skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd lean toward avoiding "blub" entirely; it sounds like you're implying their code (and brain) is full of mush. You're probably making a face like a fish blowing bubbles while you say it. Be civil!

As novel as this may seem, most people who regularly program in languages other than Lisp also consider excessively verbose code to be a bad thing. (Hence the interest in refactoring.) If you're dealing with someone who just started programming a few months ago, they don't have enough experience to know why it's problematic, but then, they probably need someone to be patient and helpful, rather than smug.

You can say, "There are some things that are inherently hard to express in some languages that come naturally in others, and until you have experience with a couple different styles of languages, you'll only really know techniques used in your main language. Learning new languages adds new techniques to your problem solving toolkit. It takes a while, but it'll make you a much better programmer in the long run.", and it doesn't make you sound like you're sneering inside.

If you want to make the point that the way their language's object framework is designed makes any nontrivial program in it have a bunch of repetitive boilerplate, say that. Name-calling makes people defensive, not likely to consider new ideas.
GBA? I don't think a real hacker would want to mess with this. I was excited for a while about ZoHo's scripting, but found using a proprietary scripting language in a webpage to be like pulling teeth.
I do not think the "sexy" they refer to is the same kind of "sexy" that a geek would want to improve in.

I know I was disappointed that it wasn't a list of common geek skills that people are secretly drawn and attracted to.
It's not against the law to own drawings of people murdering, or hatching ponzi schemes, or smoking pot. Why should it be illegal to draw one crime and not the others?
Why do people purposely limit themselves due to an irrational allegiance to a brand? An allegiance that you pay for the privilege of having.

Isn't the ideal that our choices always produce the best results? So why would you choose the counter intuitive of picking the worst result?

Curious.

PS. Not saying the Pre > iPhone, but your statement is rather ... strange.
For me, I have found that a more concise language is easier to think in and write in. I recently worked on an application that was implemented both on the web using mostly javascript and as a desktop application in VB.Net.

One of the more complicated features I waited to implement in the web version, just because I found it rather difficult to think of the problem in VB. The javascript code was just easier to write and think in, and once implemented I could translate it to VB.

Although I do not know if there is a limit to the benefits of moving to a smaller language. Also, this is just my personal experience and I do not know how much it generalizes to other people.
Interesting enough. But let's take a step back. Sure, a single tweet may not be copyrightable, but what about timelines?

Couldn't someone consider their Twitter timeline to be a body of work? Think about Fake Micheal Bay, Darth Vader, or other fake users who exist solely for entertainment purposes. No single tweet is important, however the image they convey of the character is described in these 140 character chunks. Pretty much a work of fiction.

It would be like trying to say that words and sentences can't be copyrighted because they are too small to comprise anything substantial, but ignoring books, songs, plays, etc.

A case for missing the forest for the trees.
Imagine Our Mind Without Bounds
It is well-established in the law that First Amendment protections do not apply to obscene material--where "obscene" is not just "pornographic" but "sexually explicit in a really really gross way with no redeeming social value". There's a summary of the relevant law on the DOJ's Web site here:

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/optf/links/citizens_guide.html

I'm not saying this a good law, but anyone who has this kind of stuff should know that the "it's just ink on paper" argument cuts no ice with the judges.
typical single pricing for a can is $2. also, typical pricing for a 4 pack is $6-8. walmart is specifically pricing them lower than "market", if what the OP is saying is true.
Yup, realize I went way way way too far on this what if scenario but it was infectious. Couldn't stop dreaming up potential paths for extension of our minds beyond our noggins.
Mozilla Jetpack and the battle for the Web
Wow... that's quite an achievement, I don't think I would even know where to start with building a CPU from scratch!
Not all language cruft is created equil. I find the more more that happens within a line the easer it is to write but the harder it is to read.

x = (a = 7 * (b = 14)) + (c = 9 * ((d > 7)? e:f));

Now toss in some casts and the line becomes harder to read, but at the same time it's considered poor from to have 4 assignments on one line. Yet that's valid C, C++, Java, C# etc and it's got fewer symbols so it must be better according to the arc view of the world.

So is reqiring one assignment per line cruft or a good idea? How about those assignments? I would argue that one of the most useful mesures of a language is how easy it is to read other peoples code, but then you end up with something like Pascal...

PS: I acutaly like mantaining pascal code more than most languages then again it could have more to do with the experence of the people who use Pascal.
It's not in writing 40 lines that something like "blub" hurts, it's in reading it afterward. As long as you don't end up in Perl one liners, shorter code will tend to better highlight the relevant content (e.g., there are four keys that perform one of four things).
All Things Digital Conference Gets Going; Top Names Talk Future of Tech
In local stores (in my country) a Redbull costs me around $2.5. Looks like you guys are very lucky :)
The "blub" argument fairly applies just as much to Lisp as it does to, e.g., Java. For example, (any dialect of) Lisp is my blub language, as I understand Lisp quite well. I do not understand Haskell to anywhere near the same extent. I've tried to learn it several times, but monad transformers consistently make my eyes glaze over. I am perfectly comfortable admitting this, and I intend to try harder to understand programming language concepts with which I am unfamiliar, rather than write off Haskell advocates as condescending.
its also nice to have a custom admin panel in situations where there are more complex data interactions and you want to make sure you don't ruin things in the database accidentally
Anti-vaccination groups, such as those led by Jenny McCarthy, are gaining a significant amount of publicity these days. One of the most unfortunate bits of news is that McCarthy herself will be getting her own talk show thanks to Oprah. The medical community as a whole needs to start standing up to these erroneous claims and educating the masses before these previously defeated diseases start popping up again.

Dr. Steven Novella has a pretty good write-up about the whole situation here if you are interested http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=444
I think that learning is much more that "obtaining knowledge". I am almost at a point where I think that nothing interesting can be learned by only reading - anything that is worth learning involves doing.
If you want to learn something that is physical or social, this is a given but it also applies to, say, programming or even math. You don't really learn by reading - reading can only help you when you want to get started or get stuck at certain levels.
Sketches: Auto-reload your ruby code between your editor and irb
I did this in undergrad, though not a 6502 and using solders and sockets. Wire wrapping makes this far, far more difficult.

“Why did I do all this?” he says. “I don’t know. But it has been a lot of fun.”

Same thing everyone asked me, and I gave the same answer. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
You are avoiding the issue of how difficult it is to dig up gold vs. print money. At $1000/ounce, that is a pretty big incentive to dig for gold now, so why aren't people dumping it on the market? Do you know of any examples of hyper-inflation with a gold standard?

If we return to a gold standard, the value of a dollar would change from the current situation, and then hold steady. How is this a problem? Does it make sense to value current dollars in gold equivalent now as a premise for an argument on the "value" of the money supply? This sounds like a non-sequitor to me.

The gold standard removes the most pernicious and powerful way for the government to take our money, inflation. It is happening now at a rate faster than ever in US history.

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aIeLg1dj...
Emergency services: there in minutes when seconds matter.
Quite cool.

Actually surface mount is not all that bad. I have some friends who use it on boards at home for fun.

And I would be surprised if there weren't vendors or other activity using surface mount at the Faire.
Linpus sets date with Moblin 2.0 for netbooks
Computex: Show sidesteps slump, swine flu on Android hopes
>> "You can't return the operating system because the computer can't work without it."

That is a very annoying misconception. I tried Windows Vista, and in attempt to be fair and be sure I gave it a fair chance, I even called support to see if there was a way around the things that annoyed me. When it became clear that instead of helping me fix the problem they wanted to explain that I didn't want what I thought I wanted, I said, "if there really is now way around this, I just won't use Windows". And the response was basically, "you can't run a computer without Windows!"

It's sad that the employees answering the phone don't even realize they have competitors. If more users realized there was an alternative, MS would certainly have to try harder to make a decent prdocut.
kind of makes me want to sit down and take a swing at building one myself
Lotte: A Lightweight online translation editor
Perhaps we are coming closer to optimal play?
Joined. I've been thinking we need a group here in the DC area. Nice going!
Ask HN: Please throw some good YQL learning resources at me.
I was Googling for some good YQL tutorials but failed to find anything useful. And Couldn't find anything interesting on YQL documentation too (Any documentation for syntax & stuff). If you have any good resources please share.
Get this in front of Bill Simmons immediately. He keeps begging Dork Elvis (Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey) for all of the secret stats that they collect on just about everything that happens in an NBA game. Get the Sports Guy to blog, chat, tweet, or podcast about this, and you'll have more traffic than you know what to do with.
I might add that a friend of my GF saved his life by being able to make a call with a mobile phone without taking it out of a zip bag.

He said he'll check weather reports better on long kayaking trips. :-)
well one of the first robots that i saw one of these guys build does pretty much exactly that - so worth getting in touch - they know about where to get all the parts, pre-packaged kits and all kinds of stuff
I do not believe that these manga depictions of sex with minors have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". So, I do not believe that they constitute art and therefore it's OK for the government to intervene.
The point on statistics is well made. I recall my cryptography professor calling it "Sadistics." Still, I continue to read more & more on it, as it just keeps getting more and more useful.

Performance measurement of largish applications often comes down to statistical questions.
Unix tip: Password complexity for users
In this case, I'd say that the author is trying to stop people from staring at the trees, so that they can tour the forest.
What may be a 'cute trick' to you, is a massive leap in usability for others. Mainly kids who at a young age could interact with a touch screen but find it very hard to use a mouse/touchpad (I witness this first-hand with my 3 year old daughter)

This is bigger than most geeks recognize for the 'casual' PC market and also for breaking the PC out of the office.
I get what you're saying, but I think dropping the "blub" term would make everybody better off. Using "blub" intrinsically frames the conversation in terms of one language being "the stupid one used by the stupid people", and that's likely to be counterproductive. The word always has that baggage.

It's not a linear continuum, with some "most powerful language" at the top. Different styles of languages have different strong points and weak points.
We also build one at engineering school (national university of Mexico), although 12 years ago it was a 4-bit CPU (from gates, a couple of ALU, some sequencer,...), I think now they build 8-bit CPUs. Did you guys build similar things?
Lesson learned: never become good at drawing if you don't want to go to jail. Yeah, that makes sense.
Windows 7 Ink Input and Math Handwriting Recognition
Chapter 22, Articles 175 of the Japanese penal code:

第二十二章　わいせつ、姦淫及び重婚の罪

（わいせつ物頒布等）
第百七十五条 　わいせつな文書、図画その他の物を頒布し、販売し、又は公然と陳列した者は、二年以下の懲役又は二百五十万円以下の罰金若しくは科料に処する。販売の目的でこれらの物を所持した者も、同様とする。

My comment:

法律上で禁じられているか禁じられていないかを判断するにはWikiを参照するより直接法律を見た方がいいんじゃあないか？例えば、「日本の法律で図に過ぎないものはわいせつにならないだろう。それは論理的だし、日本はポルノだらけとよく知られているし。」と思うなら、読んだらすぐ「いや、文字通り、図に過ぎないものでもわいせつとなる」と分かるだろう。

日本のわいせつの罪はアメリカに移行としたら憲法違反と必ず見られるほど広いふうに定義されている。例の漫画は明らかにわいせつである。わいせつとして罰されるかどうかは先言ったように別の話だが。

これは「おれは日本語読めるからカコイイゼ」とのオタクの台詞として受ける人もいるだろうが、まあ、しょうがないか。
It seems that the complexity of the technology is already out of immediate reach for hardware hackers of this sort. This is an 8-bit cpu!
I don't know if I agree. Owen's letter seemed to pretend that Kasparov didn't lose the last match. Why would Hsu need to establish himself as a competitor when he won the last match? That doesn't make any sense to me. When he says things like, "All he had was a computer chip with no organization or sponsor behind him." it's ridiculous. That chip is the chip that contains the data and knowledge that beat Gary last time, and he can't get any sponsors because they won't commit to a match. Looking at both letters, it seems that all Hsu wanted to do was get another match and Kasparov didn't really want to do it. I certainly could be wrong, but it sounded like they were making excuses.
First pictures of Pixel Qi 3qi screen
Online Scrum Tool Features You Need
Yes, the basic idea is to _recognize when is about sunk costs.

In my case i must have to have a feeling in my stomach to start looking after sunk costs, to move on.

In normal situations everything is the same old, linear: I have a knowledge from the past upon I'm building the future.
Pretty boring comparing to a pro poker player
Anything Arc does better than Clojure that would be enough to offset the benefit of running on the JVM and full java interop?
It isn't legal were I live! :-)
It´s hard to predict. I don´t believe that Pre will take the place of the iPhone, but fail !? Bah, far from that ...
Heh. Just using `aptitude install <foo>` I tend to forget how long building can sometimes take.

You might try Fink. Seems like they're still active, but their last news update (on their homepage) is from 2008-07-23.
Time Warner to split off AOL
Quick Reference to Alternative data storages
While it may probably not be exhaustive, my intention is to provide a quick reference to BASE systems (Basically Available, Soft State, Eventually consistent, as opposed to ACID: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) that would offer newcomers an overview of the existing projects in the field.
A lot depends on how much you want to learn. I wrote a post about depth of knowledge in March (http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/learning-journal-a...) - lowest is recognition where you can remember things about it when you come across it again, usually just reading about something is enough for me to reach this level. Progressively more difficult, and requiring more work, are being able to recall information from memory without an immediate stimulus, understanding the subject matter, and being able to use what you have learned to make things or do original research in the field. I have several other posts in March and April about independent learning that you may find useful.
It's actually touch mixed with stylus handwriting that I think will become useful. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=476184 I expect it will first be put to good use by a company like Evernote. That's my interest anyway.
The inverted pyramid of Identity
This is still under work and input from everyone is more than welcome. Please help me fill in the gaps.
The real problem is not the string concatenation, it is that stupidlyExpensiveCalculation() will evaluate, regardless of whether debugging is on or not (at least in Java, not sure about Ruby), since Java doesn't do lazy evaluation of arguments.

In this case, that just slows things down. Worse yet is when it is stupidCalculationWithSideEffects(). And I have seen that before. :(
Please consider a small donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (http://www.cbldf.org/). They do good work defending against this sort of persecution.
Ask who-taken-the-karma-point-away: I was too optimistic about hackers, or completely wrong about hackers?

Thanks a lot!
1. You can't compare Walmart to Amazon and expect the same prices.

2. Although larger quantities are usually cheaper by the unit, sometimes that is not true. Maybe the store is running low on inventory for the larger one, or high for the smaller one. Maybe they cut the price on the smaller one to act as a loss leader - I know drinks are often in this category.
Neither do our comments. Should they be subject to government approval too?
Motorola W377-The Stunner
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U.S. Inflation to Approach Zimbabwe Level, Faber Says
Sorry for posting several places, but when I really need to stay awake getting things done, I eat something with much curry in it. Having fried garlic aside ... tasty. And pours strong coffee.. And believe me that works!
PHP.JS: use your favorite PHP functions client-side
While I don't have the skill/time to take on a project like this I really loved the book 'Code' by Charles Petzold. It walks you through the design of a CPU starting from nothing.

There is also 'From NAND to Tetris in 12 steps', I haven't looked closely at that but from what I've heard it gives a similar level of detail.
Here's a link to the games from the 1997 match. The game logs (showing Deep Blue's actual output) are pretty fascinating.

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/watch/html/c.html
Kindly paraphrase? My Japanese doesn't extend beyond "Two beers, please" and "where is the bathroom?"
what happens when you read someone else's code and find they've come up with macros to do the same things as yours do, but with different names and different usage conventions? Wouldn't that be a bit like having every scientist invent their own jargon?

You can replace the word "macros" with "functions" and your point would be the same. Consistency in naming and usage is part of good programming, but the point is orthogonal to macros.

Edit: actually, it's not orthogonal: macros make it easier to be consistent because they let you write less code, so there's less code to contradict itself.
(def only (f)
(fn args (if (car args) (apply f args))))

The . and ! operators got redefined so that x.y.z is ((x y) z) instead of (x y z). I think I posted the source on arclanguage.org.
Spare me with this fanboy criticism.

How hard is it for you to consider that if new laptops are going to have have touch screen then Windows will make touch mainstream.
Hehe, that same graphic is the reason why I find the touch phones annoying. Small keyboards, hard to press for people with long nails like me (I'm a girl, in case you're wondering :P). I prefer stylus.

That doesn't mean there aren't instances where precision isn't an issue and we can happily use a touch interface without problems. I would say it's more than a cute trick.
Also, it looks like it booked the SOONEST appointment rather than the one I requested. In the "When" row I selected 10:30PM and it said on the next page 11:15AM was what I had selected.
Big Mess o'Wires  BMOW 1
"I'm not convinced games are really that important either, the case in point being Mac OS X users."

Well, take a look what kind of apps take the top spots on AppStore.
However the most amusing thing in this kind of discussion is
a take on SDK. When Apple initially offered to develop apps using web technology it was greated with "booo". Now Palm says the same and it is greated with "Wow, cool". Go figure.
Patience and Hard Work - The Web Apps game
Google Apps Script preview
And you are avoiding the issue that the Gold Standard removes a lot of flexibility in monetary policy, and buys you zero protection from manipulation.

There are numerous points in history that the US Gold-backed currency was manipulated. During WWI, it was suspended twice. In fact, gold standards are regularly and habitually suspended in times of war. (Ideally, once reinstated, a deflationary postwar period would counter the inflationary period during the war, but there is no rule saying the standard must be reinstated at the same notational value, so this is wishful thinking.)

During the depression, the Gold Reserve Act reset the value of gold from $20.67/oz to $35/oz, effectively devaluing the dollar against every other gold-backed currency (inflation), and, to quote wikipedia "the higher price increased the conversion of gold into dollars, allowing the U.S. to effectively corner the world gold market".

So the government can still manipulate the value of it's currency at will, simply by changing the redeemable value of it's notes. This is on top of the possible manipulation by private parties (mining companies) and other governments (nationalized mining companies) that I have already pointed out.
I've tweeted and emailed him. We'll see if he responds...
I can't tell if you're trying to be funny or not. If we want to make a point about how a language is better at letting us build useful abstractions, we have to spell out exactly what we mean by that every time, even though somebody has invented a word that macroexpands to exactly that?
The Methuselah Foundation Blog: Why My Bridge 4 Life?
"Blub" is offensive, I agree. I've been bemused at the name-calling. It undermines the factual content and alienates adopters. Why do it? I wonder if an explanation is that name-calling simply isn't regarded as offensive within the community. For example, there's a development environment called "Slime"; and of course the name "Lisp".
"Touch is a cute trick" is a similar statement to "No Wireless. Less Space Than A Nomad. Lame.".

Touch will be the future of computing. The potential in touch and multitouch is staggering, and Windows 7 actually brings it to people. The hardware people will catch up next, then the software people will follow.

Microsoft are rich because they get where the trend is going.