo probably being a disaster in many ways, vim's use of y and p might ease some of the copy/paste issues.

At least we(QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak, and ASETNIOP EDIT: Not the french though...) can all agree on how to press the letter 'a' (and nearly 'm').

I would point anyone looking for the perfect non-chording keyboard to the kinesis advantage, regardless of your favorite layout. http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm
The issue is about ego and understanding, not specialization.

Fishermen probably think they're hot shit and that developers are useless people building addictive distractions.
Apple basically came into the phone industry, built upon the innovations of all others of the past decades, added their innovative ideas, a highly-polished UI and then flat-out refused that others ever could use these improvements of theirs.

Apple shocked many of the incumbents who believed they had a stable oligopoly and could now be lazy. This is the positive effect Apple had, and they have earned handsome profits for it so they really have no need to exploit the patent system for the last penny. I hope they realize this gradually.
Not to mention, in a lot of factories, although the labour is broken down into operations, operators will be trained in every operation and switch between them.
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Why geeks and nerds are worth it...
Don’t laugh: Code for America thinks government can be beautiful