skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I first started programming in C, I did the same thing with pointers (i.e.,

char* str;

instead of

char *str;

).

Unfortunately, this creates the wrong impression that

char* str1, str2;

creates two pointer-to-char variables, whereas actually str1 is a char pointer and str2 is simply a char. Indeed, I was confused on this point myself when I was a newbie, which led to great confusion later on.

The clearest way I've ever found to think about C declarations (ironically, I think I read this in some article maligning C's syntax in favor of Go's), is that each declaration is of the format

[type] [expressions--one for each new variable--that equate to type];

Thus, the way I think of declaring a char pointer is

char [de-referencing the variable (which is a char pointer) to arrive at the char];
char *str;

(Obviously, not everyone is going to agree that that is simple, but it works for me and my brain.)

Anyway, the point is that while typography is great, it can be just as harmful as helpful if you communicate the wrong impression to the reader. And to be fair, it really looks like the author is not at home in C: besides his misconception about pointer declaration, he didn't bat an eye at the old-style argument-declaration syntax that has been obsolete since ANSI C.

Also, I hope I never write a for loop that looks so massively bloated--a matter of opinion I guess.
Unfortunately if you focus on beauty you sometimes break pragmatism. The JavaScript example in particular is not merely a typographical convention, but a way to avoid common errors.

var i=1
, j=2
, k=3

You can remove any of the comma prefixed lines there (even the last one) and not introduce an error. You can add another similarly prefixed line anywhere to the list and not introduce an error. It's obvious if a comma is missing (which is good, because you don't have a compiler to let you know).

It can be difficult to spot the lack of a trailing comma, or the end of this declaration list having a comma instead of a semicolon (, vs ;), both of which will break the execution of your script.

So please, do not change your code to make it look better without understanding why it's like that in the first place.

The classic example is tchanging the following to allman/gnu style braces would break it in JavaScript:

// works, returns {a:1,b:2}
return {
a: 1,
b: 2
}

// semicolon inserted after return, returns undefined
return
{
a: 1,
b: 2
}
The article makes a big deal about efficiency, but underlying the efficiency of the container system is standardization. It is the same story as railroads using standard gauges and couplers, electrical sockets being standardized and having standard voltages and frequencies, the IP protocol, etc. It allows people to think about their problems more abstractly, which allows people to get more done.
I shamelessly reach for the backtick shell notation in any exploratory Ruby code that needs it. I try to replace it with something written in Ruby if the codebase grows beyond my laptop, but backticks never get old.

=> 1.upto(100) { |n| puts `curl -s fizzy.heroku.com/#{n}` }

1
2
Fizz
4
Buzz
...
This is the part I'm objecting to:

To move, you have to move to or away from ... well, from what? You'd have to say that you don't even get to use a word like "move" when you are the only body in that void.

You can move. You can have a delta v. You don't have an absolute position or velocity, but you don't need those to move.

I don't see any comparison to the pre-sleep state, this is a statement about the void, and it overreaches.
The important question, though, is "why". Why would that department head spend out of his own budget and risk censure? Pretty much the logical answers are "not getting what's needed from IT" and "very good chance that the results from the rogue app will wash away my sins".
What I was trying to express by "inky void, not even a star" was that the void didn't even include anything resembling an aether. "You are the only body in that void" is meant to include non-material bodies. All this passage is trying to establish is that in order to distinguish constant motion from absolute stillness, there has to be something else to measure against. Whether or not our universe contains something that can serve as an absolute frame of reference is not the point -- yet.

So yes, it really is meant to be talking about a self-evident fact (once you think about it).

But you're right; I'm not a physics teacher. I'm willing to concede that I underestimated the potential stickiness of this point, and/or that I failed to overcome my handicap in expressing this point.
Browser vendors control the javascript VM. Though we can't solve the halting problem, we can just throttle or unplug the JS interpreter if it causes usability problems.

But CSS is required for the site to look right There's no way to turn it off without messing with the site's layout.
I want to highlight a statistical quirk that biases the results of this poll:

Whenever you have a self-selecting population, approval ratings are measures of the liquidity of the population, not of how good a job the organization is doing.

If you're a Googler and you hate your job, you don't stay a Googler for very long. There are umpteen zillion companies that would love to hire you, or VCs willing to fund you if you choose to do your own thing. There are a number of such ex-Googlers on Hacker News. Google software is somewhat proprietary, but the core languages, skillsets, and architectures are common to a lot of firms who would just love to pick up accumulated ex-Google knowledge.

If you're a Microsoftie and you hate your job, there's a good chance that your skills are more specialized, or you've "drunk the Kool Aid" and can't imagine a life outside Microsoft. If you think things suck...well, you might not have any other options. Or you might not think you have options, having accumulated so much company-specific knowledge. And so you stay in a job that you hate even though you hate it.

It's the same with customers. The reason Facebook, Comcast, TWC, and Congress have such low approval ratings is because users are pretty much locked-in to those services: even if they hate them, they can't go elsewhere. Meanwhile, the reason Google has such a high approval rating is because it's pretty simple to leave most Google products (and ones that are easier to leave, like Search and Chrome, tend to rate more highly than ones with a large degree of lock-in, like Plus and GMail).

If you want to tease out companies that are actually doing things right, look for ones with both a high approval rating (indicating large liquidity) and a large & growing population (indicating that despite this liquidity, more people want to come in than go out).
And how do you accelerate - do you have a rocket attached to your feet?
See the videos on 11foot8.com, that beam is a freestanding structure separate from the bridge solely designed to decapitate trucks.
How exactly is Samsung working to make their devices less useful?
Does anyone have any examples of AWK vs. some other programming langauge for AI. It would be interesting to take a look at.
I apologize, the Foreward is the inspirational work I was speaking of:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-5.html

Not that the contents of the Preface should be ignored :)
It is just a matter of time (perhaps it has even happened, I don't follow Glass development much) until there is an app for jailbroken Glass devices that takes photos on an X second timer, no winking required. Whenever cameras and control logic are combined, intervalometer control isn't far behind.
What would you put forward as an alternative to awk for the kinds of complex projects the author describes?

Sam and vi are both descendants of ed, but go in very different directions. Is there a path forward from awk that focuses on different strengths to perl's choices? (perhaps avoiding perl's move to being multi-paradigm)

Is there something that sits close to unix in the way awk does, but which is stronger?
But, think about if a criminal duplicates the design and screws it to the front of existing / old machines? Most users will think that it's not a skimmer but the "secure" device.

Also: Place the skimmer to the LEFT most portion of the horizontal hole. The card is the rotated and pushed past the skimmer as it's inserted into the machine :)
Another underdog story: Xbox, which has turned out really well for them.
"formatting was performed manually"? What do you mean by that?

I'd rather it be performed automatically. But, I find very few tools that would format it the way I want.
Needs a way to try the tool before purchasing. There's no way I'm spending $30 on something when I have no idea what I am getting.
I tried IntelliJ and had the same reaction. I did find that IntelliJ had complete parity once properly configured and shortcuts were learned except for two showstoppers. Complilation was not continous and was slow, and in the debugger you can't pause a specific thread you can only pause all threads.

I did find that some common operations I do through the GUI require more clicks then when I do them in Eclipse. I didn't find it enough better to switch, but I run on fairly honkin hardware (Ivy Bridge i7, 16 gigabytes of RAM) and I changed the Eclipse default heap size to 2g.
Many Apple fans would say that Google is the favored child right now.

Journalists look for a good story (or the ability to make one) regardless of what device they use.
> Also "record financial record" thing can be very misleading for a company.

Benjamin Graham supported the opposite. It may be, in some minority cases, but generally it is not. Companies who consistently delivered generally keep delivering in the equivalent future timeframe.
I mirrored this implementation a while ago since the full source isn't available. It was not nearly as successful as the blogger portrays. For example, if I used a high quality wav mono file to create a fingerprint it would have a hard time identifying a track that is an mp3. It seems the maximums actually get shifted and merged from compression. In other words there's a reason shazam uses entropy based anchor points to help it pick hashing values.
I've heard some reports of phones getting hacked. I guess it's a question of which one is easier to secure.
To further eclipxe's question (because I think I know how you're going to answer it)- how is Samsung working to make their devices less useful that they haven't already been doing during their meteoric rise to dominance?
As in most non-trivial choices, context matters. I just emailed a woman that I know professionally that she is beautiful. More precisely, I replied to a photo of her lying in a hospital bed with her newborn daughter "Mother and daughter are both beautiful". I had little fear she would think I was hitting on her. :)

But it took a situation that extreme for me to say that. Her job requires her to be nice to me, so I surely don't want her to regret that necessity.

Back in the 1980s, when ever the most impressive of women -- e.g. Ann Winblad, Sandy Kurtzig or Esther Dyson -- felt they needed a flirtatious demeanor as part of their toolkit, I usually didn't respond ... unless, of course, we were dancing at a party. ;) But I recently saw Sandy again, made it clear she's looking awesome, and hugged her a couple of times; she's over 60 now, and at this point of her life I figured she probably wouldn't mind the attention. ;)
Cool! I'll surely give it a read!
So... If I jaywalk, and a LE officer doesn't give me a ticket, he's in "jaywalking's pocket?" That doesn't make sense.
Nice, clean and simple! I love how your utilizing CSS3 and the very simple html5! Mad props!
Google Glass rooted and hacked to run Ubuntu live at Google I/O
Understand diff in Unix
Wow. I was sure this was inspired by George Boolos' great "Godel's Second Incompleteness Theorem Explained in Words of One Syllable".

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Math/Milnikel/boolos-godel.pdf

I wonder if Hofstadter was inspired by Boolos?
I suspect the story was more about how often he's taking pictures than learned behavior.
Electronics comes to paper
I know I'm dumb, but can someone explain this part?

"Dana sees each rock at the same time, but Bert sees one rock and then sees the next rock."

How would anyone's movement, or lack of it, affect their perception of whether the rocks landed at the same time or not?
> I personally find the lack of parentheses makes the code
> harder to read [...] but faster to write.

Then simply use parentheses. They're still there for you to rely on as much as you'd like to. One main reason why they're optional is so that things flow together nicely with the significant whitespace, like so:

filter list, (item) ->
if item.flag is 'priority'
item.visible
else
false

... writing the above with all parentheses present wouldn't be quite as nice -- and I don't think any clearer to read.
And they were right, because MS is on the decline – it's loosing its strategic position. 10 years ago, they were much stronger. Since then, Apple and Google surpassed them in market capitalization.
Since when is reason not influenced by bias?

You seem to be splitting hairs here. The OP complained about the bias of others but didn't like it when he had his own biases pointed out.

I'm suspicious of any claim that says "votes" somehow have more "power" than words. Words, opinions and ideas all have power too.
The less travelled path - figuring out how to do it with fewer people so you can stay in control. Kudos to them for thinking for themselves.

Quote: 'And it’s dawning on them that they’re doing something impressive. “We’re doing a lot of stuff that no one has done before,” Hantoot reflects. “I do think we’re sort of proof that if you streamlined your business enough, you could do a big thing with a few people.”'
You can see help pages on command line with 'man commandname' or with 'commandname --help'

Regarding customizing your prompt, try running 'fish_config' and check list of already available prompts from prompts tab.
The more I use C++11 the less I like it.

constexpr has many problems:

- Its syntax is that of C++s, but limited to a single statement and so is about as expressive as a block of wood. Templates are much closer to functional languages and so are naturally more expressive. Seriously, use templates instead!

- It's inefficient. If you want to do heavy computations then you're better off writing a program to generate code. If you want efficient run-time performance then good luck optimizing a single statement.

- It's specification is full of quirks and pitfalls. Quite simply, constexpr does not follow the path of least surprise. Plus, I hear it was a nightmare for the compiler writers.
> The Mint Desktop Manager now has a choice of three "greeters." A new greeter for 15 supports code such as "HTML5, CSS, Javascript, [and] WebGL".

So that must be the most ambitious feature ever.
I guess they're using LightDM, and if they are, that feature has been there for years.
Do normal glasses have a camera attached? Bathrooms are a place of privacy.
Guy Steele: Growing a Language [video, 1998]
The very fact that in HTML, a URL can look like a totally legitimate URL (the part between the &gt; and the &lt), and yet the "a href=" could be anything, makes HTML a bad idea for email, where headers can be easily forged. Sure people can (and do) copy and paste, but having it in HTML just makes it that much harder to check a URL. Don't even get me started about the "onmouseover" events that can further obscure the true href.
The day they take away the old compose I'm switching back to mutt over IMAP.

(Unless they fix several issues with scrolling, especially in firefox.)
Parent comment is being facetious.
Why Your Social Content Strategy Sucks (and How to Fix It)
Baby Boomers implicitly distrust PCs and the Internet, let alone smartphones, but many others realize that they are living in the most interesting time of their lives and wish they'd been born a little later.

In the US at least, I have to believe that the 60s were the most interesting times that generation lived through.
Why Indian Elites Like to Call Themselves ‘Middle Class’
Meta: The Most Advanced Augmented Reality Interface (YC S13)
So, is there natural seismic activity on the moon? Apparently so: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/moon-seismology-ea... but i'm having trouble finding anyone talking about results from these installed seismic sensors.
Well, I guess you expect that it is copying something. It is implemented using C pointers, which enjoy a reputation of being difficult to explain. For example:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15151377/what-exactly-is-...

Accepting some level of fuzziness, the ++ parts are moving through two spots in memory, the * parts are copying the contents of the one to the other. It all goes 1 byte at a time.

(I apologize if my assumption that you are not familiar with C is off base)
Yes, in Europe Chip-and-PIN cards are the norm - the card has an embedded microchip which the reader communicates with electronically. But they still have the magstripe as well, for backwards compatibility.
But again, I refer you to my HTML5 example. Should we dumb down what websites are capable of rendering to prevent social engineering via the web?

Strawman; we're talking about email, where the combination of header forging and HTML mis-labeling are what's really dangerous, not web pages.
Ask HN: Can you prevent me from hacking Facebook to check in from Siberia?
I'm sitting in Florida. Can you stop me from faking a Facebook check-in by altering the coordinates provided by JavaScript location services?

I'm curious because I'm working on a Web app (geopackages.com) that relies heavily on JS loc services, and I hope to prevent tampering.

No luck on Stack Overflow, so I'm trying here because this community always has creative ideas concerning security.

Plus, I think it's an increasingly relevant issue, as more apps are using client-side loc services to offer special promotions, etc.
Show HN: multiplayer shooter in HTML5 (works in chrome)
That really is a great talk! It's on Youtube too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0
How I Made a Fully-Functional Arduino Weather Station for $300
The US consistently donates $100 Million + to Ukraine in foreign aid per year. The notion of "Well they're not following copyright law so we're going to sanction them" is absurd; nobody follows US copyright law. Not even the US.
The WTO issued sanctions against the US for it's handling of foreign online casinos[1]. Did they ever honour those sanctions and pay up? I'm guessing not. That's probably against US law too.

[1] http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds285_e....
Thanks for all the Fish!!!

_J""-.
.-""L_ /o ) \ ,';
;`, / ( o\ \ ,' ; /
\ ; `, / "-.__.'"\_;
;_/"`.__.-"
I gave CAH (and expansion packs) as stocking stuffers for xmas and they were extremely well received.

What they say on the tin is true -- you feel like a horrible person when you play the game, which is extremely cathartic.

Hell, they even did a pay what you want for a small package of Christmas themed cards and pretty sure they pulled a 70k profit from that maneuver, despite ~25% percent paying $0.

Their average credit card fee was $0.43 per transaction. Ouch!

http://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/holidaystats/
How does that compare to the amount of money Minecraft has made?
I'm sorry that I read the assertions that you should always skip TDD and that it's proponents are all members of a wacky cult as calling TDD harmful.

Clearly you intended to have the nuanced view that sometimes TDD is ok and sometimes you shouldn't use it. I guess I mistakenly read the author to say that when in fact you were the one with this point of view all along. My mistake.
Actually, Hofstadter states that he was inspired by a magazine contest.
If I may piggy-back on this thread, the idea of "containerization" is one of our inspirations at IFTTT. Information is currently being transported in "break-bulk" [1] - everyone has a different way of shuffling it around.

What we hope to do at IFTTT is develop a containerization of information; a common interface for moving data from point a to point b. Now, I realize we run the risk of creating the 15th competing standard [2], but we have some big ideas on the horizon of how we can make this work in a really general (and beautiful) way.

BTW, if these types of problems interest you, we're hiring :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_bulk_cargo

[2] http://xkcd.com/927/
I feel like I was pretty honest in my last paragraph: My sense is that the sort of fear of sexual assault that you're describing is something women I know experience fairly often in public, fully clothed, with witnesses. (And their fear is reasonable, since sexual assault occurs in those same circumstances.) Their reactions vary, but never is preemptive violence on the table, for obvious reasons.

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with extending your standard of self-defense to women who feel uncomfortable with the way men are behaving in public, but I also feel it would be hugely challenging to our social structure and I'm curious where you fall on the issue.
So this article mentions moonquakes and the sensors: http://news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/moon-magma-...

"Moonquakes detected by seismic sensors installed during the Apollo missions support the notion of recent activity on the moon, researchers added."
I don't like to waste my life on internet arguments (nicely in alignment with your comments, there), but seriously?

I hate to join the 'hacker news is going downhill' parade, but this is pretty bad. Go read http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html :-

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g.:-

"That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Note you didn't even respond to my points, you just gave me the minimally informed personal attack bit.

I wrote a fair bit here in response to your 'points', but to be honest your lack of civility doesn't warrant it. Feel free to disagree, but try + do it politely, this isn't reddit.
I use lua for that, and it seems to be a very good fit. There's awk influence in its history, so it's probably no accident.
Scientists find woman who sees 99 million more colors than others
It doesn't really matter. But there should be some mechanism. A rocket attached to your feet works quite well if you ignore the exhaust for purposes of reference.

If you want a useful thought experiment about physics then you need to give reasonable physics tools. Otherwise you get something like "Pretend you are an inanimate green blob. You can't climb a hill, can you? Therefore climbing a hill is an illusion."
Meta (YC S13) Wants to Become the Next Augmented-Reality Glasses Phenom
Trawling Tor Hidden Service – Mapping the DHT
How does a paper get published without the alleged corresponding author knowing?
Linux Mint has sucked since 11, and I mean that. It sucks.

Mint 10 (julia) was awesome, and I refuse to tolerate Mint beyond that version. Mint 11 was awful, and I feel the same way about everything thereafter.

Bad, ugly themes. Strictly enforced interface, with settings locked away from user customization. Everything was unnecessarily new and different, and previous experience was not compatible with the new interface. (yes, I know about how everyone (actually, just snob developers) hated Gnome 3, and there was a revolt, and migration to Mate Cinnamon, XFCE, blah blah blah. They all suck. I hate them. They are not good.)

Before you argue with me, consider that the only thing Mint has to offer is it's desktop/windowing interface. Otherwise, it's merely yet another Linux flavor, and if I have to relearn and resort to the command line for ANYTHING, why not just use some other Linux distribution, and deal with everything from the command line in the first place? Which is exactly what I did.
That's not a good analogy. The 'crime' being committed here is actually being committed in the Ukraine. It's a question of whose laws are broken, and who should care. The US doesn't punish its citizens if they break the UK's strict defamation laws.