skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> JavaScript does exhibit this. It has exactly one thing going for it: it's the only scripting language widely available in web browsers.

Other things it has going for it:

- a proper universal unicode-aware string type. Languages which lack this: C, PHP. (Note that i said universal, obviously you can do proper string handling in any language, some just make it a bit too hard.)

- low verbosity and a general lack of boilerplate. Languages which lack this: Java, C++. (Yes, you can write concise code in these languages, it's just that in practice nobody does.)

- Prototypal inheritance. Admittedy, many people consider this a disadvantage, but that's because they were introduced to the inferior classical inheritance model first.

- Everything is an object, always. Languages which lack this: practically every mainstream language out there. Combine this with prototypal inheritance, and it makes javascript the most object-oriented language i know by letting you inherit from almost anything.

- A syntax so expressive it can be easily adapted to do dynamic scoping and namespacing (see crockford's book) without actually needing a namespace syntactical element, which makes it possible to scale it up to hundreds of thousands of lines of code. (The DOM is a different matter, but a different language would feel the pain of scaling that up just as much.)

So, really, worse is in the eye of the beholder. Javascript is different, not worse. Are you sure you've given it a fair chance and aren't just rejecting it for weak typing and the horribleness that is the DOM?

(Btw, you should try a proper IDE like webstorm that has a full debugger for javascript before saying the tooling isn't there yet.)
Sharing information about yourself is always a good idea and big news is often shared with a group of people. For instance when I decided to be a programmer I told everyone I could because it was a big thing for me. Later I learned that in order to avoid discrimination I had to describe myself as a software developer...
If the world standardized on English, it would help improve global efficiency and communication. As it is, English is the lingua franca of business and software.

However a large part of culture is language, and countries are always trying to maintain their own.

We're also all pretty biased since this discussion occurs in an English-based community. If Chinese were to become the dominant world language, I bet there would be more resistance. The imperial system is a prime example where Americans are a stubborn cultural holdout.

Another concern is that language helps shape one's beliefs. Multilinguals understand that there are certain cultural concepts in native languages that are difficult to translate. Likewise, being a single language developer--whether it's Javascript or Lisp--influences how a developer approaches problems.
Technically the London underground has two live rails, one of them which is the return rail. No idea though if this makes it more dangerous than a normal three rail subway which uses the two main rails for the return current.
Bloomberg: The Cheaper iPhone Would Cost $100-$150
Zotonic - the Movie (Erlang Web Framework)
Yes, we probably will open-source; it needs some work before that, though. (I work for GoCardless).
The graph should have indicated whether those were base salaries or total annual compensation.
A fibonacci heap (in almost any language) is also one I would recommend. Definitely the hardest single thing I remember doing in college.
So you made me curious. I went and had a look at Dustin's writing. Here's a piece entitled "Do".

=========================

Wake up early. Show up. Learn how to think. Be genuine, but appear nice. Use envy for motivation instead of destruction. Do what you say you’re going to do. Ensure balance in every area of your life. Confront repressed thoughts immediately. Surround yourself with people who are better than you (but remember the thing about envy). Work out every day. Be good at what you do. Make money doing what you love. Have good friends. Never settle.

--

Now, as far as I can tell, every aspect of that post is good advice. It's evident that Dustin's advice was derived from experience, because some his points are counter-intuitive-but-true (which tend to only be learned as a byproduct of screwing up). The advice seems to match my own experience as well, so it seems possible it may be broadly true and (and therefore broadly useful).

I don't know what demon you see in him, but you're wrong.

Now, at this point, it seems only fair that we contrast Dustin's writing against someone else's writing. Let's use your writing, in fact.

So here's a piece you wrote, entitled "New Year - No Fun Allowed".

=========================

My resolution is to blog every day. Whoops, already missed that one. Make it every week, I guess.

Also, to finally launch the enormous white whale of a ship that I’ve been working on in Kerbal Space Program (which is what has kept me from here for so long). It will set all sorts of records, visit all the planets… I just need to have the damn thing not explode. I’m getting closer now; got as far as 20km, and the most recent launch was spoiled by pure bad luck (a piece I’d blown off the top of my rocket fell down back onto it).

You might think stuff like buying a flat or finding a job should be higher on the list than achieving something in a computer game. And you’d be right. But damned if it doesn’t feel like the other way around.

--

Eh... I was going to say some more stuff, but it appears you may be going through a rough period in your life.

This is something of a tangent, but: if you happen to want to talk with someone about what's on your mind nowadays, or if you just need someone to talk to, then please feel free to toss me an email. I'm happy to listen (if you want that) or to do whatever else I can.

Life can be rough, but don't let it break you, even if it seems hard not to.
Microsoft Messenger will be retired and users migrated to Skype on March 15
It seems that you're also expecting other people to change.

You can also just voice your opinion respectfully while still leaving room for everybody else's interpretation.

It's the difference between "I don't agree." and "You're doing it wrong!"
Sweden not so much any more: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9599/
i had to write very similar code (deleting from a linked list) a couple of days ago. i wasn't the easiest code to write, and i needed several iterations before my tests were ok, but i remember feeling happy that the final result was clear and correct.

i just checked it and, yes, i used "two stars".

now i'm reading all the comments here, which are predominantly critical, calling this "clever" code. and it struck me just how lucky i am to work with decent programmers. where this kind of thing is considered quality work, not "showing off".

what i don't understand is why the other commenters here use pointers at all. couldn't you rewrite this to use arrays with integer indices? then you wouldn't need any stars (or very few), and it would be even "easier".

well, that's not true. i do understand. everyone thinks their own level is the correct one.

but still, i have sometimes been lucky enough to work with people who knew a lot more than i did. when i was in that position i didn't think they were "showing off". i thought they were awesome and tried to learn from them.
How Facebook and Twitter are messing up (Slovenian) journalism
It's never late to start with something like this for example: (c25k program) http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
It's pretty common in the UK these days.
Xi3 Making Valve’s Fabled Steam Box? That’s News to Valve, It Turns Out
As an alternative to the ACH approach, Bitcoin offers this

bitcoind sendtoaddress <bitcoin address> <amount>

Works anywhere in the world, not just USA.
The specific code given in the blog post might encounter a LHS, but it's not endemic to that approach of doing linked-list manipulations via double pointers. They can be avoided just as easily using either approach.

The point I am attempting to make is that the double-pointer is very nearly just syntactic sugar that allows the programmer to avoid special-case handling. Semantically there is very little difference between the two approaches; if they are properly implemented, they perform the same memory operations in the same order, and there is no architectural hazard that is specific to one but not the other.
> I think the moral of the story is that when you are too clever with implementation details, you might run out of your cleverness when starting to deal with the actual problem domain.

That reminded me of this quote: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan
Doom3 Gangnam Style in WebGL
Great story. Unfortunately, the API documentation and tutorial writing guilds went extinct decades ago and has never been able to return to Lispland. :)
If you use Vim within tmux (on Mac OSX) the clipboard can become 'detached'. To get it working again I use Chris Johnsen's excellent little command.

https://github.com/ChrisJohnsen/tmux-MacOSX-pasteboard

You can install using 'brew install reattach-to-user-namespace'

You need to config tmux:-
set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh"

then set vim to use to use the unnamed clipboard by default.
I'm in Montreal. We have a serious traffic problem during morning and evening rush hours. In fact, TomTom has put our city at #4 in North America for worst traffic and it seems #1 for both morning and evening traffic peaks [1].

Two places that I can think of this being brutal are taking Decarie Blvd exit from Decarie North and taking the 20W exit off of the 13S. I'm sure that are some other pretty good examples out there.

1: http://www.tomtom.com/lib/doc/congestionindex/2012-1003-TomT...
>the first Gulf War in Iraq was won because a Lisp application took care that US soldiers had everything from toilet paper, ammunition to gasoline.

Really? Because IIRC it was won because it was fought by superpower against a small country with 1/1000 the military resources.

I'm not talking politics in this comment. What I mean to say is it's another thing to say "Lisp was used in that system" and totally another to say "the war was won because of it".

There is a big possibility that there was absolutely no correlation between what that language that system was written on and the war being won (and is far more likely, anyway: wars have been won, before and after, without Lisp).

Lot's of NASA missions use plain old C and do just fine. Should we say that they succeeded "because of" C?
Going off topic here but: I won't disagree with the utopian notion of a world where everyone have a common lingua franca, I think that would be a good thing as well. There being only a single language though, that's definitely not a very positive thing.
How to build your own guitar speaker
Yeah, on a closer reading one mode of WPS sounds like it would fit the bill. Too bad that it has also the major security hole mode ("enter AP PIN on device" mode). Hopefully that can be selectively disabled and eventually deprecated.

edit: Whats in WPS 2.0? There are some references to it, mainly saying that it could fix the security issues in WPS. But I couldn't find any solid info how it would to that.
The difference is the experience. If they can provide an experience that people find valuable and an improvement over, for them at least, just hooking up a PC to a TV then it could be advantageous.

Forget for a moment that this is "just" a linux pc running steam. Imagine for a second that this is some company launching a brand new game console. In much the same way that Sony entered the market with the PS1 or Microsoft with the XBOX. Does the installed base of games matter? Not if the console maker can drive an initial set of games on launch that are compelling enough to drive people to buy the console in large numbers, and then the installed base of consoles will incentivize other games makers to target the console. Valve has the advantage here that they are already a top tier game studio and they already have quite cozy relations with a lot of game makers and publishers.

Will it work? Maybe, maybe not, it's hard to say just now. Ultimately the market will decide. Personally I'd give it just as much chance as the WiiU, if not more, of being a major player in the console games market in 5 years.
New Github Public Profiles
Gmail: "cant send mail yet"
anyone else having this problem when trying to send from google apps gmail?
It would just bump Venus's orbit a bit - probably not even enough to notice. A single asteroid doesn't have the potential energy to destabilize a planetary orbit.

see: the pockmarked surface of the moon, which still has a stable orbit.
Good article, but the last paragraph had me scratching my head. $250 for a YouTube channel subscription that notifies you with an email? If I'd paid $250 for that I'd be pissed off.
You are right in your interpretation of what I meant.

I think the lane split is the better example of the prisoner's dilemma. As others have mentioned that in the two-lane merge situation the global optimum is the selfish approach.
In your calibration tests against GPS, what sort of error do you see after 500 miles of accelerometer data?
Don't forget: The Caves of Clojure - steve losh

http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/07/caves-of-clojure-01/
It's common, but daft. It makes every relationship sound like a firm of solicitors. I don't see what's wrong with wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend.
In some (maybe even most, I have not really checked) of the tunnels in the Stockholm subway there are walkable paths alongside the tracks. They or off-limits for the public though. London underground tunnels are generally way more narrow than the tunnels here in Stockholm.

EDIT: To illustrate this.

London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Underground_is...

Stockholm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swe_subway_switch_2005042...
Technology for technology's sake. But at least I can easily create box-shadows now or know my geo-coordinates at all times! PS - This article is on the frontpage of msn.com
If you understood pointers well enough, you would see Linus's version as more readable.

I agree - and as someone who makes his living as a C programmer, I'm sure someone could easily come up with a terse piece of Ruby code that I would view as too clever, and therefore confusing, but which the vast majority of programmers on here would look at and think, "a beginner may be confused by this, but a competent Ruby programmer would not be."

I know some of this comes down to stylistic preferences, and likely some have had bad experiences maintaining code that went overboard with this sort of thing. But I also think that if these snippets of code were being discussed in a forum with a bias towards low-level development, rather than HN, which seems biased towards web development, you'd be seeing some very different responses.
This looks like a comic from the 70s, photocopied and hanging on the bulletin board in the computer lab.
[aside] that looks like it was a very interesting conference. i can't find much related info. will it be annual? are they spreading to other places? who was behind it? [edit:] it seems to be an indie thing http://techmeshconf.com/techmesh-london-2012/contact/
Europe’s 4 biggest operators reportedly in talks to create EU-wide network
Many people over the age of, say, 30, feel weird about using the word "boyfriend" or "girlfriend", because they feel that it implies a young person.
You can even ask for money without having any way of receiving it. This is a good discipline to get into when doing customer development interviews.

"So we've established that this is going to save you four hours a month. OK -- it isn't ready for you yet, but it will be soon. It costs $50 a month. Can I get a $50 deposit from you to reserve your spot? We'll apply it against your first month's fee."

If you've identified a problem people actually have, they'll crawl over you to give you money. You don't even have to accept it, just watch whether they're actually willing to get out the checkbook or not.

(n.b. A lot of software is sold prior to existing at numbers substantially higher than $50. For example, you might hypothetically be building something enterprise-y and looking for your first anchor customer. If you are, the conversation goes something like "OK, will you soft-commit to being our first customer on this? We'll draw up a Letter of Intent which says that, six months from now, after we've got the technology in place, we start implementing a field trial for $YOUR_COMPANY, with successful implementation to be followed by an annual purchase in the six figure region. Does that sound good to you?")
If you've been hiding it for a long time because you're worried about the response you might get, then at some point you decide to tell others, then it's going to happen that way.

And across a lot of the world, even in 2013, there's still a lot of negativity about homosexuality.
Could be private videos right? As I understood it, he's paying for the content, not the email.
You can see how the title of the post might give the idea that it was about specific drivers. My first thought when I read it was "I bet it's those god damn hippies hyper-mileing in their priuses", but then I clicked through to the article and it failed to confirm my preconceived opinion.
Good article, but the last paragraph had me scratching my head. $250 for a YouTube channel subscription that notifies you with an email? If I'd paid $250 for that I'd be pissed off.

No, he paid for "a weekly 5 minute video series."

Marketing is everything.
Sure, that's a valid opinion of meetings or what time is appropriate to start working in the morning.

The point is that the late person he's talking about agreed to meet at 9:00 but failed to be on time.
FundedByMe To Launch Branch In Finland As Crowdfunding Heats Up In The Nordics
Sorry, would you mind clarifying? Any Ruby app? So a Sinatra app which happened to YAML.load would also be at risk?
Ban, I don't know. I recall that Denver regulated billboards in the mid 1970s for just this reason--certain flashing signs had to be shut down.
Just because you shouldn't have to lie about it, doesn't make it good advice to never lie about it. There are, sadly, many places in the US (and many in the rest of the world) where expressing your true self will cause you (physical/emotional) harm. If you live in such a place, be careful.
It's not so much a question of "Why Lisp?" as it is a question of "Which Lisp?," if you ask me.
I didn't see any concise answers there so I'll say why I use this a lot at work:

- If I use Spring.Net I never have to put stupid trace logging on any functions but I get it for free. I make one change in the XML config files and suddenly every function for every inject object has full tracing turned on.

- Getting new code installed into production is a huge drama/pain but changing a config file doesn't have the same level of bureaucracy.
"...except too-many-layers-of-indirection."
I had a fabulous middle-class friend once who would refer to his Mum's boyfriend as "My mother's lover". Let's bring "lover" back.

Failing that "Other Half" or "Baby Mums".
Could be private videos right?

Even then, what's the issue? Just because something is available free if you search hard enough for it doesn't mean the creator can't or shouldn't charge for it.
Not me, but I would guess it's because, while both Common Lisp (ie. SBCL) and Clojure are both Lisp-like languages per se, Clojure departs further from "pure" Lisp than Common Lisp, in that it replaces lists with things such as vectors in a lot of places (see defn syntax).
Thanks for your feedback. very excited to get this up and running
Intellectual Curiosity In Our Schools: Why We Need It Now More Than Ever
> However a large part of culture is language

I think the reverse also holds. A large part of language is culture. The meaning of a sentence depends on the context and culture is a part of the context.

I believe if all the world started speaking the same language it would quickly diverge into different dialects and (sub)languages.
"Your ability to stand up for your truth is a muscle, and the more you exercise it the stronger it gets."

His attitude is commendable and helpful in a lot of different situations:

- people with stand-out religious beliefs
- people with strict diets
- people who don't drink

It makes me very appreciative that I don't have anxieties over anything that would require me to correct people or divulge personal information.

Being gay in his situation, and in general having anxieties attached to information you must always carry, is a pain in the ass. This might be a good reason to act "flaming" (when its an act): get the information out there immediately. I do that in certain situations too.
A little Ask HN that is relevant to this thread: what are peoples' favorite avenues for processing cards these days? Especially for small increments (e.g. a few bucks a month)?
Yes, if attackers controlled the content of the YAML message.
52 developers give 100 iOS/Android games for free
> First, know what you're coming out about. Identify your truths. Write a personal values manifesto. You can't know if your values are being violated if you're ambiguous about what they are.

most people would come out about the fact that they don't give a shit about the value of the product their employer produces.

many would have to admit they delight in sabotaging the system they hate.
If you right-click the AdBlock Plus icon in your browser and choose options, the first option on the General tab reads "I like the text ads on Google search results; show me those." That's what I do.
ok, English next time
Ah, I came to make a comment about needing 'in WebGL' adding to the title, and I see it is already there!

Little comment: If like me you try to click on anything in chrome, you will get a message about the page wanting to disable your mouse cursor. I thought that sounded dodgy, but agree. It just means let the app take control of the cursor, so you can use it for changing viewpoint.
My Story of Launching a Top Paid iPad App
Does anyone else not see any evidence within the article that proves Iran is behind these seemingly routine DDOS attacks? Seems like we are made to think it was Iran..
Wonderful. The vocoder idea is fantastic
Would be nice if it caches 2-3 answers so it doesn't have to call each time. Also if I could specify like -p123 it shows me first three answers instead of only first and I have to make a new call till I find my answer.
Really useful. Thanks for sharing.
The existence of this vulnerability (without details) was disclosed publicly last week. So far as I know, nobody was told any details about the vulnerability itself; just that a patch was coming, and it was very important to apply it.
Amazon used to pull out "statistically improbable phrases", 2- or 3-word phrases that occurred in the book you were looking at that were rare among all the books in their "look inside" database. Some examples: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25839
a) You might not want to disclose the sex of the other person.
b) Some people object against the term 'girl' and 'boy' for grown up people.
c) Political reasons, there is a wider variety of relationship permutations than the above 4.
The Rise of the Activist Engineer