skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First, cite sources for specific cases where a mainstream malloc() is "a lot slower" than a specific GC'd allocation in a mainstream HLL. This rings more truthy than true to me.

Second, fixing malloc slowness is among the easiest and fastest optimizations you can make in a C program (in most cases, a pool and freelist will get you 90% of the way there), and no GC'd allocator is faster than pool and arena allocation (which is usually just a couple ALU operations in both the alloc and free cases).

Third, large C programs tend to start up faster than large HLL programs. For instance, Eclipse is slower to start for me than Firefox --- and if you're thinking of Firefox as your archetypal "big bloated C++ program", remember that Firefox is by design the most complicated application most people ever run.

To make that argument work, you have to find a HLL program of comparable complexity. You didn't do that; you just imply that one exists. I'm calling you out on that.
I'm a fan of ReadItLater, as it also comes with a "text only" function. Furthermore, the best articles eventually go to GiveMeSomethingToRead.com, which has a nice article selection (sadly only one or two) every day.

Full disclosure: I am actually not affiliated in any way.
Me, for one. My PhD was a lot of work, and the material itself is of very little value, but the things I learned on the way are absolutely invaluable.

I've learned how tell if I'm too tired to work, and techniques for getting me through that. I've learned how to find the most useful things to work on, and how to leverage them into getting the other stuff done as well. I've learning how to organise my time, estimate work to do and how to fit it in. I've learned how to communicate complex technical issues clearly, precisely and for multiple audiences.

The PhD was definitely painful, but equally definitely worth it.

Other exercises teach you similar things. Running a small company, saving a dying company, coaching sports for 10 year olds, and so on. If you use it right, though, school is a great place to learn from your mistakes without it mattering too much.

Possibly even more important, learn from other peoples' mistakes.
As true as that is, it's orthogonal to the actual debate at hand. There are plenty of good reasons to pick Python, or Java, or Scala, over C/C++. But this article claims performance is one of those reasons, and then crafts a particularly leaky argument to carry that claim.
Next up on HN:

Why an Orange Can't Become an Apple: Its tough orange skin
"The early use of the biological example was to inform us that flight was possible at all."

If there had never been any birds, would(n't) we have invented planes eventually anyway?
That argument is a slippery slope towards asserting there should be no quality control on Wikipedia; any debatable WP article could be defended by saying "tag it and hope for sourcing".

What people keep forgetting in these arguments is that WP isn't pronouncing a final judgement on the topic; they're judging the article itself. If you believe sourcing could be found for a topic, and a better article could be written, go write it. There's a zillion "proven" articles in WP that need maintaining; why argue about the ones people can't bother to bring up to some minimal standard of quality?
I second this. But you might want to go into practice for a couple of years to get the feel for information flow in a law firm and the places where you can leverage your expertise. I suppose you could go the IT route in a firm, if you really dont want to get into law. My guess is that the law school view of a firm is quite different from the view on the ground.

I think vertical disruption is virtually untouched, because the hackers who do the disruption tend to go into more interesting environments than vertical IT.
Ask HN: What can I do about someone wrongfully threatening trademark infringement against me?
I am getting a threat from someone claiming that my website is infringing on their trademark. Should I just ignore them? I want to avoid court if possible.
The deal with what's "Pythonic" is that Guido believes it's better to have Python be clear upfront about what it does and doesn't do well, and to have a relatively straightforward way to express those things. This is in reaction to languages such as Perl that have several ways to do the same thing, sometimes with counter-intuitive differences in performance. It's good to ask whether the benefit of adding feature X to the language is worth the cost of making it that much larger.

While I would choose a different subset of features, I think he's got a good point.
If that counts as "intelligent", I'm fairly sure that it's been passed well before. I could be mistaken, but by that definition, isn't any user AI created in a videogame/virtual world parameters passing the test? If so, users of Garry's Mod and the more complex Wiremod coupled with it passed it ages ago...and with more style. :)
That is indeed brilliant, but I think it is pretty clear from context that Rondam was referring to brilliant technology and product ideas. The Google ideas he cites fall into those categories.

Microsoft's most brilliant ideas were always about how to sell their products and maximize profits. A fascinating example of this is Gates' memo to Apple about licensing the Mac.

http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html

Common wisdom is that Windows became the standard because Apple did not license Mac technology. Very early on, Gates explained the rationale for this to Apple and even suggested potential partners for licensing agreements.

So it seems the "ideas" behind Mac OS were not as valuable as Gates' and Microsoft's business sense.

(If you want to cite Apple's resurgence as a refutation, I would argue that the maturation of Jobs' business sense is behind that. He has been brilliant in negotiating deals that favor Apple since his return, has done a better job competing on price than people realize, and has undeniably manufactured customer demand for Apple products.)
Looks like you'd have to go back to 2006, but yes, that was the case not too long ago.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=myspace.com,facebook.com&...
Good to see there are other people from san diego on here!!
Wait,

Venter: $10 Million

2007: $1 Million

2008: $350,000

2009: $5,000

2010: $1,000

Um, like, holy fuck.
Agreed, that is a question that needs a boolean answer, and a rating scale is a range of answers. But if you were to ask ten people that question and their average answers came back at above the half-way point, would you think it was a good place or not? If nine of your friends said they had a good experience and one said they didn't, how is it not that this place is considered to be a good? That's all these rating system strive to do.

I also don't see how any of this leads to less or more "honesty" in the ratings.
Economy hits developer growth projections
Well, someone keeps posting these things on HN! This is always a weak criticism: "How can you criticize something you know a lot about." It's actually kind of silly.
As an aside, SearchYC (http://searchyc.com/) and HNSearch (http://www.webmynd.com/html/hackernews.html - Firefox plugin) might help you if Google isn't.
What about Forth? As far as I know it can do all the stuff that C can do plus some more nifty things.
I don't think stcredzero meant that as an argument that C is worse than HLL -- it was just a warning that, as with any tool, it can be improperly used.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=576677
Fortran's (alleged) dominance in scientific is probably attributable to tradition (they still teach it to undergrads in non-CS departments) but the native multidimensional arrays have a much bigger impact than aliasing. In Fortran you just index your array like A(i,j,k) and the compiler will compute (and optimize) the addressing for you. In C, a typical (non-computer) scientist who doesn't really focus on mundane shit like this will end up writing something like

for ( int i=0; i<ni; ++i )
for ( int j=0; j<nj; ++j )
for ( int k=0; k<nk; ++k ) {
a[ k*ni*nj + j*ni + i ] = ...
}

which sucks. Optimizing multidimensional array access (which characterizes most of scientific computing) is much easier for a Fortran compiler.
What you are complaining about is not the graphic design part of the site but the web design part.
Ask a lawyer.

You might want to avoid the court, but they might not. Play it safe, ask a lawyer.
When someone clicks through your filter question, ask the question in small print, "Want to see more NSFW stuff?"
I think ICANN is better off in the hands of the US than in some global governing board, particularly UN style, where political agendas abound. Maybe ICANN is so limited that you can't squeeze in a political agenda, but I doubt it. (Politically, I am probably to the left of Obama, just so we get any rants in perspective. :-)
Orson Scott Card Goes Off the Deep End on Gay Marriage
Are you sure you aren't infringing on their trademark? Ask your lawyer, and if he agrees with you, get him to write a letter to the threatening party.

And really it depends on who is doing the threatening. It's your call as to whether they are serious or not; but if you have a lawyers opinion that you are not infringing, then they are much less likely to waste their time and yours in a legal action they would likely lose.
Yeah, but that was the other person's point. Apple is still successful. Therefore, competition is not the panacea to solve all the worlds ills, since Apple is behaving so poorly yet we all just pony up the cash for iPhones anyway. :)
Libertarian democraphobia
Fastest Growing Naija Community
I read the article more like: "Writing a program in C is no guarantee of having a fast program. Here are a few examples." (Of both places where C is not the best for speed, and other languages giving good results.)

I think your idea of "the actual debate at hand" is too narrowly focused. As a reader of HN, I'm generally interested in how to get things done in a reasonably efficient manner. I find that "get it running, profile it, understand it, then optimize" is a good thing to think about when discussing performance. It cuts through a lot of delusions people have about their ability to write fast code. (Especially when they try to do it up-front.)
> First, cite sources for specific cases where a mainstream malloc() is "a lot slower" than a specific GC'd allocation in a mainstream HLL. This rings more truthy than true to me.

> Second, fixing malloc slowness is among the easiest and fastest optimizations you can make in a C program (in most cases, a pool and freelist will get you 90% of the way there), and no GC'd allocator is faster than pool and arena allocation (which is usually just a couple ALU operations in both the alloc and free cases).

In a semispace or generational GC, allocating memory is just bumping a pointer.
Ok from all this what emerges is: ADs blocking extensions may destroy one of the few viable business models not only for web services, blogs, ..., but for this kind of software too. This is not very smart.

When you see a web page is a mix, in different ratios, of content and ads: too much ads for you? Switch to another, more balanced resource. The web is full of content after all. If the content of a specific web site is particularly good either accept the ads or accept to pay for an ads-free site (if it is possible) or go away.
Have you ever seen someone writing IANAL on /., Digg, Reddit, or even here?

Start seeing it as $$$$$. Unless you want to do pure technical stuff, than the law degree doesn't have much value, indeed. But there's a huge intersection between law and tech, and few people that really understand both.

Heck, setup a blog and talk about laws affecting tech stuff. The recent Lessig DMCA notice, what iPhone developers can do against the Store late payments or app rejections. The HN's front-page is a goldmine for someone who can understand the law. I am pretty sure you can live off ads if you put effort on it. Sprinkle with consulting (using your blog as a personal marketing tool).
http://www.searchlores.org/swansong.htm

http://www.2113.ch/phplab/mbs.php3/mb001?num=1241367858&...
Having your own opinions is also not a bad thing. If unsure, you might consider asking Paul Graham for guidance on this, too.
Link?

You mean the netbook specs? I couldn't find them online, so I just measured my eee PC (dimensions are just the display, not the whole thing.)

Yeah, the form factor is an issue. Just BTW, MS has a cool idea of a seen-through case: it's touch-sensitive on the back, and the position of your fingers appears on the display. Kind of bizarre, I don't know it will work (how to differentiate between position and "click"?), but it's a cool idea.
What you don't see is that the person in question is a HS science teacher.
This is a critique, from a libertarian perspective, of Peter Theil's 'Education of a Libertarian,' which got some play on HN the other day. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=578417) I thought I'd post this as an interesting continuation of the debate.
It's the latest,newest & fastest Naija Community with lots of fun pls join!.....It's got Great Mobile Tricks enjoy!
What kin of threat, email from the webmaster, letter from a lawyer? Specifics, including the URL, will better shape the answers here. In any case, advice from a lawyer trumps advice here.
They obviously need to have some measures in place - of what is acceptable and what isn't. That doesn't mean you need a degree to do the job.

And I'm an SEO/Marketing Consultant.
He could have restarted in his spare time.
For me, this argument in favour of C is really missing the point. In the long run, maintenance costs dominate, and unsafe languages like C lead to programs that take more and more programmer time to maintain, and it becomes harder and harder to see the high-level structure and optimize that through refactoring, rather than the low-level bottlenecks that show up in profilers.
If AGW is actually an issue, saving the planet relies on getting the no-nukes folks out of the way.

And don't get me started about flying Air Force One to photo ops, even to a wind turbine factory.
Try jLinq Online (Extensible Javascript Query Language)
Liars: No Information Allowed
I'm certainly not against C. I've just used C to write an embedded controller for doing real-time mixing of PWM control signals and laser gyroscope data for a model tilt-wing aircraft. (Which should be able to convert between horizontal and vertical modes in-flight.) I wouldn't use Smalltalk for that. (Yet. If I had 10X more CPU to burn, maybe.) Likewise, I'm not going to write my next Commodities Trading app in C.
Scientists Teleport Data on Tiny Scale
the website being threatened is http://www.recipepuppy.com by a webmaster with an unranked by quantcast,compete,etc search engine with a dog in its logo
Your goof? That's the title of the post. I would have kept it as such also.
http://newmogul.com if you're into business, financials and that sort of stuff.

It's run by our very own nickb (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nickb)
Sorry, but I agree with vaskel.

The PR campaign may have been a success, but the site/business as a whole does not seem destined for success–if in fact it's goal is to be a going concern.

They may have generated some affiliate revenue, but now what? Are they going to keep doing cross-country road trips? I'd imagine that very few visitors will refer this site to a friend/family member for the exact reason vaskel stated.
At StreamingMedia.com, we hear directly from thousands of customers each year who use various CDN providers. I must get at least one call per week from angry SimpleCDN customers. They are by far the worst when it comes to support or following through, based on the feedback we hear directly from customers. Not to mention, there is not way to reach them.

I have left multiple messages for them over a week period, they never returned a single call.

I would suggest you try other providers who have low prices, but real support and customer services. Try StreamingMediaHosting.com, Abacast.com, StreamGuys.com and AudioVideoWeb.com

Dan Rayburn
StreamingMedia.com
How Facebook can monetize its activity stream API
Seriously, i really think that if they get at there, the information world will change forever. Hope be alive until there.
I am posting this for several reasons:

* I myself have been incredibly annoyed by creationists' mention of information theory, without ever giving the definition of information that's used by information theorists

* This is shows a great example of equivocation logical fallacy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation ) which is common in marketing, politics and popular discussion of scientific topics

* Since this is about science and logic, it should be fair game for HN
I wonder if the other fifth is just British expats who still think a trillion is a million cubed.
I'm not saying there are good and bad ideas. I'm saying there are ideas that are questions and there are ideas that are answers.

The inspiration of "how can I fly like a bird?" is a great idea. But it's not an answer. The only value it has is that it inspires you (and that's why we have aircraft). It cannot save you a month of hard work.

But an answer that comes to you - why don't I swap the orders of the tubes, so that the one that is slower to warm up is second, so that when it amplifies something, there signal will be ready? It seems like a simple idea, but it refers to specific parts of a known system. This idea is an answer. This kind of idea could save you a month of hard work.

I'm saying that question-like ideas are a dime a dozen - that's my position. Does that fit in with your point of view? I think the article means the same as me, but I don't know for sure.
2015: Your DNA on a t-shirt for $30 at a mall kiosk.
So, is it obvious to everyone, or just me, that Orson Scott Card is a closeted homosexual and is deeply disturbed by the conflicts this creates with his religion?
LOL, FAIL!
Looks like a letter from a lawyer should do the trick. Probably an IP or trademark lawyer is better than the lawyer from your last divorce. ;-) I know it seems like a waste of money, but it will be less hassle in the long run.

FWIW: your dog looks like a dog, not a cutsie cartoon that looks like their cutsie cartoon.
Thanks for the suggestion guys... it looks like dzone.com from the thread you linked is exactly the type of site I'm looking for.
"Drew would be calling the news stations, harassing the assignment editors"

That's the key. You can do everything, but there is still an element of 'cold-calling' that's necessary, and sucking up any fear or rejection.
Your startup (http://www.kiko.com) is down.
It's important to distinguish between being brilliant and having a brilliant idea. They are not the same. The folks at MS are undoubtedly brilliant (and ruthless and unethical, but that's another matter). But Microsoft as a company has not once produced what I would consider a brilliant innovation. In fact, it's arguable that Microsoft has been successful precisely because it has not tried to be innovative, but has instead followed the less technologically risky strategy of preying on the innovation of others.

If you want to dispute this, the most effective way would be to cite a counterexample. I've had this discussion with an awful lot of people over the years and so far no one has been able to come up with one.
I think there is plenty of evidence that you don't need to touch java the language now.

However, if you need to interop with existing libraries or between languages (not specifically java language) then it is probably worthwhile at least understanding how interfaces work in java (and most languages would allow you to define them in their own language) - as that is often used at the edges of systems (and its also pretty simple).
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ad/news/ Academic Hacker News - although it isn't too active
> This argument is as old as the hills.

Of course. It's the "disproving a generalization from its exceptions" argument fallacy.
Very true. Best Buy is selling the 8330 (Verizon's Curve) for $39 this week (at least in NY); even on an off week, it's normally $100 there, which is a comparatively low barrier to entry into the smartphone market. I've seen 5 of my friends get Curves in the last 6 months.
Researchers hijack botnet, score 56,000 passwords in an hour
"text-only ads" are not really a technology or product idea. It's really closer to clever marketing, in terms of delivering what people want.

I think the most brilliant non-technical idea of Google is its PR. They seriously spend on it - not on telling people that Google is good, but in doing things that people will think are good and cool. Like free GMail.

I think they genuinely like to do it; but you can't run a billion dollar company without having a business justification for it - which is that people can switch search engines so easily, you better make them like you (it works on me). It's not just a nice to be - it's crucial for the very existence of the company, and it's justifiable to spend actual money on it.

Other companies provide cool free stuff - but not to the extent that Google does. They are exceptional in this. Microsoft could make billions even when hated by many; Google can't.
Learn unix in 10 minutes
Silicon Valley Start-Up Whisperer (And Twitter Investor, Natch) Sacca Speaks
The arguments about language efficiency on a single processor machine are probably outdated today. Most machines have multiple cores. We need good tools which can exploit this CPU architecture. Languages like C/C++ place a large amount of responsibility on the shoulders of a programmer. Effectively, you are writing two programs - one for the task at hand, and the other is memory allocation for it. Control does not always give speedup, also it is not always a boon. It implies managing the different resources on your own. In a large scale application, this is not a great idea. GC is a good alternative over Malloc and Free'ing when the size of the application gets huge.

Also, the scalability of a single system is limited. If you really need extra speed, I think going parallel is the key. Most numerical methods are parallelizable. And C/C++ were not created keeping this mind. It can be a programmer's nightmare to debug multiple threads with memory leaks. Languages like Java do make this task easier using programming paradigms like Map/Reduce.
I had plans porting one of my applications which used XML as the DB and did heavy XPath processing, to LISP just to see how it worked but had concerns on the GUI part. It looks like The Clojure innovation will ease which can be summarized as: "GUI programming using Lisp"
I welcome the Java-the-platform!
I can only recommend hetzner. We got > 10 servers there and are very happy. In June, they will have their new datacenter ready with new server offers. If all goes well, I will order another > 30 servers for our data processing.
I think ORMs do a fine job, excellent even. The problem is that you may be using O's which require a lot of M'ing to from the R's ;)

So if you don't do mainstream OO, then you probably don't ever need ORM. SQL databases are powerful relational engines in their own right - many ORMs have to replicate a lot of that functionality into their memory based stuff (which can be good, but its more work).

I guess its all slowly fading, as I am led to believe the trend is away from relational data to distributed data, which has a different set of problems...
A Media Manifesto
Most of your genome is shared by all mammals > all humans > all humans with your common ancestry. So it's not very interesting.

23andme gives you the 650,000 bits of your genome that are most interesting.
You forgot:

- Facebook has the talented engineers. Twitter might have a few now, but didn't have any in the past.
Slightly OT.
people still remember and use jottit? Awesome!
Dealing With Pirates and Being SMART About It
Two anecdotes ≠ general rule.
Warren Buffett is a crazy old guy and incredibly intelligent. The lady just wanted them to fight and disagree but in the end they just used basic logic to kill the worries about taxes.