skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Statistics of mobile web use anyone?
I am trying to decide whether and how to support mobile browsers at http://maxping.org Does anyone have statistics to share how much people use their mobile devices to read news?
Facebook Snags Another $200 Million in Venture Capital at $10 Billion Valuation
My geeky niche OpenGL logfile visualizer hit the frontpage of Slashdot, and I recorded a movie of what it looked like for my server at http://www.fudgie.org/slashdotted.html - pretty fun to actually see the slashdot effect. :-)
I assume that language implementors "like" flat namespaces because they are easy to implement. Or easier. I've never looked into how such things are done, but it seems like flat namespaces are a much simpler problem in terms of implementation, at the cost of making users of the language be careful about name collisions.

"Flat is better than nested" is a rule of thumb, not a maxim. I agree that the python standard library could use a bit more nesting, but I think that going to the same lengths as java wouldn't fit with python too well.

I've never had to step carefully to avoid namespace clashes in python - I'm curious as to when and/or how you run into this problem. The only way I can think of that would make my code run into it a lot would be if I was doing a lot of "from foo import *", which generally isn't a good idea. "import foo", or "import foo as bar" serves the same purpose.

It seems to me that having a nested namespace for the standard library, but not to the point that it's a tree, is roughly analogous to a lot of other design decisions in Python - for example, there not being any concept of private or protected variables, at least on the high level.
Calling C small, beautiful and elegant is quite a statement, considering what larger-than-academic projects end up looking like after having been macrofied to the point where only the person who wrote it can make sense of the code.

The bottom line is that they are both rather ugly but practical languages. C++ offers more abstraction means, but is more complex. But for larger projects, I'd rather have that then GLib style hacked up C.
The Perl echo chamber has got a bit bigger recently: http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/

Perhaps this may help turn Perl back into a good lover for u ;-)
How do I compile this thing?
I seem to remember that being the case on HN a while ago, can anyone confirm?

If it was, I don't remember why it got changed, but there would have been a good reason for it.

Unfortunately, I may just be confusing my web-site histories.
Japan's earthquake rescue robot (and more) [video]
I particularly like the walking robot that converts into a roller-skating robot.
Free Composer Ringtones
Once you find a site where you can get free composer ringtones, bookmark it so that you remember where it is located.
Be sure to check out the comments. Lots of good discussion in there, on both the paradox at hand and mathematical Platonism in general, by people who know what they're talking about.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. -- unsourced René Descartes
If jQuery's so inefficiently written, I dread to think how the others are written based on the fact that jQuery is approximately a squillion times quicker. Bigger picture David Mark, bigger picture.
A nonstatement. Just because something is obscure doesn't mean that it hasn't also been secured.

A nonstatement. Just because something has also been secured, doesn't mean that it is secure. Obfuscation has no true correlation to true security.
Here is another metric we can cling onto: http://www.blackducksoftware.com/news/news/2009-01-21 ;-)

Generally I take everything I read with a large pinch of salt unless all the facts are presented and can be proven so don't believe either of these are fact especially the TIOBE one!
You should use maxmemory to avoid this, but before to reach this condition Redis will start to be very slow of course, it's hard to reach this condition without to note it.

Btw the way to go is maxmemory, that will be in the next tar.gz and in days into Git. maxmemory also allows to use Redis with a memcached semantic of volatile keys expiring to make room for the new ones when we are low on memory.
Just do the Demo
Yes, research surveys seem to indicate this although I can't remember the source. It's going to be an interesting future with a bunch of desperate housewives around wondering why reality is different from the Bridget Jones movie :)
99% of all statistics are made up
Refactoring: The 5 main questions: Why? When? What? How? Who?
Take away software setup
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US Energy Secretary: paint roofs white to fight global warming
They just port the user data. Reputation points are seperate (that makes sense).
Being respected doesn't matter? Were you dissed as a young programmer? Did somebody take your beautiful 'hello world' creation and laugh in your face at its inefficiency? What do you gain exactly, by coming across as a 'smug prick' or a 'complete ass'?
From the article:
"Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women."
Your point is don't. His is make your own mind up. I'll take his, thanks.
Last.fm Denies Data-Sharing Accusations, Again
Awww, c'mon. We're intelligent people here. Resig isn't running around crying about the way you've written... er... what was it you've done again? I know you're dying to be asked.
I think it has lots to do with cultural values. I went to elementary school in Taiwan for 4 years. In an asian education environment, you need to take exams after exams to get into good schools to get a good job. Not to say it isn't the same in the states, but it's on a different level. In junior high school, it isn't uncommon to see kids stay at school for 14 hours plus to study months on end. Most schools have rankings for midterms/finals, and some give out a slap on the wrist for every point under 90 (at least when I went to school) to reinforce the importance of studying.

So being bad academically is more like losing a school wide competition, rather than the American system of being able to shrug it off as something you don't care about. In Asian countries, they don't buy the idea that people can be talented at different things, it's more a black and white "you're smart or you're not" thing. So of course people like winners more than losers.

So back to the point in the article.. I don't think it's about the actual utility of a person's skill, but the perceived successfulness within the context of societal values.

Which brings up an interesting point: other than using the societal values, how else will you know how successful a person is when real success is often based on luck and isn't apparent until ~30?
Women's liberation since the 60s has only indirectly made women unhappy. Contraception has made women unhappy, and men happy.
How can this be called "Zero-knowledge" proof?

Based on the information from the proof given by Paula, victor can solve the problem atleast partially, right? What am I missing here?
That's your bottom line then? Pure Javascript or nothing? 'Cause that would tend to back up the 'smug prick' and 'complete ass' assertions I've seen thrown in your direction, IMHO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Truly_Large_Numbers
Heh, blame the people that have played with the site thus far. Most of those measures are a direct response to shameless bot-ing by users who like to play (and "break" things).
Code Harvesting
ExpertExchange FTL.
Firstly, if Jane Street are able to use it, it must have been signed off by their auditors and regulators, so we can be pretty confident in its numerical correctness. Secondly, it holds the record for the fastest Fourier transform - again, it couldn't do that if it was fastest by getting it wrong...

I've also seen job ads for it from other banks including Credit Suisse.
CrowdSourcing- The New Social Media Mantra to Sell Better
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Von Neumann probe: self-replicating spacecraft
I consider the Unix command line to be my IDE too (I'm mostly a vim user).

Just last night my plane was delayed due to heavy storms in Europe and as other peoples heavy laptops were running out of juice I still had hours left on my netbook. The command line is a great environment on low power hardware, it doesn't need a mouse and you don't have to wait for IDE support to start working with a new or obscure technology.

That said, I still feel I need netbeans/jvi to do anything with Java -- personally I feel this is due to shortcomings with the language rather than a problem with the way I normally work. In fact, I recently started playing with Scala and, since netbeans didn't really add anything useful, I was able to go back to vim. I feel much more productive in Scala/vim than I ever was in Java/netbeans.
Oh, I know so many people to whom I will be emailing this link. Or at least, I would if I could work out how to do it anonymously.

Then again, maybe part of being over 25 means I should bite the bullet, make the hard choice, risk pissing off someone I've known for years, and try to help them make their lives better.

And then again, who am I to criticise others?

Hmm ...
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Someone should build twitter using the tumblr API.
This simple solution was suggested long ago. It'll help keep the building cooler and the roof will last longer. I'm so bored with these dead simple suggestions and no action.
Taht's pretty much my experience. Being a musician myself, I tend not to have problems with female attention in Western countries. I also met lots of Chinese girls in my life and they looked at me like they felt sorry I couldn't do better than that.

I'd don't like to generalize but that's what happened to me. And I'd like to add that Chinese != Japanese (re: Yoko Ono).
I would hesitate to recommend any female get involved with the Ruby nutjobs.
Rate my startup: Socialmod - take the pain out of UGC moderation
‘Relational Theory of Space’
They also suggested American school kids hide under their desks in case of a nuclear attack by the USSR!

Some "solutions" are more of a psychological crutch, or placebo, than anything.
Japan has a thing for developing cool robots. Nevertheless, these robots always seem to be simply showcased and never really put to practical use.

There have been several mine accidents in the past few years in the US and no robots to assist rescuers in a practical way. A roboticist from CMU who specializes in snake robots even says they are still a few years away from something useful. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8536

Maybe I'm being too critical of these robots, but just seeing them slither on the nice polished Tokyo Institute of Technology floor makes me suspicious that I will never see breaking news in which one of these robots is videotaped as a hero slithering over concrete and bent rebar in an earthquake disaster.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there more energy used to heat buildings than cool them? Of course it depends on many factors, including location; so a blanket statement of "white roofs everywhere" seems wrong.
Copy the first code listing into "test.m", the second into "Makefile", and run make.
Excellent presentation, clear explanation.

I've desperately missed the power of coroutines ever since leaving behind BCPL. Until now some of the work from my Ph.D. has been somewhere between difficult and impossible to map cleanly to another language.
Helicopter flights in Yorkshire helicopter pleasure flight Yorkshire
Visitor's guide to Yorkshire - written from an independant viewpoint and covering the odd as well as the obvious. Brilliant deals on helicopter flights over Yorkshire
Wow, the trackpad detects at least 10 touches on my 2008 MacBook Pro. The angle property seems a bit too noisy to be useful, though.
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How much energy would be spent on the production of white paint? How much energy would be saved by painting the roofs white? Unless a detailed quantitative analysis is provided, this is pretty much nonsensical...
And here we have another battle:

Console or GUI?

The only really good developer I know who prefers Visual Studio to Emacs is the one who prefers TortoiseSVN to svn.exe and just dislikes command line.

However, there are two extremely good reasons to use command line (and emacs/vim):

1. You're typing text when coding or debugging, and going back and forth with mouse is counterproductive and frankly, really irritating.

2. You can automate text-based controller much more easier than a GUI-based one.
It strongly depends on where you live.

But very little of the heat from the roof gets in the building in the winter. Mainly because it's insulated. But also because hot air rises, so little of it travels down to the building space.

But A/C is with vents, AKA air currents, so may be more effective at capturing heat from ceilings.

But all that ignores the fact that white paint does not survive. In Tuscon the roofs would have white rocks on the roof. I strongly doubt you could make a white roof paint that would survive for more than a few years.

How about shiny aluminium roofs?

As a side note, I always wondered why metal roofs are not more popular. Aluminium would last pretty much forever, and it doesn't have to be one piece - you can make it into shingles for easy installation.
Possible, if we know a system better than PageRank aka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
I use Acme and Plan 9 from Bell Labs, a text editing tool, I edit text. I don't need something to do the programming for me. Acme's ability to run commands by clicking on text is more productive than you're giving it credit for right now. Want another menu item? Just type it into the menu bar! Use a bunch of commands on one file regularly? keep them in the comments.
Want to pattern match text snippets and execute commands, no problem it's built in to userland.

I won't call it an IDE because it knows nothing about the types of text you're editing, doesn't do syntax highlighting but it can run a shell in a window, and an HTML renderer and has an email client and a wiki editor and and and
Kutcher threatens to stop Twittering
This is a really interesting idea.

Top emacs/vi users : please list your favourite shortcuts.
i would go as far as to say it's the new wordpress. it's incredibly simple and easy to use. they should make the transition easy though (batch import wordpress articles).
Excellent, excellent essay. There's even something for people seeking money (but you should read it even if you aren't):

This was a typical Richard Feynman explanation. On the one
hand, it infuriated the experts who had worked on the
problem because it neglected to even mention all of the
clever problems that they had solved. On the other hand,
it delighted the listeners since they could walk away from
it with a real understanding of the phenomenon and how it
was connected to physical reality.
The article suggests up to 15%. Assume 10%, and a $1000 yearly A/C bill, that's a savings of $100 a year.

Energy spent is pretty much exactly equal to the price of the paint. So how much does paint cost? How much to install, and how long does it last?

All theoretical questions, since I don't think paint that can survive on a roof exists.

I'm going to make some wild guesses:

You need 10 gallons of paint at a cost of $40 per gallon. And it takes about 1 day to install, at a cost of 8 hour*40 $/hour.

So total it would be about $720 to install. And I bet it would last 3 to 5 years. Lets be generous and say 5.

So it costs $144 per year, but saves you $100.

Not a good plan. It uses more energy than it saves.

Of course my numbers are totally guesses. Especially the cost for paint that does not exist.
Microsoft, You Got Binged - $80 Million Against Google
After testing “Kumo” behind closed doors, Microsoft will probably release this new search engine under a different name: Hook, Bing, Sift or Kiev. Apparently “Bing” is the winning candidate, as the news headlines today lead us to believe.
"Note that every possible permutation in the row will occur with equal probability over the choice of σ, so Victor learns nothing about the solution from this question."
Relative imports are in python, which allows you to dictate where a "foo" module is imported from
Laser-printed PIN Mailer Vulnerability Report
http://hackernews.speeqe.com/

It's dead - but the room is there for anyone.
LavaPS - a contribution to "calm computing"
[Cue the "all real programmers use vim/emacs/etc" comments.]

I've used both. I like both. If you're new, I'd start with an IDE and lots of online, context-sensitive help.

And an easy language.

Once you get your feet wet writing a few apps, keep challenging yourself by moving to more complex languages and less-visual environments.
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Looks like another example of infinity leading to nonsensical (or at least unintuitive) results.
I am wondering why not all websites enabling this great feature GZIP?
The actor, who boasts a record 2 million Twitter followers, frequently posts updates that take fans behind the scenes of his life and his current movie production

Two million people are interrupting their lives to hear the latest blurb from some total stranger that used to have a TV show? Two million?
Also needed:

CashOverflow - Gadget shopping advice for rich people

StuckInARole - Job advice for nerds

StruckByAHole - Software Security
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On the other hand, you get complaints over the complexity of C++ because it doesn't really have 'One True Way' to do anything. Ultimately, it's a case of trade-offs, and accepting that can't win them all.
May the heading come true.
http://www.uwp.edu/sws/usaco/2002/usaco2002.htm

Gold: Tiankai Liu

http://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=6446

http://www.exeter.edu/news_and_events/publications/winter_04...
Component in Green Tea Helps Kill Leukemia Cells
If true, this strengthens the case that Google's monopoly is dangerous. The defence of Google's market dominance has always been that users are not locked in to Google and would switch the moment something better arrived. If Google have built a brand loyalty that transcends that then they would be virtually impossible to challenge.
How to use pulsars for interstellar navigation
Is this of any relevance to hn ?
Wait, are you saying that 1984 is implausible?

We actually have newspeak, constant surveillance, the bumbling inept bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure he predicts.

It's a pretty accurate vision as far as I see it and the Department of Homeland Security/CIA/NSA are merely a step removed from the Ministry of Truth.

Long live Oceania!
"(how many people will die for apple?)"

On certain message boards....all of them.
I'm not an expert on the matter, but my understanding is that rooftop greenery is a cheaper and more effective way to reduce cooling in the summer and heating in the winter.
I like your back-of-the-envelope calculations...

The problem with such seemingly unorthodox proposals is that they can be either brilliant or totally retarded. The devil is in the details. Unfortunately, neither the media nor the masses care a fig about details...
Nice work, guys.

Where were you when I was still slaving away in the network admin pits? :)
Bah - selfish gene again. People give away ideas because we are social animals that survive through our ability to co-operate and recognise that it is advantageous to share. Except for those evil selfish Peter Chamberlen brothers of forceps fame.
> It could be that knowing in advance the emotional, legal, political, or otherwise time-wasting repercussions that a certain type of debate causes justifies avoiding the discussion altogether

So person A, and B and C are interested in having a debate.

Person X "knows" that persons A,B,and C (and some bystanders) would be better off if they don't even speculate or speak on the topic.

...so person X responds "People need to stop writing shit like this" ?

My objections:

* Why should I accept person X's assertion that he knows - better than I do - what will make me happy, or what will waste my time ?

* If person X truly thinks that, he should make a compelling case, put it on up a website, and respond not with "People need to stop writing shit like this", but with "I think that this debate is fruitless and time-wasting - check out this blog post for why".

* Even if person X is right, for a large percent of people, trying to shut down speech "for someone's own good" is un-American, and illiberal. If it's done under the color of law it's called "prior restraint".

* Even if person X is right given the conditions on the ground, conditions change, and over time his flawless heuristic for when to force people to "to stop writing shit like this" will become more and more disconnected from reality. What's needed is a constant feedback loop that keeps in touch with reality. ...and "ongoing debate" is the name of the ongoing feedback loop.
This is a pretty minor thing compared to a lot of the warts here - to be honest, I'm not in the league of most of you as a programmer, I suspect - but two pretty simple things I've found surprising/annoying and have managed to shoot myself in the foot with:

* loops leaking their control variables: I get why this is useful sometimes, but it particularly bites with list comprehensions, especially as generator expressions don't leak. Apparently the list-comprehension part of this goes away in Python 3 (http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2008-April/0131...).

* How mutable default argument values behave. Now, this one's even mentioned in the tutorial - http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#default-arg... - so I've really got no excuse, but that hasn't stopped me getting it wrong before!
Not compelling.
Actually I agree that we need more disclosure.
I just cannot conceive of any way that locking up knowledge is a healthy thing for a culture or society.
I believe the widespread adoption of the internet has helped compress the lag time between the early adopters and the general population from about 10 years to 5 or less.
If everyone was actually living in the present things would be better.

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