skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Naming things is tricky. I got into programming when 6 character assembly labels were the norm. You can imagine what that led to. I still catch myself dropping vowels from function names every now and then (rndflt anybody?).

What's pretty good about this code is that it is neatly laid out, the modularity is just about right and it solves a particular problem and provides a bit of text showing how the bits get put together to make it work.

As such it beats a very large number of the github projects out there. Brevity in function names is easily forgiven when the code itself is this easy to read.

But I'm with you on the basic principle and I'd vote for random_float. iNeverCouldGetTheHangOfCamelcase.
This is really a nice trick!! Thank you for sharing!
Definitely a good implementation. I wonder if it could be further improved to use a linear gradient (dark to light), instead of a solid color fill.
GNU is actually a totalitarian regime
What would you say the current market rates in the San Francisco area would be for full-time iOS developers? What are the variables that this depends on?
http://i.imgur.com/RbPQ8.jpg

PowWow is trippy.
The code isn't all that bad, the spaghetti reference might give that impression.

PHP gets a bad rap because 'it's not a real language after all' but frankly I don't care what language you use if you write neat code like this that's an automatic 'pass'.

You can write spaghetti code in any language, but this isn't it.
iOS 6.0 shipped with the iPhone 5 and Apple Maps was a major new feature touted by Apple and presented in-person to journalists.
1. Launch barebones, simplified product for free

2. Iterate on user feedback, often for years

3. Get tonnes of folks hooked

4. Begin charging
It's by far the best huge mail system, but I've seen lots of 1-500 user mail systems which are superior to gmail. They just cost more like $100-500/user/yr, vs. $0-$50/user/yr.

Compared to utter shit like Army Knowledge Online, sure, it's great.
As of 12:47 AM PST it looks like they fixed the issue. If their devs are on the East Coast, I feel bad for the poor guy who got that call.
TLDR, he exhibits hindsight bias
4 Changes in Backbone.Events you should know about
I'm currently going through Big Nerd Ranch's iOS Programming book and the "Challenges" at the end are geared towards making you accomplish tasks that would be given in the real world. I'm 25% of the way through the book and I'm already working on some projects on the side.

I know a couple people in the contracting business, and they all say that having their own app(s) in the App Store was the most valuable aspect for marketing.
If you read the back story the translator believes exactly that, which is to say that the DPRK created it for westerners. What is interesting is that the website its on has completely bought into the message. They say things like "And jesus, is it on the f&k*g money."

That suggests that it was targeted exactly to the sort of non-critical thinker/reader that the site "superchief" represents, and by all indications manages to hit on all of the sensitive spots. That is the point of propaganda, and whether it is anti-Semitic white supremacist crap or DPRK crap it requires that the person reading it check their assumptions at the door.
The verdict on the popular podcast Tech News Today was that "Scroogled" is very petty and childish.

I personally think that it is hilarious, but not in a good way for Microsoft. I lost a little bit of respect for them.
" the use of statistical models that have no biological basis."

this is irrelevant

This is like saying a computer using an x86 processor is different, from the point of view of the user than an ARM computer, beyond differences in software

Or like saying DNA is needed for "data storage" in biological systems and not another technology

Sure, you can get inspiration from biology, but doesn't necessarily mean you have to copy it.

""I need to meet up" to Chinese. Google translates it to 我需要满足, meaning "I need to satisfy". This is where statistical translations fail, "

It's not really a fault of statistical translations (more likely quality of data issue), even though it has its limitations. Besides, google translation has been successful exactly because it's better than other existing methods (and Google has the resources, both in people and data to make it better)
There was also http://www.doineedajacket.com/, but that seems to have gone ad-crazy to the point where I can't find the result.
I'm also a student that is looking to intern/work with a startup.

There was a common application for startups posted on HN recently, and it seems very promising. I am definitely applying. The deadline is March 5th, so you have some time, but it would be nice to see who is interested in you.

Here's the link: http://www.university.firstround.com/
Nah, you can use the VS Express Edition on a VM hosted on Azure or Amazon to develop Windows 8 store apps for next-to-nothing. There's still some kind of fee to register as an app developer though.

I doubt anyone's going to beg you to jump on it, just sayin' IMHO even the most pessimistic projections would still indicate it's going to be a pretty freaking huge app market.
The guy didn't follow any of the accepted conventions, so please stop with the generalizations already.
>Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am (hyper?)active, extraverted and social. Sitting in front of the computer alone all day is as sub-optimal as it gets for my character

A more appropriate title would have been "Working alone sucks for me"

I love working alone. Politics are non-existent or scarce.
10 Geeky DIY Christmas Decorations
Contrary to what the parent comment asserts, they are not prohibited from printing the full name. It's a gentlemen's agreement between the various media organisations not to do so.
I believe that TBL not only complains about it, but also warned that it could happen many years ago. It's annoying that not many people listen to him... perhaps it's because he's so polite and civil all the time.
Key term: "ordinarily."
In the same way is still happening in places like Okinawa: http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/okinawa/marine-given-fou... ?
Verizon Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean Update Brings; Google Now, S Voice
Glassdoor spamming all its users due to a technical issue
For several hundred years, inventors tried to learn to fly by creating contraptions that flapped their wings, often with feathers included. It was only when they figured out that wings don't have to flap and don't need feathers that they actually got off the ground.

It's still flight, even if it's not done like a bird. Just because nature does it one way doesn't mean it's the only way.

(On a side note, multilayer perceptrons aren't all that different from how neurons work - hence the term "artificial neural network". But they also bridge to a pure mathematical/statistical background. The divide between them is not clear-cut; the whole point of mathematics is to model the world.)
> Does karma matter that much to you?

Revealed preferences suggest that it does :(

> That's pretty neat code ;)

Flattery will get you karma beyond your wildest dreams (for wildest dreams = 1).
The McKinsey Approach to Problem Solving
I don't think he is trying to justify anything...
If the messages are between humans, that helps. You can't build a community over just DNS.
In banks, especially those with large capital market or investment banking arms, you WILL risk losing your job if you try to work around corporate IT. It is basically a guilty-until-proven-otherwise perspective. I have seen it happen multiple times to front desk personnel.

That is also assuming you can, since many banks have super strict policy implementations which would necessitate greater than average technical know-how or investment to work around them.

Of course, there is a cost to this type of infrastructure. Whether you can dilute this cost to make it more accessible to ordinary companies by technical means alone, is something I suspect is not possible.
I think it is important to learn enum's but it is a bad example. You really should use the built-in types when they're available. Color is a particular example (in both .Net and Java) where you should never re-invent the wheel.

In general teaching enum's is very important and something I've not really seen schools do (although their "learn to program" programs are typically 101 to newbie, I've never seen a program that really builds on the basics).
I'm probably preaching to the wrong crowd here, but I'm not talking in hindsight-bias. I mean, even in the early days others were making similar predictions - not all of them were as vocal though. Also, I'm pretty sure he did not single-handedly invent all the listed things before anyone else had even thought of it -- as is the case with any invention, you probably have a few thousand people thinking about the idea or researching it before one person steps forward with a good implementation -- and I'm sure Kurzweil found inspiration in his colleagues work, and there were probably earlier implementations of his ideas.

This does not mean he was not smart, I am simply making a general truth: there are few "original" inventions, and many "obvious" inventions. If you do not think these things were obvious, how long do you think it would take for the next implementation to appear? I would bet 1-3 years at most. No single human is that extraordinary -- some just work harder than others at becoming visible.
Sure, I can relate to that. In the early eighties computer magazines had huge listings of code which I dutifully typed in.

They never worked worked first time as I'd invariably mistyped various characters, but the subsequent bug finding taught me about how the code worked.

The bonus was you got a playable game at the end of it.
Mouthee – Share and discover word of mouth recommendations
Tech entrepreneurs face hidden biases - SFGate
Well this used to be the way I migrated people with old phones to Android. Since it is impossible to still get the arcane sync software for old Nokia or Sony phones to work, I always just synced them to Google. Once - then that person's new Android phone would sync them back. I can't imagine that was too taxing on their servers :-(
Thanks for the invitation!

I agree, and I was pretty involved with the pbem hobby for a few years now. At the moment, I just moved to Singapore and am still settling in. I've mostly played the 1900 variant recently, and even introduced the Cambridge University Diplomacy Society to that variant and made it their mainstay.

1900 is a definite improvement over standard.

I prefer pbem over ftf, but ftf is a good pastime in its own right.
Well, there's probably nothing sensible that I could do to prove who I am. I promise that making the hashtag trend wont blow up the world.
Is it France that has some kid of law like this? Here in New Zealand papers have some kind of thing where suicides aren't usually reported where young people are concerned. I believe this relates to something the Ministry of Health organises.
I think Ryan should receive a lot of money from the media. Can the media really just ruin somebody's life and not even pay a dime for it?
Ask HN: Knowing how some thing works vs Knowing how and when to use it?
How does knowing how something works compare to knowing why and when to use that something?

I'm a self-taught programmer with a lot of experience. I know when to use a database index, and I know why they exist. I know the performance limitations, I know the tradeoffs, and I know when they are appropriate and not appropriate. But if you were to ask me about how they work, I have no idea. If you were to ask me to explain the computational complexity of selecting a tow on an indexed table compared to a non-indexed table, I have no idea.

How does this fact effect me as a developer? I recently got into a discussion on another forum about this topic. The consensus from that discussion seemed to be that not knowing the low level implementation details significantly hinders your ability reason about the technology. In other words, if I can't explain how a B+tree works, I'm pretty much worthless when it comes to understanding how to use a database.

The discussion came up when I noticed that just about 100% of the job interviews I've done, I'm always asked to explain how something works, rather than when to use something, or why you would use something. This means that I pretty much fail every single job interview, and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.

To what extent does understanding the underlying concept effect you ability to reason about a technology?
I use Chrome with Vimium when I want to do development, but I still prefer Safari for browsing. Something about having those tools away from me helps me grok whatever I'm reading...
I hope the pay was really excellent, I mean - fabulous. Otherwise I don't see why someone would submit to such treatment. Many companies are constantly looking for good programmers, and I bet you can find one with a non-jerk boss.
How well what? And why does one have to go back? Compare now to now.
Four Tips To Avoid Breaking The Glass of Your New iPad Mini
Think about what kind of games you like to play, choose one of them and try to simplify it down to the bare minimum, no fluff. Then start making the most basic feature and continue from there.
I think your phrasing that wrong. If gun deaths are the problem, then guns are, by definition, going to be part of the problem. However their may be contributing or even bigger problems involved.
I feel like this is a joke that I almost get, but don't.
> It must be strong in some niches - but what are they?

Social network speculators?
I too felt the same and said it here:
http://www.codinggarage.com/2012/07/how-to-be-better-program...

"The right approach is to get your hands dirty, get inside the core of the code and understand it, thus implement it well. We should also try to remember the code as much as we can at the first place so if we face a similar problem later, we can solve it in no time. Also I would suggest not to copy paste it and try to type it on your own (if the code consists of a few lines), this approach will definitely help you to remember it for later use. The coding ninjas, the coding beasts, the rock start programmers, whatever you call them, all the great programmers definitely have one thing in common and that is they are like living library of the programming language and framework they use. They spend maximum time in getting things done (not finding the solutions to the problems they have already worked on before)."
Why this Professor begs on Mumbai trains
New reports say that other guns were found - some kid of rifle left in the car r something like that.
You do realize Ray Kurzweil is behind the initial technology of Nuance, which Apple uses for Siri now.
I don't think that it's the right approach only ever to allow JavaScript (just because every time anything else is mentioned, we inevitably go off on this tangent).

There is no indication that browsers are going to standardize on a VM (let alone NaCl) any time soon.

If someone just stopped bikeshedding and did Python in the browser, there's no reason a machine-level bytecode or whatever couldn't be implemented later.
It's a hard experiment to pull off.

First - because being surrounded by states where access to guns is easier will mean it's likely that they'll be significant illegal traffic in guns. You already see that between areas with tight gun controls like NYC and other states.

Second because I think one or two years is unlikely to be enough time for affects to show. I'd bet you'd see a drop in male suicide - but the culture of crime and violence will take longer to change.
The speed improvement is a bonus because the real benefit is it being an easy to install & use app/module (the only dependency is Perl).

If I was after bigger speed bump then I would consider using CSS::Minifier::XS which is a Perl + C app/module - https://metacpan.org/module/CSS::Minifier::XS

NB. CSS::Minifier::XS is reputedly 152% faster than CSS::Compressor - http://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/14udtf/efficient_css_c...
These arguments are terribly heuristic. The full stack of software included in any significant JavaScript app is big and complicated. There are already runtime differences, and we aren't saying that those make JS unusable. There is not going to be a big 3->4 migration any time remotely soon. No 'version hell'. The current story for Python compatibility is certainly much worse!
Because its syntax can't work with the DOM, or what?
A sad day for technology when a "giant" like Microsoft resorts to mud slinging tactics. Why not just build stuff that people want to buy?
The point of linking to another comment (made by someone else who is more qualified to comment around 2 years ago) is to point out how people just aren't learning.

While it may seem like it's just a convenience, these things tend to take on a life of their own. For example, Chef's "pipe to bash" installer is used by Vagrant, thereby exposing anyone using Vagrant and Chef to make a dev VM on an untrusted network (any wifi!) to who knows what being installed. But unless you read the source, you don't know about this risk.

Why does no one care about security?
You make it sound as if Google wanted you to use Microsoft's ActiveSync. They've only offered it so far for free (while having to pay Microsoft for it) because a lot of users needed it. But other standards have appeared since then, and they are pushing for the adoption of those, and less reliance on Microsoft's proprietary technologies. Apple is doing the same thing, too.
What science says about gun control and violent crime
>'Harder' is all about the tools at hand. If you have the right tools, everything is easy.
>So to me this is all semantics. To me all the wikipedia page basically says is 'we haven't invented
>a good artificial tool for generalized, fast perception'

Ok I'll rephrase. "After 30+ years of intense research it has hard to develop the tools to generalised fast perception". Whereas in that time we have developed tools that make higher level reasoning computationally cheap in comparison. But as you yourself say that's just semantics.

If you try to do something for over 30 years and make little progress, compared to another area of activity were many of the hard problems are solved in just a few years and the solutions to harder problems keep on coming, that's pretty good evidence that the first problem area is a hard one, however you try to finesse the description of the problems.
Maybe this is an overly simplistic response - but is it possible your question is exploring the difference between "learning something" and being "taught something"? I suspect that if you truly understand when to apply some technology then you probably have some insight into how it works - the opposite would be that someone has an imaginary table of "when this do that" values prepared by some notional domain expert that they employ.

To get back to your issue with interview type situations - I think that there is possibly some confusion between understanding how something works and how then it should be applied - with a lot of people biased towards "how it works in detail" as a key indicator for knowing how to apply.

For myself, I find it very difficult to understand the "when" (can I call it) if I do not understand the "what/how" first - but I do understand that might be just me.
Yes, that's probably exactly what the Skype managers said. "Let's do it first before our Chinese competition does it".
What other standards have appeared that support calendar, contacts, and tasks sync?

Google are doing this to stop third parties from offering Gmail integration without paying some kind of Google Tax (e.g. other platforms, apps, web-sites, etc).
I suspect that comment was more about the analogy of building detailed models out of pasta; in other words, that the subtext was that it looks like a painstaking technical feat achieved with strange materials for the purpose. And maybe in that respect all the more impressive.

PHP gets a bad rap because of problems with its design and implementation and some loosy-goosy culture (though most of these can be worked around or smoothed over by a framework and personal discipline, core language issues can be a form of technical debt). Really fixing this might require a breaking new version like Perl 6 or Python 3. But of course you can still build things with it. Like models of Neuschwannstein Castle ;)
Creating custom Nagios plugin
The 2012 Perl 6 Coding Contest
Fair enough, although I actually love that it wants my photos; I let it have them off my main (Android) phone but not from any other devices. As soon as I walk in the door at home my pics are on my PC, with no effort at all. Recently when the SD card in my phone went bad for some reason it meant I hadn't lost anything at all. It works very well indeed.
Rebooting the Gaming Industry
>I doubt anyone's going to beg you to jump on it

Noooooot exactly what I'm hearing from people that do popular mobile apps...
Some Go programs already play at professional level on 9x9 boards, and amateur mid-dan level on 19x19. That's "playing well" on my book: many people play go for years without reaching that level.

Yes, it's still far from the level computer chess was 15 years ago (beating top pros), but they're getting there. And I don't think it will take any major breakthrough in AI itself.
Obviously Google translate is not error free, nor is any statistical translation system going to be comparable to a human translator in the very near future, but you're underestimating the current development of statistical translation. Granted, I'm not a native speaker but I think "I need to meet up" is not even a sentence with proper grammar. Underlying model probably predicted something like meeting (satisfying) requirements due to the lack of an object in the sentence and context. Situations like this where the input is very short and noisy is obviously going to be a weakness of statistical systems for a long time to come, but looking at technologically how far we are from mastering biological systems, I think it's safe to say this is going to be the way of doing it for a while, and will be very successful in translating properly structured texts if proper context can be provided. Currently statistical translations have (almost) no awareness of context beside some phrase-based or hierarchical models. Many people are probably not factoring in the fact, that with exponentially more data, and exponentially higher computing power, a model can utilize the context of a whole book while translating just a sentence from that book - which is actually still much less than what human translators utilize in terms of context. While translating a sentence, I might even have to utilize what was on the news the night before to infer the correct context. We are currently definitely far from feeding this kind of information to our models, so I'd say this kind of criticism towards statistical translation is very unfair.
I guess you could just gzip your python code without minification, here's a little bench: https://github.com/jch/gzip_vs_minify
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We're hiring an iOS developer to complete an adventure-related iPhone application for delivery to clients in early February 2013. Themes are: performance travel, gear and social. Email will@magneticjunction.com for the full brief.