skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The stack is a great huge implementation detail, and doesn't necessarily work the way you want it to.

With porting an operating system across processors or when performing significant changes and upgrades to an operating system and its interfaces, the details of the data and call stack and the thread stacks and register-passing and register spillage and all the other related ugliness can be (and often is) exceedingly platform-specific.

Adding applications dependencies on these details means your code can be somewhere between faster and less portable, or faster and non-portable.

Or your applications can pin the vendor in a corner by depending on a design statement that the vendor might now regret having made. Whether that might provide or prevent a thread stack, or changes to the call frames, or stack randomization or otherwise.

I'm working in several areas where the vendors spend far, far, far too much time describing the internal details of their implementations. Which is bad on several levels. It can pin the vendor to the design; into choosing compatibility or choosing to break applications. And it tends to obscure the information presented to application programmers with details that are less than relevant.

There's more here than strictly performance; there's also compatibility and maintainability, and stability and sustainability, and extensibility.

Absent specific reasons and whenever in doubt, the decision should be to present an opaque interface. "The stack is an implementation detail."
So This Is What the Dream Is Like: Violence and Assimilation in Grand Theft Auto IV
Presumably the bugmenot login would only be allowed to vote once.
Internet Explorer 8.0 - The One Month Review, Part 2
TDD Anti-Patters
Note that the chief engineer from reCAPTCHA offers a comment on the blog. He indicates that rC is intended to be "only one element" in a defense against attacks. (and seemed good-spirited about the cake-in-the-face of the whole thing).

Seems to me the issue raised is about the "integrity" of online/offline "journalism" (of Time) in not acknowledging the meaninglessness of the poll results (or even the fact they were badly hacked). [ Maybe that's for Newsweek to report?]
Just to point out, this was previously submited to HN and for some reason, unknown to me, became dead. There is a good load of comments on there still:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571447
No. The sentence I quoted is in the 8th paragraph, above the first photo in the article. The part you're mentioning is in the addendum, "Painful Truth No 1."

I stand by my claim. It is ridiculous to say that we all have the same chance of getting hurt, which is what he says. He also says much later and in an unrelated part of the article that, as you note, you're more likely to get hurt in expensive shoes than cheap ones, according to one study. There is no mention of "Remember that stuff I said at the beginning-- that was wrong."

Maybe "madman" is going too far-- perhaps "inconsistent and unreasonable person" would be more accurate.
Tips and links could help you as a developer
Articles like this are a good way to make sure that someone will use the client string in Adium to troll the Apple rumour mill in the future.
FTA:
> One other thing I learned is that some in the academic world scornfully refer to Python as "the Basic of the future".

I'm not from the academic community and have never heard anyone else say it before, but have thought of Python this way for quite a while now and am pleasantly surprised to see I'm not alone.

Thats not me being snarky, its a very serious observation - you'd get laughed at for learning Basic today. I'm young and expect Python to die well before the end of my professional career, so I do invest my time in longer term languages such as Scheme and Haskell.
Zoho Smoothly Works In Mobile Device
Oh, the gap isn't anywhere near as big as 10%. Men and women differ by only a few points on average when you test for mathematical ability.

The problem is that ability is distributed along a Gaussian. Small differences in the norm make for huge differences in the tails. So everybody can balance their check book about the same, but don't expect any women to win the Fields medal within the next millennium.

Now, the female dislike of programming jobs goes beyond this tail effect. I think that as a big a problem is that programming is not a socially rewarding occupation, and women like socializing.
Focusing on the differentiation. This theory is expressed well in Dealing With Darwin by Geoffrey Moore.
Damn, I thought I recognized you and your company name while walking around GeeknRolla. Will definately have to catch up next time I'm in London.

But definately agree that this was the best talk of the day by far. He's also very accessible and has given us feedback/tips since then.
Funny how, for Rails at least, Windows is much, much harder to use than Linux. And judging by the screenshots, it's uglier to boot.

You'd be crazy to use Windows for Rails, though. Many popular gems simply don't work, like DataMapper. Just use UNIX for Rails, it's what it is designed for and on.
You wrote about the world that everyone experiences, and essentially told a bunch of other people that they are wrong about their own experiences.

Is it wrong to say that when they are?

I don't know everything. I only know my specific narrow field. But I do know that everybody I know who is actually unpopular - that is to say, not somebody who lacks friends due to lack of social skills, but somebody who people actively dislike in the way that nerds seem to think happens - is counterhostile in a way that turns people off, and that that usually is the reason why they are disliked.

I'm saying that anyone, regardless of age or intelligence, should try to avoid generalizing from their almost certainly narrow experience.

But everybody does that. Paul Graham does that in his essays. The great writers of fiction wrote from their own experience. It's why they were good. Most of them also generalized: look at Steinbeck and the way he turns entire groups of people into black-and-white heroes and villains.

I'm not saying this essay is as good as Why Nerds Are Unpopular. PG put a lot of time and effort into that essay; this piece was dashed out. But I'll also point out that among the people I've shown this to that aren't the sort of people who use HN, there's a much more widespread agreement that what I'm talking about makes sense, and that I've nailed an element of nerd/programmer that's given the whole subset of people a bad name. That doesn't make me instantly correct about it - I certainly overgeneralize - but to say that generalization is a bad thing because it's generalization ignores the fact that you almost certainly like and agree with and think in generalities. Just because this one is not one you agree with doesn't make generalities in writing wholly bad.

Also, the tone of your comment has certain elements of the martyr mentality that you have criticized in your essay and in these comments.

Martyr? I'm saying that I have a right to write what I think is right, and that a lot of this criticism that's aimed at me rather than at this piece simply because this piece is a poor one offends me. I'm not defending its being on Hacker News. I wish you all would flag it and remove it. It's not worthy of this site. Criticizing that is fine. But the criticism against me for writing this piece in the first place offends me, and I don't think I'm being an asshole martyr for saying that.
It's a great talk. Worth even 10 minutes of your time ;)
Is that what HTWFAIP is about? I've never read it. (Also: is it a good read, or is it overrated?) (Also also: I agree. This should not be here.)
You have proposed a mechanism. Now Occam's razor it!

You have replaced a simple explanation for which abundant evidence exists with a complicated explanation. You could spend time inventing even more complications for your theory to explain things like why there aren't any cultures that have the opposite effect on female mathematical behaviour, and why very high mathematical ability seems to be linked to androgyny in females, or you could just junk the theory as unlikely.

Unless you'd rather rather say something politically correct than true, that is. But nobody would chose opinions about the world like that, would they?
To be fair, this article is a lot shorter than Getting Real. So it's more Real than Getting Real, in a way, I guess.
Ben Fry's PhD Dissertation (the creator of Processing)
CodySafe Suite Alternative Of Portable Apps Suite
For some context, Mike Gunderloy (author of this article) is an extremely prolific rails activist and community member. This is not some random unknown making a fuss, it's a very well respected, very active, very productive member of the rails community making a pretty pointed statement and putting his money where his mouth is.

Some further background:

http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/

http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/39-im-an-r-rated-individua...

http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/40-alpha-male-programmers-...

And, the slides themslves (NSFW): http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr...
Ask HN: Review my new single service website
http://www.simplecountrycodes.com/

The idea is to offer a completely painless way to find the country codes you need when dialing internationally.

What I'm looking for is ideas to make the process potentially simpler, easier to use, or more useful. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Where did you order those shoes?
AdBard - FLOSS online advertising network relaunches (beta)
JetBrains readies Rails IDE
It looks like it's released with Arc:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494421
One thing I'm finding that I didn't plan for is that I'm getting a lot of visitors from outside the US. Any advice on internationalizing the site?
It's amazing how little that means.
Opera celebrates 15 years of existence
Find something (shoes, stretching routine, etc) that works and stick with it. If you're an amateur, the bottleneck is you, your weight, etc. anyways, not the equipment. Eg. last year when I did the Ironman I was 80kg, now I'm up to 90kg, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to optimize the weight of my bike.
Screencast on how to install DB2 Express-C on Mac OS X
> Don't miss class. Take good notes. Read the book. Party the night before the test.

In my experience taking notes is only second-best, because you sit in class and take notes, and then sit at home and think about your notes. I tend to contract both steps to: Sit in class and think very hard.

Anecdotal evidence from friends who had broken their writing hands and were forced to use that tactic, support this habit.
A lot of countries, most of then developing countries, see the connection between prosperity and a lot of advanced degrees and think correlation = causation.

It's a lot easier to send bright kids to school, then it is to fix the corruption and mismanagement that's keeping your country underdeveloped.

Canada might just be overenthusiastic ;)
Dilemma faced by startups: developing world grows traffic but not revenues.
The START Fund: Disrupting the Disrupters (RWS Interview)
We need to make science based decisions, not marketing based decisions. This article is dead on. In the absence of science (and sometimes in its presence) we should look to history. What we find in indigenous cultures, besides just the Tarahuma runners is barefoot or minimal shoe wearing people with very few feet problems. Wearing a cast around your foot all day is not a good idea!

Personally, I recommend a mixture of barefoot and the vibram five fingers or other minimal shoes.
There seems to be no essential difference between users of Jeff Vogel's games and users who are petroleum products traders and schedulers. They complain and insult you for trying your best to make improvements. Then they praise you for putting in something mindless like a "Refresh" button.

I think it's because the users have minimal control in the development process.
Every single citizen of Estonia to have 100 Mbps broadband available by 2015
Perhaps that's why oral exams seem to work much better for me than written ones.
Indeed.

I'd also done things that might appear like this on occasion, even though I trusted that the person asking wasn't playing some sort of practical joke or simply trying to get me to do their work for them. The reason is that the questions were often things like "How do I make a web page on geocities?" or "How do I program DOS?"

In the former case, after establishing that they didn't want me to actually sit down in the computer lab after school and give an hour or two of instruction, all I could really say is that "It's really not something I can just explain in ten minutes." That comes off as a bit of a brush-off.

In the latter case, the question actually doesn't make sense. One can't "program DOS" any more than one can "perform a photograph". People became offended more than once by my genuine attempts to figure out what they were actually trying to ask. When I do get down to it, it seems they're usually asking "how do I make a game like Wolfenstein? That's kind of an old game so it should be easy!". That is just a more egregious example of the first case.

But yeah, this is the reason geeks don't accept invitations to parties. They've been burnt by requests like this before, and are worried about being burnt again.
It's written in pg's lisp dialect Arc. IIRC, a version of the news app is provided with the official Arc distribution, available here: http://www.arclanguage.org/install

See also the Arc Forum http://www.arclanguage.org/forum and the unofficial Anarki version of Arc (which, again, includes news.arc): http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master
Yes. Recently I make increased efforts to not just recall information, but also sources.
The Cross-Platform Myth
What's the risk for nerds?

When I developed the attitude I've got now, the one that accepts my faults and doesn't immediately get nasty, the change in people was almost immediate. Most people really would rather like you than dislike you, and the instant you start accepting them, they start liking you back. The people who are real jerks and tormentors drop it after it stops affecting you - and that doesn't mean your responding harshly or ignoring it, it means your ignoring the fact that they're attempting to be tormentors. If you ask a bullying jock a question about his sports team, and start just talking to him about the stuff he does, they're completely nonplussed, and after just a little bit, they start treating you like a normal human being.

There is an imaginary risk, and I agree with you that it's terrifying as hell to think that people are against you. I've been there. But it's not a real risk, and once you overcome that nonexistent worry - and that's absolutely not an easy thing to do - you realize that nobody is any more at risk than anybody else.
> maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular.

I can agree with this to a point - by the time high school rolls around, yeah, the unpopular kids probably have adopted a set of behaviors that contributes to them being unpopular. However, those behaviors are probably defenses developed against some early damaging experiences. And who is responsible for those experiences? In my experience, it was those same jocks (or whatever) inflicting their damage all the way up.

Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.
what do you want us to tell you?

drop out? startup? sucker up and go to college? do as your parents say?

just do whatever makes you happy, and fuck the rest.
What browser/OS are you using? The shadows have been tricky - on Safari they look vastly better than on other browsers, and I've been trying to get it not to look tacky. I might disable them entirely for non-Safari browsers.

Agree with you about the leading. This is the first thing I've written where the title has dropped to two lines, and it looks icky compared to with one. This theme is very much a work in progress - just started coding it in early last week - so I'll tidy those things up.
Since you don't seem to understand what led up to it, I will explain. I only posted after the following transpired (from my perspective):

1- Your initial 'Ask HN' post in which you said:

"Please try not to post a meta-comment about whether this should be killed -- just flag it. If it's detrimental, it'll be killed, and that will be the end of it."

2- But then you complained once it was flagged, here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581039

3- And you denied you were complaining about it later: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581122

4- Then rms called it censorship here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581046

5- And rms decided to post this story, and what I perceived as a passive-aggressive reference to your 'Ask HN' in the GP comment.

Really, I should have left it alone as my feelings were summed up better by someone else here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581091). But as implied by my list, the sequence of events was enough that I felt the need to rant about the issue.

So to answer your question, I would have said something to your face had a group discussion equivalent of the above happened, though probably not those exact words and fwiw, I would have been directing it at rms more than you for he is the one that decided to make it a two-story issue.

Also, I've only bee here a month (despite my join time, I didn't use the account until recently), just because you perceive something I say as dickish and unnecessary doesn't mean that the identify of HN has changed (whatever it was, I don't know). In other words, I am hardly representative of this community.
Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
Why has such a noble project initiated and run by top-quality people and institution fell far short of its original goal?

Short answer: Make something people want. (Y Combinator's motto)

The greatest weakness in OLPC's implementation is perhaps its learning software, which mostly emphasizes constructionist style of learning. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionist_learning)

People in developing countries don't yet want or need predominantly constructionist learning style (although I highly respect the method and agree to its importance in the long run). They need to make sure their youths have strong basic in math, science, and languages (English and their national language(s)) first.

In the words of Global Competitiveness Report, most of the world are still in the factor-driven or efficiency-driven stage of development. Current OLPC software emphasizes learning style best suited to countries/communities in the innovation-driven stage.

From my first-hand experience living and working in the education field in such a country, if OLPC incorporates highly effective learning software & contents on these essential subjects into its machines, it would make a much easier sale to governments and people of these countries.
An interesting point, but using the stack is not always transparent. You can ignore how it works for the most part, but eventually you're going to notice differences in performance or get a stack overflow exception.
Comparing Advertising Programs: Google Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing, Stumble Upon, etc.
"What percent of jobs in the economy need more than reading, writing, arithmetic, and apprenticeship?"

My Dad lost his welding job around when I was starting high school. He took a few different jobs, one of which was cutting brush with a machete for a local private surveyor. He found the surveying work interesting, so he checked out books from the library to re-learn his Trigonometry (and probably a few other things). This allowed him to get a job with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation surveying group, from which he took early retirement a couple of years ago. I think having an initial exposure to Trig in high school allowed him to realize this career change was possible.

So, it is hard to say what knowledge will be useful, or not, over the course of a lifetime.
No, because then you may be locked into design choices that limit what you can optimize. If performance is important, experiment with the general idea of a design, and if its performance is acceptable, follow through.

If you wait until everything is mostly written, you risk finding out that a fundamental design decision is causing your performance problems.
First release, too.
I'm not a member of the Rails community, so I'm curious as to why this "Women in Programming" issue seems to focused solely on that community. Women are underrepresented in almost all development communities and it seems odd to focus on one specific community. It would be strange to talk about "the lack of female representation in the C++ community" rather than the development community in general, so why is this different?

I'm not trying to stir the pot or anything, I'm legitimately curious.
University was once akin to "finding one's place in the Universe." Yet it seems like the more the pursuit of profit overlaps the goal of furthering humanity, the more difficult it becomes for people who want to further humanity (science, engineering, etc.) to do so.
It makes people happy. My mother has found old high school friends - old high school crushes, even - and met up with people who left her life a long time ago. A friend of mine in Washington D.C. uses it to organize all her groups of friends for her homecoming party. I used Facebook for writing my notes before I decided to make everything I wrote public, and I bonded with a lot of people over issues I'd never thought other people cared about. It's used for organizing protests and finding phone numbers and occasionally hooking up. Connections lead largely to happiness.

I think Facebook is one of the best-looking sites that's ever been, though the last two redesigns haven't been too tight. The original layout, with the links on the side and the two-column profile, was one of those things that vastly inspired me when I was younger. The level of order it forced on its users was stunning, especially compared to MySpace. Now it's been tuning down some of the things I liked - especially the "How do you know this person" syntax - but it's still more usable than any other site that huge. The fact that people can intuitively figure out how to post photos, videos, events, groups, notes, friend people, fan pages, add applications, all without any advice - my grandfather figured it all out without help - is one of those things that's so impressive that it's easy to ignore because you take it for granted. Meanwhile, a lot of the things that have become common in sites - the thing that stands out to me is the resizing textfields - were first popularly used in Facebook. When I wrote for AllFacebook my main interest was scouring the site, clicking everything I could, looking for those finesses. So it's beautiful in terms of dedication to usability if nothing else.
It's pretty much a universal top 10 book on the subject of general success for people whose top 10 books anyone cares about.

I want to read it, so far I've just used the audio book and enjoyed it, but didn't really focus on it as much as I would have if I had read it.
Actually, just last week there was a panel on "women in technology" at Geeknrolla, so it's definitely not a rails-only issue.

More info here: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/04/23/just-a-girl-why-we-put-o...
I'd be interested in that, too. I do not like to watch videos at work, and my connection is too bad at home.