skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"People writing code should know these things"

Why? I think every programmer who didn't grow up using a machine with a few kilobytes of RAM misses out on lots of fun, and it is true that some people need to know this (e.g. to write efficient hashing code, video compressors, networking code, etc), but I also think there is a place for programmers who only work at way higher levels, glueing together libraries others wrote with a decent UI.

"if they can swap two variable without a third"

I can, but I also know it may be harder to optimize for the compiler, and introduces a data dependency that many current processors have problems handling, and I know I never felt the need to remember which those processors were. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR_swap_algorithm#Reasons_for_....
Nielsen, Michael A.; Chuang, Isaac L. Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. p. 202 is what you want ;)
Yeah I would have voted for "I know about and use them for basic things regularly, but only rarely for complex things"

Instead I voted for the first thing.
can you give some examples of better notation for an operad

Not really, no (although I don't think this proves anything one way or the other).

Obviously there's a difference between mathematics and computer science, as well as a lot of overlap.

My intuitive sense of things is that math "appears" to be more complex/novel/difficult than it actually is precisely because of the notation. More specifically, because math adopts notations that are useless without the accompanying text (see [0] for an example).

In CS, this would be like code that only "worked" if you also parsed and executed the comments!

My point is more or less that in math, this CS idea: List<List>, would be given a special name, it's own notation, along with a bunch of properties that, when presented as List<List>, clearly apply.

In the List<List> example, for instance, it's obvious I can iterate on each inner list -- I don't need to define a special "property" on this "object" telling me that.

In math, you would, along with special notation you invented just for your paper (yay!). When you define obvious properties of things, your mind starts to break down: the reason he's saying this is, presumably, because somewhere else some other obvious property doesn't hold. I need to pay attention.

Except...you don't. It's just an artifact of how math is done.

Of course, it's worse than that, because we wouldn't be content to refer to it as a List<List>. No, we'd need to give it a name, probably a random person's name, which you'd then have to learn.

So much of mathematics, to me, is like this. Pointless complexity, invented notation, and random names for mathematical "objects" that are no more interesting than List<List>. Wow, a group of groups. Here's your PhD.

Despite the snark, I do like math results, but I just really feel like they are needlessly unusable due to the notation. When you make something different, it feels different to people. They lose that concrete connection in their mind.

If, instead of List<List>, I called that a Domanixly torus (note: not the geometric torus[1]), and then I went ahead and defined a bunch of "properties" of this exotic object I've created, people would (rightly) assume this was some new and exotic object.

Except it's not, but the math-notation approach, and really, the whole way the field is conducted, makes it impossible to see that. Complexity is introduced where none was needed.

Anyway, that's my intuitive sense of things: that math-notation obscures what is actually there, and in the process, makes its own results very difficult to apply and use, while also scaring away people who don't want to clutter their mind with "Domanixly torus" when List<List> would have worked just as well, and required far less mental gymnastics, but sadly, won't get you a PhD.

[0] http://www.mtm.ufsc.br/~cmdoria/Notices/what-is-column/16-op...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve , last paragraph of intro for an example
Just look in any Job board.

Unless you are doing games, HPC, codecs, drivers or compilers, you seldom use this type of stuff.
What do you get out of it, though?

Sure a high chance of meeting women (which is nice if you don't want to be Forever Alone), but other than the ability to strech a little more what is the gain?
NVRAM should definitely be a top consideration. If you want to add any sorts of third party tools or customization to your router you will want plenty of it.

I have 32MB NVRAM to play with and that has served me well enough, but I see plenty of consumer-routers which can be "upgraded to dd-wrt" but which doesn't even have enough NVRAM to do an ipkg update.
Here's a similar algorithm that creates patterns slightly resembling radiolarians:

http://alisey.deviantart.com/art/Orbits-316110768

http://explord.com/experiments/orbits/
Unfortunately the personal security measures on credit cards are very poor in America - I remember even little things like having a persons picture on bank cards in Belgium was a huge step up compared to the cards here. Even online banking here is pretty bad - so many banks still only allow 4 digit pins (often with "safety measures" in place to restrict your options, like reusing numbers, or disallowing years - thus making the available pin pool significantly smaller), and for online banking the security options are often a joke too, such as low maximum character lengths, not allowing anything but a restricted set of characters and simply converting your password to lowercase.

I don't know if this is to keep things "convenient" to the consumer, but I never feel secure in the way my money is handled.
Poll: Which programming language do you prefer for startup?
Which programming language do you prefer for an Startup project?

I believe the chosen language should be Easy To Learn, Simple Enough and Powerful to have a successful Startup.
NodeJs/ExpressJs
PHP/CakePHP-CodeIgniter
I'm part of the Ruby community in Nairobi and I can confirm Martha's a very active member and I'm really impressed by what she's achieved so far. I've been in the tech space longer but haven't been as enthusiastic as she is when it comes to open source work.
There are tons of useful features that aren't supported in C. The basic feature set of C was determined by whatever operations Dennis Ritchie could easily implement on the PDP-11 when he created the earliest C compilers. (Fun fact: the bitwise operators even preceded the Boolean operators like && and ||.)

If the question is "why isn't bit indexing supported" then "because processors didn't (and don't) support it" is the historically correct answer, whether you like it or not.
Interesting book but wow $50, never seen anything so expensive, even used copies are over $25 ?

Discovered my library allows me read it for free online:

http://proquestcombo.safaribooksonline.com/9780133084993

Others can at least see the table of contents.
I guess programming languages don't really encourage using bit wise operations.

On top of it, it doesn't have many advantages. It takes much less memory, but takes more lines to write, while on the hardware, it's the opposite: more memory, not so fast processors.

What always bugged me, is that there are no real programming facilities to take advantages of bits, like encoding many variable in on 32 bit integer variable.

I guess
Rule #1 of blogging: if you mention your company or service, it should be a link. I don't have hard data, but I think the need for googling "spry fox" (or guessing the url, spryfox.com) lowers the number of people who go on to the OP's site by a full order of magnitude.

Good post otherwise.
Not sure - we received notice of her pending release and that was about it. As for her past - yeah, it was astonishing that she was going to commit the same types of crimes to pay off the fines from her past - it was perfect though that she had that in her written confession with the detective, normally her case from when she was underage would have been sealed, but since she brought it up, it was now knowledge that the court could use.
You will have to mine the new currency yourself. Are you willing to waste all that electricity for the promise that you "might" cash out if your currency achieves any sort of success?

You can try, but I doubt it will be as easy as you think it is.
Yes, I did. Thanks.
Wow that's one ugly eyewear
The Mother of All Depression Studies
Porting Source to Linux: Valve's Lesson's Learned [video]
I'm unable to find a reference, but I'm pretty sure you could do that in PL/I.
Smartphones Launched in 2013 'Blackberry Z10' vs 'HTC One' vs 'SamsungGalaxy S4'
I'm thinking either this story is entirely sensationalized, or Google are scared that this guy will take his roadmap and go execute it elsewhere. Like he has seen upcoming trends and Google know they have to be first to act on them. I wonder what they could be...
How to Write a Great Blog Post
Last year I entered CS school and found myself embarrassingly weak at Math. I've been studying really hard since them and I don't really believe I'll be a very good Computer Scientist if I do not learn Math (Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Graph Theory, Game Theory, Calculus, Statistics).
New York, London, Berlin, to name a few immediately.

Common pattern there is that they are all metropolises with industries requiring tech skills and that additionally have an emerging startup ecosystem.
If we will, they will be bundled with a classical CPU, which does most of the work. However, it's more likely that quantum computing will used through the internet.
In the videogame industry the standard question on the phone screen interviews is what is the two power 8. It's eerie how many people cannot answer this at all or answer incorrectly.

So, if even the people who are aspiring to write "code to the metal" console games don't know binary then, I imagine, a generic programmer knows it even less.
As usual, it is per definition very bad for men (white men) to have something - a club, a community - of their own.
Positive correlation between GDP and wealth exists but it's hard to find causality. GDP is a misleading terms in economics. Two major components that Gross Domestic Product measures are private consumption and government spending - things by definition unproductive.
NSHipster: C Storage Classes
Display Disqus On Click Event
Interesting. Do you have some pointers to that?

I thought both the D-Wave 1 & 2 both had specialist quantum chips that couldn't run Shor's.
I'm not a games developer, but I can relate to what Daniel wrote about game forms, after playing Bioshock Infinite.

I love the game, but I did so mostly for elements of the design and story, rather than the game play. That it was an FPS connecting the story rather than a puzzle game, for example, was almost incidental to my enjoyment of it, and given the story, I think a series of Myst-style puzzles would have been a better fit.

Wouldn't have sold nearly as well, of course, and there's the rub.
Here in Brazil the government just fingerprints everyone when they go make an ID card, which they need for everything. No one makes a fuss.
arianvanp had the point of my question correct.
“Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended
Perl 6 needs a production-grade implementation before it needs a paper book release.
Again I would appreciate examples.

How about this? This is copied and pasted from the first sentence of the Wikipedia page[0] on the Guass-Newton algorithm:

Given m functions r = (r1, …, rm) of n variables β = (β1, …, βn), with m ≥ n,

Quick, what is the signature of those functions? Do they have return values? What type? Are there multiple return values? Are the "n variables" the same for every function? Different? Is it a matrix, indexed by the function? Why is m greater than or equal to n?

This sentence, to me, is an integral part of "math notation". Personally, the CS way of saying what functions and variables are, along with their signatures, along with a precondition on a couple of length properties, is far superior to the above math notation, even though it's, perhaps, more verbose depending on the programming language.

The problem with the math notation is it's going to exclude anyone from understanding it who is not an abstract thinker even though nothing about it is actually abstract. It's become abstract only because we've been given the concrete ingredients, along with a written algorithm to construct the (now abstract) result. And we really need to understand that result to even finish the sentence!

That's math notation in a nutshell.

In CS, it'd be right there, concrete, unambiguous, sitting there on the screen (or page). In fact, you'd barely even need to say anything about it at all because there's nothing else, really, to say. CS notation is concrete and unambiguous.

These kinds of abstract, inline definitions are integral to math notation, and constitute the bulk of the problem people have with math: you force simple, concrete things to be abstract just by the notation itself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Newton_algorithm
Resolv-idn: Thread-aware Unicode domain resolution for Ruby
I find them useful in my job. I work in parimutuel betting.
very amusing and honest.
I bet some great scientists are good at math - the author probably means "Great Scientist ⫫ Good at Math".
Out of interest, when the chemically accurate simulations are made are there any surprises? Or do the estimations that are normally used good enough for most purposes?

Well - it's more that there are entire classes of things that we can't simulate in any reasonable amount of time that (in theory) QCs should be very good at.

Protein folding for example. Finding the lowest energy state that protein's fold into is really, really hard and slow. QCs can theoretically do it very, very quickly. This opens up whole areas of experimentation and validation that are closed to us at the moment because the feedback cycle on solutions is so darn slow and/or inaccurate.

Protein folding errors are at the heart of diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinsons. QCs capable of simulating the chemistry involved would be a huge help in attacking those problems.
I'm guessing that writing networking protocols and even de-marshaling binary data doesn't fall under "regular programming". The vast majority of programming is business programming and marshalling and de-marshalling data is relatively troublesome (Ruby anyone?). Most of these projects are better off using a library than implementing their own.
I know them especially since I took digital electronics in university. However, I've never had to use them so far in anything I've built. I could use them if required but unless I get into some kind of video processing or high end optimization, I don't think it'll be required.
The reason I am not going to buy Bioshock Infinite is precisely because it seems like a pretty mediocre FPS, married to an interesting narrative and/or exploration game.

Don't get me wrong, I love FPS shooters. So when I want to play one, I want it to be good.

I also enjoy exploration games, and from what I have seen of Bioshock Infinite (I watched the ending and playthroughs on Youtube), it seems like it would have made for a great Myst style game. If anything the gameplay looks like the weakest part of Bioshock Infinite.

I actually thing Irrational missed a big opportunity by making the game a FPS. Wasn't Myst a big commercial success back in the day? Wouldn't they have been able to appeal to a wider audience if they had tied the narrative to a something other than a FPS?
A person making decisions that may lose $100 million or make a $100 million profit can be thought as "1000 times more productive", because large losses/profit depend on his actions.

Of course the average software engineer at Google can't make similar decisions, so they can't be worth that much even in theory (unless they happen to invent something revolutionary).

So my point is that yes, CEOs can be "worth" thousands of times the salaries of the average employee, but that's not fundamentally about the skills of the CEO, but because the CEO happens to be in a position where his choices/strategy/etc have extremely large consequences. (In this example Mohan is not CEO though, but makes similar choices that a CEO does).

A real world example would be Stephen Elop at Nokia: some say that he has made Nokia lose billions of dollars, when another CEO might have made Nokia save that money.
Very nice work.

Hope to see PyPy become the canonical implementation one day.
The only point about having a computer on my face is to have the output going to me eye. This doesn't do that (yet).

I'd be interested if it did have some kind of display.
It may just be me but I got the feeling that he wasn't posting this in order to draw traffic.
The idea behind "being open" and "using XMPP" is to make network effects irrelevant: XMPP federation allows you to talk to anybody also using XMPP, regardless of their service provider -- imagine messaging Facebook Messenger users seamlessly via WhatsApp. Just like Email works already. That's the point of XMPP. And because XMPP is extensible, providers could still compete on features without locking their users in. Wouldn't that be great?

Unfortunately, there's a strong business incentive for user lock-in. Imagine Email were created today instead of 40 years ago. We'd have a myriad of startups trying to make a buck from incompatible services. "Our new customer uses Exchange, does anybody have an Exchange account so I can email him?" As long as companies are trying to make products out of the social need to communicate, and thereby fight for the triviality of who gets to route the messages, there won't be much innovation on top of these services.
OK, I have a challenge for you. I'm going to rewrite the Gauss-Newton sentence slightly so it's still in "math notation", as you call it, but so that it will be clear and unambiguous (at least in my opinion). You do the same, rewriting it in "CS notation".

Given m real valued functions r = (r1, …, rm) of n real variables β = (β1, …, βn), with m ≥ n,

Three extra words and I think I've done my job. What do you think?

what is the signature of those functions?

Well, they're each of type R^n -> R.

Do they have return values?

Yes, of course. They're functions. That's what functions have.

What type?

R

Are there multiple return values?

No, functions don't have "multiple return values".

Are the "n variables" the same for every function? Different?

Do you mean is the number of variables n the same for every function? Yes. Otherwise I don't understand your question.

Is it a matrix, indexed by the function?

Huh?

Why is m greater than or equal to n?

Good question. I don't know.

In CS, it'd be right there, concrete, unambiguous, sitting there on the screen (or page). In fact, you'd barely even need to say anything about it at all because there's nothing else, really, to say. CS notation is concrete and unambiguous.

Perhaps you can give me a further example, because I don't know what you mean by "CS notation".
The basics don't save CPU cycles, every decent C compiler knows that for unsigned x, x*4 == x << 2.
D-Wave's machines are very different from "regular" quantum computers, and the sort of problems they solve faster than conventional computers are travelling salesman problems and those closely related, eg: "how can I lay out this printed circuit board so the traces don't cross and are as short as possible?"
"the ecosystem". Somehow the article avoided mentioning the utter dominance of CPAN.

When CPAN dies, perl dies. Is CPAN still my best hope for "easy interface to something really weird but very important"? Oh it is? Well then Perl it will be.

I find it extremely hard to justify on the job writing and debugging something that "just works" off a 30 second install from CPAN.

Note this criteria doesn't matter much for boring CRUD webapp number 246264. There are somewhat more optimized solutions for that very small subset of problems.
I did start a poll on it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5506656
This question isn't exactly clear either. What constitutes "knowing" bit-wise operations? Can I do bit-wise math? Test if a bit is set? Use shift operators for some arcane purpose?

As I get older (lets just say I'm over 35), I'm baffled by older programmers who worry about this stuff. When you were a young programmer, there were likely problems that were solved that you never had to deal with that older programmers feel were super important. Bitwise operations likely stick around for the duration of digital computing, but I think it's foolhardy to think that the vast majority of developers will need to know about them in all their gory detail.

New developers will stand on the shoulders of giants so to speak, and solve the problems that are pertinent to their domain. It may or may not include bit-wise operations.
This is so glorious I almost want to undelete my Google profile to give my first +1 that never happened.

Almost.

Still, great post with which I sympathise greatly.
I use "&" and "|" when i use enums, that act as options.
I.e. var myCarExtras = Extra.Radio | Extra.PowerWindows;

Where Extra = {
Radio = 1,
PowerWindows = 2,
Tint = 4,
Rims = 8
};

Then I can do:
if (Tint | powerWindows) {
return totalPrice + 1000;
}
I've talked too fast, the facebook sync doesn't seem to download the pictures you are tagged in.
It could be that this wasn't just a marketing effort. Ever thought about that? like, speaking your mind without looking for an immediate reward.
https://dwave.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/learning-to-program-t...
Show HN: website for the works of a deceased amateur Brazilian painter
Is 4 years your sum total? If so, 70k is fantastic in Calgary for that experience. Plus, depending on your needs/wants, 70k (without huge consumer debt) is enough to live quite nicely in Calgary right now.

If you managed to grab a job working directly for an Oil & Gas dept doing mobile (they exist), you'd be able to command 90k+. Work would likely be boring though - but you'd get impressive bonuses, benefits and other stuff that you'll never find at the mobile agencies that exist in this city. Most of the agencies are marketing houses - development isn't treated as a priority at most of them.

I will tell you this - mobile dev experience (especially iOS) is hard to find in this city - make sure you get as much as you can for your experience level.
So I am in my final year of high school now, and I'm not studying physics next year. The only thing about 'quantum physics' that we had was emission-spectra, and light-interference. Quantum Physics sounds _Really_ interesting though, so I would love if anyone could point me in the right direction with where and how I start learning this stuff. Thanks:D
The garbage heaps of today are the mines of the future.
The Pragmatic Haskeller Ep 1, JSON
As a counterpoint, I'm 20 and I started programming exactly because I was playing around with extending a game (Neverwinter Nights was the game), which involved using the built-in tools to make new levels/worlds but getting elaborate behaviour required scripting in a C-like language.

I remember being utterly confused by what a statement beginning with "while" did, but eventually I was reasonable enough to mostly implement a (very weak) checkers-playing AI.

This then lead to programming Lego robots in C, which was pretty neat. (Actually, thinking about that, the first programming I did was using the graphical LabView thing that Lego provides for Mindstorms robots.)
This is exactly why I'm not in a rush to play this game. I will at some point try it but the first Bioshock lacked so much feeling and the gunfights were so boring that I'm really not into this new episode.

I'm still glad that they use a First-Person perspective because I strongly believe that it's the best way to get immersed in a game.
I forked it with fonts: http://snag.gy/TnNBO.jpg

Maybe not so useful...
> Strategy over button mashing!

That made me think of QTE. We never needed those things, but still they gave it to us. And keeps giving it to us. It's lazy gameplay, it's a "I'm a developer, I have a cutscene and I'm too bored to integrate real gameplay into it".