skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> No, it's ~2x slower with the early prototype. It will get significantly faster than that.

And we just need hardware XML accelerators and then XML will be great. This is not a new refrain from people who promote a subpar technology stack. Quality is just around the corner! We swear!

I'll believe it when I see it, and I'll be happy, because it'll mean that we're finally that much closer to the next step of dropping JavaScript as a first-order target entirely.

> The asm.js optimizations being worked on in Firefox do not match any definition of "proprietary" I ever heard. All the work is done openly and is open source, and that includes the spec, the Firefox optimizations and the emscripten support for asm.js.

It's not JavaScript. It's a custom VM built around a (bizarre) bytecode. The bytecode is an inefficient ASCII representation which happens to be interpretable as JS, but can't be interpreted as JS to actually be implemented efficiently -- which is to say, it's not really useful JS at all.

You may as well write a shell-script based ARM interpreter and call your ARM assembly "shell script". True, in a fashion, but also a totally pointless distinction. Everybody else will just call it "slow".

> ~2x slower than native is not optimal, sure. But it is in the same range of things like Java and C#, popular languages for mobile development (Android, Xamarin/Mono, etc.). And again, 2x is the starting point.

Android has the NDK for a reason, and even they are starting from a better position than trying to eek out runtime+rendering performance from an in-browser bytecode. Maybe on the web we'll get NaCL to serve the same purpose.

It'll be great if it all works out and we wind up with a cross-platform efficient and useful development target, with robust view management and event systems and common widget toolkits. Of course, at that point the web will look pretty much like the application development environments that we've been targeting for decades: operating systems.
You need a source to confirm that if you take the wealth away from the rich people in your tiny island nation, other people are not going to be motivated to create wealth there in the future?

Hong Kong and Singapore thrive because they are low tax, low regulation havens for the rich. Start enacting 'eat the rich' policies and the rich will go elsewhere.
Most ads are paid CPC, not CPM. So the advertiser doesn't pay until someone actually clicks the ad. And while it may be true that people who block ads would be less likely to click them, I doubt it's the case that they wouldn't click them at all.
> Define "intelligent routing".

At least Heroku themselves define "intelligent routing" such that the request will only be given to the free Dynos. Their random routing does not do that.
s/Rake/rack
Don't watch butterfly one for relaxation. Any life that survived the weird gravity effects in that system would also need nerves of steel.
Talk about taking the discussion in a different direction..
1Password moving to 256 bit AES keys
I was attempting to do something similar, but needed to support IE7 which doesn't support localStorage. You could probably rely on userData as a fallback though.
Right, but from the point of view of the advertiser, the user would be "Buying something" - access to the contents of the article, which is in principle being paid for by the advertising. This is the model that is failing - and why so much effort seems to be put into (mainly on videos) preventing you accessing the content without viewing the ads.

As for directly paying, this doesn't seem to be an option - see, the whole twitter thing, and the fact that having a paywall effectively prevents developing new readers (unless you are large/well known enough to avoid this problem)
Yes, yes, yes a thousand times to stop drinking alcohol. My moods leveled out substantially once I stopped drinking. Granted, I have what is traditionally known as a problem with alcohol so YMMV, but from personal experience it's been the best decision I've made by far. (I could go on for paragraphs about alcohol and programming culture, but I'll shelve the off topic proselytizing for later.)

More important than anything else, if you're having depression issues, it's important to remember that you can always change your story. You're not locked into anything (well, most things) in your life. True, some things are harder to shed than others, but if you're depressed enough where it affects you on a monumental, daily basis, just remember you can change it. Stop engaging in activities that make you feel like shit. Cut acquaintances (even family) out of your life that bring you down. Drop out of life for awhile if you need to - the people who truly care about you will understand. Anything is ultimately better than the alternatives of a quick demise or a bleak existence, both for you (primarily) and the people around you.

It gets better is an overused cliche, but it holds some merit. You can make it better.

(on a side note, time release caffeine sounds incredible.)
I lived in China for a bit. I only had bikes while I was there. I hated hauling the damn things up the stairs.
Negative numbers are supported. But if you want a clean solution, implementing a SubtractionOperator is easy enough. Just implement the OperatorInterface.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what's inconsistent there is not boolean evaluation, it's number to boolean conversion. 1 == true and 0 == false are pretty standard, but that doesn't mean 0 and 1 are booleans.
Perhaps you should suggest a few? I'd love to see what you have in mind. This (monetizing online written content) isn't as trivial as you seem to imply.
Ask HN: What was the name of the proto-IDE that used an Xbox controller?
I think it was on the front page a while back; some awesome person's personal project, that used code folding and copy-paste, to help make programming more accessible for non-keyboardists.

I wanted to revisit it but I don't know what it is called anymore. Is there any chance you might know? Thanks!
It's not a request for a brand refresh.

It's a request for a new logo.

My internal designer is sighing and shaking his head.
Do unclicked ads really still pay?

I don't really feel guilt for blocking ads because if I ever clicked on one it would be by accident.
CyberTrek: A 48 hour challenge
If your site depends on turning your readers into commodities, it is not in fact a "pro-consumer site".
it's sad to see him take so much trouble with his ads when some other sites may be the reason.

you are just a side victim. no matter how polite your ads are, if someone else has lousy video/peel/survey ads, they will force users to block ads. and the ads will be blocked when those users visit your page.

most people have no idea they can whitelist sites. when they don't see an ad, they don't even know they are missing something.

heck, my way of blocking ads (etc/hosts file from someonewhocares.org) does even allow me to whiteliste stes. even if i wanted.
Maths skills add up to higher earnings
One can outsource leadership in a variety of ways. A highly cohesive and capable group can do consulting projects and self-organize around the project, for example.
Untappd has been native for quite awhile.

http://blog.untappd.com/post/10844733770/weve-gone-native
He can rightly say that there are few "magic bullets" in life (that are articulated clearly in self-help books of 1915, at the very least), but I think he reveals that he doesn't consider making money; success in business; or managing oneself to be the metaphorical crafts or games that you can read books about and get better at.

Moreover, the author does say that people who seek to get rich are greedy, and not only that, but that they are trying to succeed by being greedy, rather than by "good work":

But what shall we say of the gospel preached to the new Industrious Apprentice; the Apprentice who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly [self-admittedly] by his vices?

If you acknowledge there is skill in succeeding (with a company, say, or in overcoming a bad habit, or tending your goals and beliefs, perhaps even to train more rigorously for that high jump), and that these things are moral or at least not immoral, the author's argument falls apart. It's as if he spins around and says that the best whist players and bricklayers must be propelled by an unhealthy greed or pride, seeing as it's impossible to write a book on such mystical things.

We recognize today that money is not moral or immoral,
but amoral. Perhaps it is dangerous that the economy is one big, somewhat arbitrary game, but so be it. We should see it for what it is.

As for self-improvement, I look forward to collectively pulling back the curtain on the human psyche more and more, continuing a pattern of ever-enlarging consciousness and awareness, shedding light on what was previously mysticism. From this perspective, the author just seems to be saying, "Stop, there's nothing there. Don't sail that way or you'll fall off the edge of the Earth."
Does Untappd not work in London?
Photographs That Capture the Best and Worst of 1970s America
If you believe in your product, then you should also believe you are guiding them to the "best choice."
I find Lua's use of tables as a universal container to be clumsy. For example:

local array = { one, two, threee, four }

A gap is silently created in the array because Lua returns nil for undefined variables. This causes the (#) operator to an return incorrect result and can lead to subtle, difficult-to-find bugs in the program.

Lua makes no distinction between nil and a non-existent element, so assigning nil to an array element will also create a gap, rather than shifting the keys of the subsequent elements downward:

local array = { 1, 2, 3, 4 }
array[2] = nil
-- array is now { [1] = 1, [3] = 3, [4] = 4 }
My thoughts exactly. The reason we don't have flying cars is not a lack of innovation, but rather that we don't really want them in their feasible form.
The reason I block ads has more to do with the latency of the ad networks than with the annoyance the ads cause me, which is minimal. I just got sick of some ad network hanging the page. I don't have that problem any more since I started blocking the ad networks in /etc/hosts.
The article was unreadable due to ridiculous ads, a dumb mobile version and a read more.. link that reloaded the page only. So three suggestions:
1: focus on helping readers read content. Eliminate everything that gets in the way if that. (End user needs)
2: reduce the volume and spammiess of your ads, in all markets. (Quality of advertising reflects quality of site)
3: do a slashdot, and add a paid subscription that removes all advertising for a period. (Allow people to give you money).
3a: as an alternative offer a gold/pro version with greater benefits, not all which have to be that tangible.
> This means that we're working twice as hard as other sites to sustain our company

This must be wrong. Surely if Destructoid are seeing a 50% block rate, their competitors must be seeing something similar too? A world with ad-blockers is the new normal for everyone.

Ad-blockers aren't going away. The fundamental architecture of the internet and the web makes it almost impossible to force people to view ads that they don't want to, and no advertiser is going to win the technological arms-race against the ad-blocking software. For now, at least, I have sufficient control over my own computer that I can dictate what appears on the screen.

I think the right conclusions are reached in this article though. Destructoid clearly understand the marketplace they're operating in, and a membership option of some kind is a good, non-exploitative way of earning money from content creation. It might not work, and there might be better alternatives, but someone is going to find a way that does work. The existence of ad blockers is providing "evolutionary" pressure toward business models that don't rely on spamming people with crap, and this is a good thing. (Assuming, that is, that the new business models aren't somehow worse, at which point we'll have to start blocking those...)
Even if you know where Pliny the Younger is being served, there's still no easy way to do this. They release a limited amount and it usually sells out in the first hour or so. If you go to the Russian River brewery it's a 5 hour+ wait. Crazy stuff.
> It's not JavaScript. It's a custom VM built around a (bizarre) bytecode.

It is most definitely JavaScript. It runs perfectly in other browsers - in fact it often runs faster than non-asm.js compiled code, so it is worthwhile even without new optimizations for it.

It is also, in addition, optimizable like a low-level VM.

> Maybe on the web we'll get NaCL to serve the same purpose.

asm.js, by design, can have pretty much the same level of performance as NaCl. Both can use the same sandboxing mechanisms, for example. Unless there is something specific in the asm.js spec you feel is preventing some additional level of optimization that is possible in NaCl - if so, what?
Roberto did a keynote at the Lua workshop '12, where he detailled what keeps the Lua team busy. A video of it exists somewhere on the web. Half of it was about how to integrate IEEE doubles and 64 bits ints soundly in the language. There are some challenges left, but they're really trying to overcome them.
Funny, I made one of these with D&D dice. Is it considered crypto-kosher?
> "It also ignores the fact that money is a big motivator for a lot of the smart people out there."

Maybe it is, I don't know. But it isn't for me. I've been working the last 12 months 8+ hours a day, 5+ days a week on a free, open source project. My total income during those 12 months? Pretty much $0. Some people say I'm crazy for not having a monetization plan. But I do it because I believe there's a small chance, if I'm successful, it will have a lot of value. I hope that when I get closer to finishing it, it will be very useful to myself and hopefully other people too.

I would much rather work on what I love and enjoy rather than do anything else that gives me money. Money is a very low motivator for me. I only need it so I can keep doing what I'm already doing now.
There's only one way to solve this: leave the loss to the advertiser.

your agreement with the advertiser is: A) you have X page views, B) you will stamp those page views with references to the ad.

you did 100% of your part. You delivered the page to the user, and you stamped those pages with the ad reference. Done!

if the user browser/system choose not to follow that reference, that shouldn't impact your revenue. at all. what the user does with the page you delivered is out of your control. it's out of the contract reach.

you delivered what you promised, you should get paid.

but of course, this will only make the earlier adopters of such position go broke while advertisers flock to other suckers. this will only work if the whole industry shifts fast.

this will make good content survive, and will make ads get better (as it will finally be it's own interest to do so) and lead to less user felling compelled to install ad blockers.
Hmmm:

$ coffee --version
CoffeeScript version 1.6.1
$ coffee --compile static/test.coffee
$ coffee --compile --map static/test.coffee
TypeError: In static/test.coffee, Cannot call method 'indexOf' of undefined
at Object.count (~/.npm/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/helpers.js:33:29)
at Object.compile (~/.npm/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/coffee-script.js:72:30)
at ~/.npm/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/command.js:171:33
at ~/.npm/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/command.js:141:18
at [object Object].<anonymous> (fs.js:123:5)
at [object Object].emit (events.js:64:17)
at Object.oncomplete (fs.js:1181:12)

(Paths were full path names, I replaced my $HOME with ~ in the output for clarity and some security through obscurity)
Ah, the heart of this is why "success" (full stop) should mean financial success. An insidious association in our culture.

Office Space is a profound movie, btw.
It's not native in the strict sense. They ported over their web app using PhoneGap: http://phonegap.com/app/untappd/

Untappd uses webviews to serve up local HTML/CSS/JS. To me, that's not native.
I like Penny Arcade a lot: http://www.penny-arcade.com/

They weren't doing annoying ads even before they did their crowdsource campaign to eliminate them for a year. I don't understand what overhead Destructoid has that requires them to have annoying ads.
I observe that their ads are all flash. I don't block ads, but I do block flash. I suspect there are a lot of others like me in this.
He mentions in the article about how since he can't control his ad network to the extent that other major companies like Reddit does (they host their own I believe), he doesn't fall under the requirements of the AdBlock whitelist.
On the note of that, there should really be a SimpleNumberFactory.
Neither better nor worth by itself, honestly. The reason why it sucks is that integration with C is one of Lua's key selling points: peeking a convention different from C's is a gratuitous pain.

It won't be fixed, because it would break existing programs in too subtle ways. Lua compatiility is sometimes broken, but only if it breaks into easy-to-find-and-fix ways.
Since the last half of the password is partially determined by the first half, this doesn't add much additional entropy (an attacker only has to guess your phrase, and which options you've selected).

In practice this may help in a security through obscurity way, but now your method is public.
So true. Grab a couple of beers with an ex-consultant when he's out of the system, open up about your BS experiences first and before you know it you end up spending all night sharing all the BS either of you had to go through. Worked every time so far.
Yes, the Ask Me Anything, does not get answers. I noticed this too when former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark was on recently. The AMA wasn't what I'd hoped for at all. Weak. When asked about Kim Dotcom saga the following appears: [–]HelenClarkUNDP[S] 229 points 12 days ago
While you can ask anything - don't expect me to dive back into Kiwi political debates! Been there, done that!
Yes, there are still ads that pay per 'impression' aka page view. However they usually drop a cookie and pay on impressions with that cookie which prevents paying out on page views to scripts.
why? if you're poor, the amount of time you need to spend just taking care of life's basic necessities goes way up. getting things done efficiently, getting other people to do things for you, and deciding you can sacrifice a few hours' earning potential to do something else, are all things that require you be well-off first.
>This must be wrong. Surely if Destructoid are seeing a 50% block rate, their competitors must be seeing something similar too? A world with ad-blockers is the new normal for everyone.

Surely not. Depends on the target audience of each site. Direct competitors with the same target group maybe, but sites appealing to the general public or specialized non-techy publics surely not.
That's /really/ fun, thanks!

It doesn't work, though. On firefox 19.0.2 (archlinux), it seems to detect clicks shifted a good bit to the right (maybe 100 pixels?), and a little bit down. It looks like it's using whole-screen coordinates without correcting for the position of the canvas.

It would also be cool if you could give some quantitative data below - the total amount of kinetic/potential energy would be fun to watch, for instance. (And graph it.)

You also seem to be using an inverse-square law, which is "incorrect" in a 2D universe, but I suppose it makes it seem more natural.
When I was younger, I used to really dislike history. I thought it was boring. I thought only the present and future were interesting. I didn't see the value in it.

I see value[1] in history now.

[1] https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308948806882426880
In the long-term, this would only destroy the advertising business model. As advertisers realize their advertising dollars have a poor ROI (due to less eyeballs), CPM rates will decrease.
There are some problems with prizes like the hard-to-avoid arbitrary nature of the rules and winner-gets-all problems which make big projects risky - you can't get a loan from the bank for building a project for a competition.

But patents and traditional innovation where you have to found a company and try to market your stuff might be even worse than that - I think most technical people don't like the idea of creating their own company. It might be easier to just open source your project.

I've been thinking about open sourcing some of my (hardware) ideas. It doesn't seem likely I'd ever create a company and start wasting my time in the pursuit of unlikely success. I'm not a crazy risk seeking optimistic person.
Half way through high school in the UK, you choose your subjects that you want to do until the end of high school and which you get your qualifications in. Being a bit weird, I chose subjects I didn't know much about so I wouldn't get bored, and chose history despite never giving it a second thought before.

And.. it's probably the one subject that really stands out from high school for me now. It wasn't so much learning about facts and figures but learning about the art of studying history, the difference between primary and secondary sources, the importance of good sources, and similar general principles that have continued to be useful to me as an adult.

I guess none of this would be surprising to anyone with a good liberal arts education, but approaching history as a math and science geek, it was a real eye opener for me as a teenager.
Oh. Now I see. You meant the literal meaning of what you said. I completely overlooked that until just now. Sorry.

Yep, I posted in the wrong thread, I apologize.
>"Somewhere between dire straits and dead... we wanted flying cars; instead, we got 140 characters."

or

>"Somewhere between dire straits and dead... we wanted flying cars; instead, we got a global communications service.
Thats exactly the point, so ads are a lousy way to try and solve it. Micropayment systems like Flattr [1] could be a solution, but they lack adoption and walled gardens hinder integration. If you have a loyal community and continued updates, Flattr can be worthwhile [2] (sorry, Google translate; the important part is the graph).

1: http://flattr.com/about
2: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...
I'm curious to do some performance comparisons, can you perhaps say how one would build and run your code to replicate those benchmark results? (Especially but not only the one you say was faster in LuaJIT?)
I spent $3.14 (USD) on a latte this morning.
Speaking as someone who runs a subscription site, there are a few key phrases to note in this article. I think the writer needs to face reality about ads vs paywalls.

I certainly wouldn't put up the sites you know today behind a paywall - Why not? Is there a law that says once free, always free? Slam it behind a paywall and you will lose 90% or more of your audience. But! You'll make money. That's the tradeoff.

My appeal read something to the effect that ad blockers primarily hurt our writers, and if you are reading our site, we'd like your support - Then ask for support the old fashioned way, by them giving you money in exchange for the service you provide.

one reader who, despite willingly denying our passive revenue, thought I was being too bold - Wrong. He's not willingly denying your passive revenue. He's installing an ad blocker to improve his browsing experience. You happen to be caught in that net. It's not like he got out of bed and said, "Hey, I'm going to screw Destructoid today"

Now, I'm not saying that paywalls are a solution to every problem. But I will say that appealing to people to disable ad blockers is not a solution to any problem. And blaming your users like this will never turn out well.