skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Factor is an impressive piece of work for sure, but, in my opinion, like many "modern" derivatives of Forth it loses the major strength of Forth, brutal simplicity. It has drawbacks, but it also has advantages. Introducing new "modern" features to Forth adds complexity, changes this balance, and I doubt these hybrids will ever attract 'hardcode' Forth programmers or non-Forth programmers. At least traditional Forth systems are small and simple enough for someone to understand (I learned myself from a tiny Forth named PygmyForth, but there are many others); it provides you with a kit you can modify and customize at will once you've absorbed it.

The postfix notation even for conditionals is really not an issue when you dive into the language. However, with most systems you should be able to translate IF into 'nop', THEN into IF, and END into THEN and it should do the trick. But then there are DO WHILE loops. etc. But everyone prefers to preserve the postfix logic at the end of the day. It's like infix notation systems in Lisp and Scheme that never caught up (and, I believe, never will).

About your second point: most of the library code, in any language, looks like gibberish and like a mess of arbitrary idioms. One simply cannot hope to inspect and understand non trivial library code just just by casually reading it. With Forth the situation is indeed even worse, because implementers generally cannot resort to spaghetti code too much, whose continuous nature, at least, helps the casual reader.

On the topic of cooperative multithreading, I think that the trend in recent programming languages in general is that, nobody wants to deal with pre-emptive threads anymore. It hurts kitties, it is dirty. It is like manual dynamic memory management. Cooperative threads (if I'm not mistaken, they're also sometimes called "lightweight threads", "green threads" or "fibers"), avoid most of the problems of preemptive threads (because the programmer controls when execution can switch to another thread and when it should not very easily), while retaining some benefits (background execution of low priority tasks). For a "modern" Forth system, I think it could be interesting to keep cooperative threads at user level (really hardcore implementers may just remove them completely, because it is expected that the programmer may prefer to implement some sort of cooperative tasking fitted to his needs), and use preemptive/OS threads in library code (typically implemented in C).

Now that's the point of view of a 'hardcore' kind of hobbyist Forth user (and implementor). There is another category that finds brutal simplicity simply not practical and I can understand that. But really for educational/curiosity purposes I would recommend the hardcore way. Like, abandon all the bloat you're addicted to, shut the up, try hard and sincerely. I tried Forth this way because I was very sceptical when reading Moore (inventor of Forth) and Fox (one of his collaborator and friend; Moore isn't very good at communication, so Fox [RIP] was sort of his Plato) that their approach could work. These experiments in extreme simplification brought me a lot when I was a young programmer.
Inflation is increasing the cost of living in India and China. A decent apartment (not luxury) will cost you min. $100K in any Indian city (even C and D tier cities)

While not as expensive as Manhattan or London, relative to Indian salaries everything is getting expensive.
Ask HN: Suggestions for spacewalk procedure writing?
I work at NASA creating procedures for spacewalks (EVAs). Typically these procedures include 2 astronauts working outside the space station (called EV1 and EV2), plus a robotics operator inside, and other actions taken by mission control on the ground. All of this is happening in parallel. Sometimes EV1 may be working on a task where all the steps can be done independent of what EV2 is doing, while other times their steps are heavily intertwined. The same goes for robotic and mission control steps.

Currently we write these procedures in Microsoft Word. A procedure is basically a big table, with each column of the table being the steps for each entity. So EV1's steps are in one column, EV2's in another, and so on. If EV2 has a step that has to come after one of EV1's steps, then we make sure that the later step is lower on the page than the earlier step. All of this requires a lot of formatting in Word, and we spend too much time dealing with the formatting aspect. Most of these procedures are text with ordered and unordered lists, but there are also images and diagrams.

What I'm looking for:

- A better method for writing procedures with multiple people working in parallel

- Ability to easily see (and diff) the entire revision history

- Allow multiple editors. Not necessarily Google Docs-type multiple editors, though. Instead I imagine the procedure would reference individual documents as sub-procedures, and those could further reference more sub-procedures. So each editor could be revising smaller portions of the same spacewalk procedure, but not the same portion at the same time...so a lot like software development.

- Bonus if it can also help manage the location of hardware and tools as they're used throughout the spacewalk

Is there any such software in existence? If not, is anyone interested in creating such a thing? I'm not sure how much applicability outside spacewalks there this, but there has to be some.
You're right, it's 2,048 layers. The sad part for me is that I knew that number, but when I did the math, I couldn't get it to work with the current layer's numbers, because I forgot that the cube length goes down by two, not one. Oh well, shows I shouldn't do math late at night!
I would have to second this. I can see how one would get that impression if the only exposure to him is an article or two that gets linked from somewhere else, but if you read him regularly he posts a lot of very even handed articles and gives credit where it's due.
HN used to have this feature (natively, configured in your profile) by way of Notifo (a Y Combinator startup).
How Introverted Entrepreneurs Can Win in an Extroverted World
Serving 100K+ Visits/Day Site From an AWS Micro Instance
I suspect this is something everyone feels compelled to do.

For github I wrote ghissues: https://github.com/Neurogami/ghissues

But ended up not using it (forget why) so it's likely way out of date.

For Pivotal I wrote Pivotal Slacker; that was in 2009; Github ended up hosing the repo somehow, and soon after I stopped using PT.

Anyways, both of these grow out that little voice that says, "I wish I could do this stuff at the command line. How hard could it be? I'll just write some code ... "
Some frills might be useful when you're having heart surgery...
I assume you mean in-site notifications. I don't think that will ever happen because of all the measures PG takes to reduce the amount of back-and-forth discussion on the site.
Looks like you have edited your comment since you first made it.

The success rates are high and on par with western counter parts. Also this is a private hospital , I think you haven't visited a good private hospital in a developing country. Many have US/Uk trained docs and quality of service and care on par with that of developed countries.
That's very true. Creating an instant release generic is nowhere near as difficult as producing an extended release or transdermal formulation.

The FDA recently pulled a 300mg generic bupropion generic because the extended release formation produced nowhere near what the branded medication did.

Most generics are equivalent to the branded medication, but there are exceptions out there.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/12/0...
This is very cool, we need more things like this in the industry. Easy entry, and instant gratification. The question that gets asked by every beginner in any field is "okay, but am I ever going to use this?" and instant gratification and identifying concepts in the context of a greater whole are crucially important.

However, the title makes me think more of actual visual programming "languages" or interfaces. Much like minecraft as is being pointed out here, or the National Instruments project, LabView (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LabVIEW) which uses a language "G" ... a graphical representation of inputs, outputs, logical operators and translators that all get connected via "wires" in a flowchart. I was playing with this at 10 or 12 and I think engaging my visual-spacial skills early in something entirely logical and non-visual dominated greatly helped me. I have to think that kids playing minecraft now will be great programmers were they to go that direction.
Let's say you have a developer whose time is worth $120/hr to you. If that developer spends two hours futzing with configuring an irc channel in a year and no time futzing with this service then it has paid for itself without needing to offer anything extra. It seems like they're attempting some extra features to sweeten the deal anyway.
hnnotify.com works reliably. I have been using it for years.
Like the article says, too much Tylenol causes brain damage.
Why do people take Tylenol, when aspirin/asa is safer and likely even good for you?
That's a nice service, but the developer could use this to find out the emails of subscribers. He does have a quick note about privacy: "I will not sell or share the email list with anyone." But this doesn't seem sufficient.
You do not need a DSLR to take nice looking photos, your phone will suffice
I think this is more a "we did it because it was fun and we can" project than a "you will find this useful" one
Tylenol has a different mechanism than most other over-the-counter pain relievers. Most other OTC pain relievers are "non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs" (NSAIDs), which means that they actually reduce inflammation at the site of injury instead of just reducing the amount of pain that your brain feels (though they do that too). But I still wouldn't be surprised if they had similar emotional effects.
Hm, but that's not an issue with this specific project, and yes, of course there is nothing what is impossible to do on yourself - but I never said that ;)

If you would let me know if there is anything what you don't like, then I'm happy to fix it or whatever :)
I'm very much behind on this since you wrote that two days ago, but I wrote my initial reply in the mindset of "what if Bitcoin becomes more pervasive" - as in: it gets increasingly used as an alternate currency. But of course your point still stands for the world today, and that other world will probably never come anyway.
I'd need to dig into the source code of this project more to be convinced, but I trust the implementation and algorithm choice in core R way more than any other stats package except possibly SAS: among other reasons it has far more of the right eyeballs looking at the code. Picking numerically reliable implementations of most estimators is not trivial without the right training. Now, I don't know how much needed to be rewritten for this project, so that's just my general opinion.
Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory (2008)
Welcome to youarenotpizza.com
I'm sure he's saying that package ecosystem is what makes R attractive.
Just because their healthcare system is low cost doesn't mean it is of poor quality.

Incidently, if you read the article, you will see such claim:

"Essentially we realised that as you do more numbers, your results get better and your cost goes down," he said.

However, the details on how good their care is very lacking.
Every deck needs an ObComicSans slide someplace.

(Graph paper or yellow legal-pad background is optional. )
This is for people who are earning 2-4$ / day and for majority of Indians and I guess the same model would work for majority of the world , who would not be able to otherwise afford even a $10k medical bill.
Reforth fixes problematic aspects of Forth without sacrificing its simplicity.
> 1. It has lots of meaning before replication ...

Nothing in science has meaning before replication. Look at cold fusion for a classic example where this rule was ignored. Of course, you may be speaking of the prevailing standards in psychology, in which case you're right -- but then psychology isn't a science.

> 2. Apparently the first study isn't science.

That's correct -- it isn't.

> I didn't realize that science was a catch-22 situation.

Only if you can't replicate any studies. That's psychology's problem, but not science's problem. In science, studies are replicated regularly, and no one takes a study seriously if it hasn't been replicated, especially where human health is concerned.

> They have a testable hypothesis: that acetaminophen/paracetamol has a side effect of X.

That is not an explanation, it's a description. Science requires testable explanations. The paper doesn't presume to explain its results.

If I say "the night sky is full of little points of light", that's certainly testable -- someone else can go outside the tent and confirm it, but it's just a description -- not a basis for science, which requires that someone have the nerve to suggest an explanation for what has been described.

But if I say "those points of light are actually thermonuclear furnaces like our sun, at greater distances", I have offered a testable, falsifiable explanation. That's science.

If someone correlated a specific biochemical action in individual neurons with later very specific behavior, that might count as science, but that would be neuroscience, not psychology. Psychology doesn't try to analytically connect specific physical causes to effects -- it's satisfied to describe outcomes without pretending to know why they are so.

> See https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

The fallacy is yours, not mine. You appear to think one study making ten claims constitutes science. In fact, science is ten studies making one claim.
Its interesting how Factor avoided "library fragmentation" by trying to include everything in the main distribution - definitely a win here, given that in the smaller communities you can't afford duplication. The average quality of the libraries is higher because of that...

I could never get over the syntax though - even though the #factor folks say its a matter of getting used to and theoretically not "harder" than Lisp, Lisp feels very natural to me, but Factor always required a big overhead.
http://www.amazon.com/Accoutrements-Fuzzy-Glasses-Classic-Di...

Costs $3, will beat any facial recognition
Exactly :)

I also have a more serious project regarding DNS, even with an anycasted network, dnssec, etc - but that is still in beta and I just wanted to do something for fun (Idea came while I was implementing a zonefile importer)
Standard IT service company entry level SE salary is ~ INR 25000/month -> INR 830/day =~ $15, now divide it by 9 and it comes down to ~ $1.7/hr. Of course this is fresher salary and at a services company like Infosys, TCS, Wipro etc.

If you start with a product development(that means just fixing bugs in almost all the cases) company or some of the startup(such jobs are quite few) then the monthly salary can be sth from INR 40K to 60-70K(I'm giving an average range, it can be higher too) so that comes down to ~ $25 to $42 per day or ~ $3 to $5 per hour.

What you mention, $10/hr, is earned by either very very experienced ones at a services company(managerial level - never bloody ever someone who writes code or even reads code) or good lead/senior level engineers at other companies in their last phase of coding life cycle. It is translated as ~ INR 150,000 per month which is quite some amount here, still.
Because the HuffPo link was more popular and Google couldn't see it on Forbes. Having looked harder for this reply, it had a different headline:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/04/18/7-reasons-...
Ask HN: How to sell apps on Appstore and Google Play from unsupported countries?
As you know, these stores have a list of supported countries from where you can sell the apps.

So what about "lucky" developers from other countries (Yes, there are quite many, even in Europe), do you know about any other channels for selling the paid apps?
"And it's not like a patient can prescribe a drug for themselves, its the doctor who ultimately decides which treatment to pursue."

Clearly you don't know very many people in the health field. If a patient comes in asking for a specific medication, most doctors will just prescribe that medication assuming the person is suffering from the illness required for the medication. Where do they get the information for making a diagnosis? Don't worry, Big Pharma will host an info session or hand out pamphlets so that doctors know what to look for...

It may be a conversation, but it's the wrong one. Big pharma is notorious for increasing the potential number of patients for an illness by putting out advertisements that widen the net for the given illness. Social Anxiety is great example here, as is ADD. 5% of children in the US are diagnosed with ADD, only 0.5% are diagnosed with ADD in france. The issue of ADD specifically goes beyond just advertisements; it speaks to the fact that drug reps have a real impact on the treatment options doctors present. In France if a child is having a tough time concentrating in school the find the root of the problem, in the US they throw meds at the kid and shove him out the door.

The marketing strategies of big pharma are nothing but pure evil. Get people on more meds, to make more money next quarter.
If you haven't already, you should read these two papers on this topic by Professor Alex J. Halderman of University of Michigan.

Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines
-https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/evm-ccs10.pdf

Attacking the Washington, D.C. Internet Voting System-https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/dcvoting-fc12.pdf

source: https://jhalderm.com
Apparently the police prefer interoperability over secrecy - if all the departments had encrypted comms during this manhunt, nobody would have been able to talk to each other because there were so many different police forces out there.
No, I'm referring to nation-states in specific. If you asked me for three major examples of why multinational empire-states are a Bad Idea, I would point to China, India, and the United States.

Though their are arguments to be made that China is a Han nation-state that simply forces everyone else to go along with what the ruling clique of Han want.
Android to replace Windows
link to the homepage of openstreetmap??
IIRC there's a plugin that lets you call R functions within excel.
Pi - 10 Trillion Digits
What you fail to realize is that the "terror watch list" you speak of doesn't hold people on it from just any hearsay. The articles said that the FBI did its due diligence and found no reason to continue an investigation on them.

Think about it this way: would you want just anyone to be watchlisted based on tips that could be politically motivated, intentionally misleading, or just completely factually inaccurate?

What you can never account for in terrorism screening is the lone-wolf element. There will always be some fringe guys in parts of the world who hatch their plots outside of the view of what we're able to observe. The only options you have are to limit their access to harmful weapons/devices, or contain them as fast as possible when they do go on the offensive.

Yes, doctors and other emergency responders did a great job, but don't be so quick to take away a victory from law enforcement when there are very few positive stories circulated about them ever. The boston marathon runners/crowd didn't know they were putting their lives on the line that day. Law enforcement, on the other hand, made a conscious decision to do so.
San Francisco Hangout Becomes Casualty of Tech Boom
The ecosystem didnt come into existence by magic. The early adopters did have a choice into which language to invest their time. Obviously the R syntax alone was enough of an incentive to starts building useful libraries in it, instead of lisp, python, etc.
I've been using `ghi` for quite some time now and I'm definitely a fan. One feature I'd love to see is offline-mode because I often work on some personal projects during my commute.
Sure it is. Both V8 and IonMonkey compile JavaScript.
The more I use Angular, the more I love it. I like how it's really easy to get started with it. Just avoid writing your own directives right away, that's still the one part that is super confusing (although powerful).
Ruby is too slow for programming competitions
Hundreds, over decades. Reference: http://arachnoid.com/building_science
Wait, web-apps didn't evolve to get past "oppressive" operating systems. They evolved because centralized IT departments and centralized application deployment were easier than providing adequate deployment support and keeping data closed for desktop applications. They're technologically inferior in almost every other way.
Right, anyone who disagrees with you must hate America.
http://wikimapia.org/ is another good one. Allows for annotating buildings etc. in the satellite view.
Gadget graveyards: Behind the scenes at electronic-recycling plants
The author could just replace the hard drive with a SSD and add more RAM. Probably will run $200 to $300 depending on the size of the SSD. I did that with a 17" MBP, and it's still doing fine after 3 years.

http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-replace-your-macbook-pros-h...
FWIW: I work for google, though i'm absolutely not speaking for them.

I'd say you have a reasonable argument either way, my point was more on the side of "A judge may disagree".

Hence "you may have a hard time arguing".
Brilliant in its simplicity.

Could you share the technical details? What DNS server/software are you using? How do you handle input, errors (broken zones? do you perform sanity checks?), and reloads?

Do you enforce any limits? Support DNSSEC?

What's the web stack?
I live near Manipal Hospital in Bangalore and had to stay with a friend in there, thrice in last 6-7 months. Maybe he likes it there too and I often go to their cafeteria(outside) which is cheap and good.

I meet so many foreigners here. I've talked to them; they simply say it's very good - service, expertise - and it's a f*ing loot! And no, this is no such no-frills hospital. So, if you are from a western country and earning even decent money then you are welcome to India and any hospital/hotel/place might make you feel like royalty - mostly without compromising in quality.
Ask HN: If you've developed an Android app, what have you learned?
If there are some lessons you've learned in the process of developing, releasing, maintaining, and promoting your apps, what would they be? What worked, what didn't, and what would you do better next time?
I was enthralled as a child reading her books - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi#Books
Another worthy mention is state-run Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research[0]; a Bangalore based hospital that provides state-of-the-art and affordable heart related healthcare services[1].

[0]http://www.jayadevacardiology.com/achievements.html

[1]http://www.jayadevacardiology.com/procedure_charges.html
Its the classic case of how you ask the question.
Can you smoke while you pray?, probably not.
Can you pray while you smoke?, hell yeah!!

Why not turn this around and say you provide a tool to the service providers that when a customer visits them and they see (using your tool) that the customer tweeted a positive sentiment about them. Hence, they give him discount.

Authenticity of the account and tweets is handled/verified by you.

This could be useful. I guess so. And I get the feel that there must be something out there like this already.