skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reason has nothing to do with that. The reason is that closures don't need most of the variables from parent scope, but if they were imported, since PHP is refcounting they'd keep a lock on those variables even after exit from the original scope - as long as the closure exists - even though nobody actually needs them.

Since PHP has $$var (and other things like this) we can not know in advance which variables the function uses in local scope, so if we did automatic scope importing, we'd have to keep the whole scope of the parent function for the lifetime of the closure in case some of the variables would be needed. This, if parent scope contained some large objects, would result in a memory and performance hit each time closures are used.

Thus, it was decided that we'd make scope importing explicit (the use clause), so if you want to import variable, you have to say it. Experience shows that vast majority of closures need no more than one or two vars from parent scope, so the tradeoff is fine. Of course, if closures would import dozens of variables regularly, we'd have to seek different solution, but this is not the situation.

Additional benefit - though not the reason - is readability improvement, as now you know where each variable is coming from, otherwise reading in-closure code you wouldn't know if the variable that is not mentioned anywhere is a mistake or it is actually expected to be imported from outside.

BTW, C++11 is using the same idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_function#C.2B.2B
though they have catch-all syntaxes which in PHP wouldn't work since PHP is a dynamic language.
The Next Google: It's Like Google, But For Search
To the author of I, Robot, they probably still wouldn't qualify as good.
As with all doctors, second opinions should be sought. There are plenty of quack MDs out there too. I've seen a few of them. They tend to gravitate toward treating more nebulous diseases, but not always.
Just after I pay for a year of StrongVPN...
There won't be a Nexus 5. It will be titled "Nexus 4" again. The number refers to the size, not the iteration.

The second-gen Nexus 7 which just made a debut kept the same name. Same will likely apply to the next-generation Nexus 10 as well.
There's no dilemma, you can and should do both! It's just a link-baity title (that I fell for)
The Nexus 4 is not a tablet.
At Google, apps to help discover (and conquer) the world around you
ya... Nexus 4 isn't a tablet...
I can tell you I came by it because I'd commonly see kites (as in birds of prey) drifting by, for hours on end, and I wondered what things would look like from their POV. Then when I actually tried to think like that (or imagine, I should say) in a sustained manner, it was unexpectedly hard; so I kept it around as an informal practice.

edit: it's interesting that we both mention "not like Superman". For me it's about going as slow as possible.
Looks like AOL.

Yahoo's logo was iconic, this is gimmicky.
This is very cool, thank you for sharing. I've been on-and-off involved in some synthetic biology FOSS software, but as a non-biologist so much of this is hard to keep up with and make informed decisions about.
So? Surely the interesting part about this is which governments are nosy, not the citizenships/residences of the people they're nosy about.
I agree. For years I've turned to yahoo first for sports because they had a simple UI, easily accessible box scores, and good bloggers (at least for basketball). And everything came without forcing too many ads down my throat.
You can't teach teaching in isolation. A math teacher has to know math and teaching, but that's not really how they're trained - an undergraduate Math Education curriculum diverges from the Math curriculum shortly after calculus, which is far too soon.
I didn't "get" standing desks at all till the last few months. Combined extended hours on long distance commuter buses, multi-hundred mile daily drives old home office chairs and crappy work office chairs have turned my lower back into a wreck.

I don't know if I could manage standing for long hours, but I imagine a nice stool, combined with adjusting into sitting for a few hours a day would do wonders.

However, the desks I use at both work and home run around $100-$130, it's hard to imagine spending $500+ on a desk with a bit more material and a simple up-down motor or manually adjusted height latches (or whatever).

In the meanwhile I'm working at a mix from home from my kitchen, my couch and a local coffee shop (with a nice easy walk to and fro) that seems to be helping.
That surely makes attending difficult, but I'd certainly watch it if possible. This is exactly what I'm about to tackle at work(entry build engineer).
How is it reasonable? They knew or should have known he's not a terrorist in first 15 minutes. What were they doing for three and a half hours? Why did they ask him about praying and problems with female attendants and such?
It's two-factor authentication not two-factor authorization.

I'd also think that authentication was (should be) a server-side thing: and that at that point you'd get some form of session/token/ticket.
Selectize.js - a fast alternative to select2 / chosen
It's true that the number refers to its size; that said, Nexus 4 is really 4.7". 4.7 is closer to 5 than 4, so I would not be surprised if they did name the next one Nexus 5.
What Really Happens When Lightning Strikes Sand?
In my experience, the combination of two trivial mashups is an innovation.

Suppose you wanted to teach someone to roll a kayak. In my experience instructing the subject, perhaps a quarter of students can roll instantly once they "know how it feels". If one person can command another's body to do it, perhaps learning would be faster and more efficient.

This work is nifty. It's playful, but the applications may be vast.

If I can send involuntary motion, can I send you thoughts? Can I write as fast as I can think? Can I be forced to do something unwillingly? Time will tell.
Ask HN: How to keep focused and working
I have 2 ideas that I think are good and would like to pursue them. Both require me to learn new technologies (which I like) but often find myself not focused enough to keep working on it.
I lack discipline, how could I fix this?
How could Google possibly choose not to use +1's if they use Facebook and Twitter data as ranking signals?

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhwPC-5Ub4
First human brain-to-brain interface (w/ Video)
I switched to a Kinesis Advantage years ago, and it's hard for me to imagine going back to a flat keyboard full-time for the reasons I wrote about here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/further-thoughts-on... .
He was right about this one!
This was amazingly accurate!
Dunno, but fixed height desks of similar style and excellent build quality run around $150.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S89806740/#/S1980...
You can. You use a function called `trace` in module Debug.Trace in the standard library.

For instance, if you defined

f x y = g (x + y)

then you could instead write

f x y = trace "calling f" (g (x + y))

to insert a debug statement.

(dllthomas linked to the library but didn't point out how it works, and unrealistically expected people to like, follow the link or something. argv_empty is correct that side effects cannot be obtained without either wrapping functions in the IO monad or calling unsafePerformIO. Debug.Trace.trace calls unsafePerformIO behind the scenes.)
Jumping into graph theory & genomics
There are uncommon sort-of-good ones (by Asimov standards), but the semi-common ones are abysmal. Ever own a Roomba? I never will again.
Low, positive inflation is the ideal for many reasons that have nothing to do with the federal budget: inflation encourages investment, spending, makes people feel richer when their salaries go up every year, and it reduces debts. Given that most americans carry some form of large debt (student loans, mortgages, etc.), this is good for most citizens.
There are a lot of studies out there that show that people only "hear" the sounds that they heard as a child. So someone who grew up in the countryside in Japan is going to have a hard time speaking English "properly" even with gargantuan effort.

Anyone here who's spent a decent amount of time abroad probably knows what I'm talking about. When someone asks you how to say something in English, and you say it, and they repeat it but it just sounds off, and they're incapable of producing the same sounds as you. It seems like the simplest of exercises but it hits the core of the issue.

For any Americans, trying to learn something like Thai (or other tonal languages) can be extremely difficult because of the tonal information. I am pretty incapable of producing anything sounding correct in Thai no matter how many times my friends try to make me say it.

You also have probably heard French people speak English. There's not much else to say about that. Almost all the accent is derived from differences in the sounds between the two languages.

Saying that it "just" requires effort is underestimating the amount of time it can take to rewrite the way you speak. People living years in foreign countries can still end up speaking with strong (yes, even near incomprehensible) accents, and I've run into a good amount of them.

There's a big perception penalty when you're not "in sync" with the language you're speaking in, which is where you get the "people talk slowly to you and assume you're not very smart" effect. So character judgements on language ability is a bit much.

There's an easy solution though: just hire somebody who can speak well. They're harder to find in some areas, but it's a pretty high priority. Just don't hate on the CEO if he can do his job.
I think it's important to note here that Asimov was never a big proponent of the "science fiction author as Nostradamus" theory. He was always very clear that neither his nor any other writer's predictions should be given any more credibility than the average Joe off the street.

In fact, I'm pretty puzzled as to why this article was written at all.
Reports: Apple offers trades for new iPhone
Best guess is to get the N4 into the pipeline before Apple's next iPhone 5whatever announcement in a month-ish.
Ha, wish I had seen this link first. My Nexus 4 arrived last Thursday so I was well within the 15 day window. I just called their customer service (https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/3053039) and they processed a refund for the difference. They're a bit swamped right now so you may have to hang on for 10-15 minutes before you can talk to someone.
"Functional Composition" - FP with music
I'm still waiting to see when that Century Link acquisition is going to have any effect on Appfog. Hell, they still do not support node 0.10.x and 0.10 stable was released six months ago. I actually have the same issue with Azure websites, the newest version they support is 0.8.x, while Heroku has up to 0.10.15
MelbourneIT have incumbency and good marketing. I've never been all that impressed with their prices or service.
Honestly if you haven't tried Android yet this is the device to do it with. Really shows off what the system is capable of.
Thank you, I didn't know about this. Very helpful.
"What I like to see, is when many countries do studies and they all come up with similar results."

Leaving aside the fact that different countries are basically irrelevant here, what you are describing is a scientific consensus. These are always founded not on a single or even a handful of studies, but rather on many, many studies and mountains of evidence, meta-studies analyzing the studies, independent verification of results, and so forth. Science doesn't move forward by individual studies - that's a common misconception - it moves forward when enough of those studies accrue that a clear consensus emerges and shifts the prevailing paradigm. This is also why the lone brilliant genius who overturns everything with their piercing insight is such a stupid meme - even Einstein had to verify his results and wait for the rest of the community to double check his work.

And that's why it's a fallacy to place too much weight on a single study, and an even bigger fallacy to disregard places where there is, in fact, a clear consensus - e.g. cellphones don't cause cancer, global warming and evolution are real, etc...
True enough. This thread of conversation was kicked off by the premise that most applications are bottlenecked on their database server. When I said, "not necessarily," I meant as far as latency is concerned--for any given request on a slower platform, it is likely that the database's contribution is actually a minority.

That is the conventional wisdom I find in need of disruption.

But you are correct. Since a conventional database server can be more difficult to scale horizontally on its own right, even that small latency contribution, when multiplied by the number of queries being run by a wide array of application instances may ultimately mean the database server is the first observed bottleneck. By which I mean, the first device to reach 100% CPU without the simple recourse to just throw more money at Amazon and spin up another instance to solve the problem.

So I buy that.

But when I see slow web applications--when I criticize a site for being slow--I am always talking about latency. When we look under the hood, assuming the application is not being silly with its queries or doing a fundamentally challenging work-load, user experience slowness (latency again) usually originates from the application's own code or slow platform.

For example, I've observed applications that require 200ms of server-side time to render a login page. Behind the scenes, I may observe that they are badly designed and include one or two trivial (but utterly unnecessary) queries. Still, those two queries can be fulfilled by modern hardware in ~5 to 10ms. The remaining ~190ms of server processing is on the application. To my mind, that is unacceptable. A login page should be delivered in ~3ms of server time (under load!) on modern hardware.

And back to the OP, Go is a platform that brings JVM-class speed (the capability to return a login page in ~3ms) to those who can't stomach Java. Bravo to Go!
If you don't feel like working on one of them at any given moment, do you feel like working on the other? Having two ideas can be a lot more forgiving in that way than just having one.

If they are complex ideas can you break them down into a "buffet" of subtasks? The idea is that hopefully on any given day/evening at least one of those small tasks will appeal to you. Doing something peripherally helpful is at least better than doing nothing helpful... as long as you have the energy to tackle the hard stuff every few days.
One weird trick to market your product
Underground chain reaction caused 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruptions
I wonder if a restricted subset of a stack based language like Forth might also work?
> In fact, I'm pretty puzzled as to why this article was written at all.

He shifted away from fiction and into non-fiction (textbooks, educational books, and newspaper columns) in the early 60s. This probably falls into the "scientific education" niche in some form.

My understanding is that Asimov did not believe in science fiction as a clear-cut prophecy of the future but did enjoy talking about what effects modern-day science and achievements could have on the future and the society of the future in non-fiction. He very much enjoyed making science -- and knowledge in general -- more accessible to other people.
Our engineering team spends much of its time and effort on failure analysis. FEA is one of many tools we use during the design process, and we left out some details in this post for the sake of brevity and clarity.
HTTP Server in Less Than 100 Lines of Tcl
Go is supposed to be a better C.

Scala is supposed to be a better Java.

JS is supposed to be popular.

EDIT: Go is intended to be a systems-programming language with an emphasis not only on runtime efficiency and concurrency, but additionally on such things as compilation speed.

Scala is intended to be a hybrid OO-functional language that is approachable by a broad class of mainstream programmers (i.e., Java programmers), with a type system considerably more sophisticated than Java. The emphasis is, I'd say, on a language that has long-term potential, at the cost of a somewhat problematic toolchain.

JavaScript's enormous advantages are that it is universally available, easy to approach, and flexible enough to support functional techniques.
I wish he was right about the education part
Long term QE can destroy money just as easily as create it. The FED only has two ways to create money long term buy loans that area not going to be paid back or rescue depositors from failed banks which is effectively buying already failed loans. QE often buys assets which may be worth more in the future and is thus a temporary measure like lowering banks reserve requirements.

Edit: OK, they can also make negative interest loans but that's both rediculusly rare and creates tiny amounts of currency relative to the amount loaned.

PS: Consider what happens when they buy a US treasury note it's worth say 100million now while they hold the bond there is extra 100 million floating around. However if they sell it in a year they just removed 102 million from circulation net result 2 million is forever gone.
Yes Yes Yes. And please come with extra key caps so I can put my Mac modifiers in the correct places. Though I'd prefer wireless.
My wife is a nurse and swears by Dansko shoes and clogs. In fact, go spend a couple minutes at your nearest hospital during shift change and count how many people are wearing them, you'll probably be surprised. They don't have the widest selection however...

http://www.dansko.com/At%20Work/
I can't upvote this enough.

I started standing a lot for reasons outside of work a few months ago. After two weeks of standing more than sitting I developed something called meralgia paresthetica, which at best is neverending thigh numbness (fun for my cat who can claw my bare thighs without me feeling any of it) and at worst insane, awful pain that wakes me up in the middle of the night even with painkillers. It has multiple causes (standing, in my case) but I've had to try to lose more weight (I'm overweight) and buy a new wardrobe (avoiding tight clothing) to make sure those also-known-causes don't make the pain worse. The best case for me is if this eventually clears up on its own soon, the worst case is surgery with no guarantee of going back to what things used to be. None of the conservative measures really work right now, with the exception of the MMJ I started to use because it's the only reliable thing that will dull the pain at small amounts and just not make me think about any of the pain when I'm high as a kite.

On the bright side I can stand for hours on end without having a problem. But I would trade that to never have this problem again in a heartbeat.

If you start noticing _any_ problems, you really need to go to a doctor immediately and stop what you're doing. Take it easy in the beginning. Hopefully you'll have more luck than me. :)
Possibly but I think it seems more likely that they're clearing stock before the next Nexus device. Nexus devices typically become available around November and are announced around October. This would give them a month or two to clear out N4 stock before the announcement kills demand.
Why you should startup right where you are.
I think it's an interesting choice to go dark. Regardless of what prior debates were had on this thread with respect to the "flat design" choice / minimalism there are two things that stand out.

1) It's original. At least, it seems original relative to its competitors. They are borrowing the well-accepted design language of their Weather app (which was critically acclaimed in relevant circles, I believe - like won some kind of award), and assimilated it across their web properties.

Contrary to what other's have said, I don't find the text hard to read. Instead, due to the novelty and aesthetic of the design, I am drawn to stay. It's a nice refresh.

2) It's cohesive. This design language has been consistently ported across its properties without making it constricting. Yahoo Sports is functionally distinct from Yahoo Movies, but blended together by the same aesthetic.

This began with Yahoo silently porting its top bar across its properties (with the search feature ubiquitous across all constituent sites). This final piece was missing and is just another step closer to bringing Yahoo together.

So no, I don't think the designs are cluttered, or that they hide/confuse information, or that Yahoo is copying the fad. I think they are paving their path, boldly, and it should yield some interesting results.
From skimming the original paper, it seems as if you can bypass authentication if you know certain keys that that particular dropbox client stores locally. Of course, if you were able to access those values on the local hard-drive, you likely already have access to the victim's hard-drive or computer. In that case you have the victim's local copy of the dropbox folder already, there is no need for reverse engineering.

This "weakness" is no different than the weakness of two-factor authentication in any scenario where login is persistent. I have two-factor gmail authentication for gmail with "remember me" set so I do not have to log in every day. If someone steals my laptop and gets my cookies, they can log in as me regardless of two-factor authentication, until the cookie authentication expires.
Why Iran? Surely Russia is a bigger suspect, but right now, my biggest suspect would be the NSA/CIA, the timing of the Syrian escalation is just too perfect.
They're pretty common in heavy industry.
Did anyone else notice that they still offer the same item with half the memory for £40 more?
Intentional or not, he has certainly predicted technology that has only recently come into existence. They may seem obvious now, but I wonder how inevitable they seemed during the 50s and 60s? Take for instance the Multivac: it is essentially Wolfram Alpha, even down to the pro-tier pricing he mentions in one short story.
I appreciate the quotes but I am already very familiar with the GoT. I do not really like getting in political/martial discussions on HN but we can if you would like to.

What is the action/operation that was designed and carried out to "deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities, groups or nations than those who actually planned and executed them"?
It doesn't sound like you're familiar with the Friis equation [1], which shows how carrier frequency is inversely related to transmission distance.

The receivers are probably around -90 dBm sensitivity, which would place the system's range around a kilometer and would improve depending on their PA and LNA characteristics.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friis_transmission_equation
If you'd like to write uninformed kneejerk posts without reading the articles, Reddit is that way.
I went through the same thing, correcting everyone with "the next Nexus 4 will be Nexus 4 again, not Nexus 5"

And then I read some rumors saying it will have a full 5" screen. We'll see.
A cousin who works at Qualcomm confirms this.
Why is Russia a bigger suspect? A study of foreign policy and defence would appear to suggest that Iran perceives that it is under threat of invasion from America.
It's to light up your face while you're hacking with others at 3 in the morning. Makes you look prettier.
* Don't drink too much caffeine.

* Work out more.

* Have other things to do.

* If you don't work on them enough, at least think about them a lot, otherwise it's likely just a pipe dream.
Recently fired Ticketmaster CEO gets hired by Twitter. Why?
I guess he never anticipated that "the best minds of [our] generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."[1]

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/why-this-tech-...