skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here are some stats from google on the relative use of obfuscation for perl, python and ruby:

<pre>
Weighted use of
Search Term Hits Search Term Hits obfuscation

"obfuscated perl" 1390 "perl programming" 164000 0.85%
"obfuscated python" 234 "python programming" 157000 0.15%
"obfuscated ruby" 269 "ruby programming" 133000 0.20%
</pre>

If I use the word golf, I get:
<pre>
Weighted use of
Search Term Hits Search Term Hits golf

"perl golf" 1780 "perl programming" 164000 1.09%
"python golf" 171 "python programming" 157000 0.11%
"ruby golf" 547 "ruby programming" 133000 0.41%
</pre>

This is of ccourse, the same statistics that fueled the last financial meltdown :-)
thanks for that and to all the other HNers that took the time to reply - i think i'll go with 2.6 but book a recurring task to make sure i'm at least aware of the changes in moving to 3.1
I think clojure's use of higher order functions is very well suited for this. With only a "#" in front the code becomes a lambda function. This pretty much makes the whole concept of handler functions void - or at least trivial.

But I'm not sure if it will work out in the end... and I mixed this with liberal use of metadata and thrown away SQL too... mostly I try to go as far as I can and see where I trip. It's fun.

And it does make for some terse code. This for example is the code for changing the person responsible for a brief:

(html-select (cons {:id 0 :name "- No account -"}
(filter #(:is-account %) @users))
:selected (:account brief)
:onchangefn #(do
(passoc briefs (:brief %)
:account (Integer/parseInt (:value %)))
(return-from briefs (:brief %))
:onchangeparams (str "&brief=" (:id brief)))

And this really is all of it. No html, no sql, nothing.
At any moment, anti-gravity could be discovered and we would be off to the races! Never say never!
If you really need floating point you don't understand your problem.

Old programmers joke from the time when cpus didn't have floating point co-processors.

It's possible, but it certainly is tedious.
Microsoft BOB works though (in caps) and 4th is plural, reverse the words with 6 for g, 7 for L and 8 for B
Just as important as the factual lack of pervasive bribery is the lack of the expectation of pervasive bribery.

I took a group of Indian engineers to the immigration office (Japan) to get some paperwork done, once. The particular type of paperwork they needed has a $40 filing fee.

"So Patrick, how much does [the paperwork] cost?"

"There is a [$40] filing fee."

"Right, and how much will the clerk want? Maybe I should ask for it instead of you. I can pretend to be a poor Indian, you are wearing a business suit so he'll surely want more."

My mind vapor locked for about half a minute there. I mean, you know in a theoretical sense that bribery happens in Western democracies, but you certainly don't expect it to ever hit your daily life. I grew up in Chicago, which is about as corrupt as America gets, and the notion of paying extra for e.g. a driver's license a) wouldn't occur to me to try and b) would bring down an administration if it were discovered (it has in Illinois).

Incidentally, the Japanese immigration office doesn't take money directly for the forms. You go over to someone who sells revenue stamps, buy a stamp, and affix it to your form. This is a brilliant centuries-old hack design specifically to make corruption difficult -- because money doesn't normally change hands between the applicant and person with decisionmaking authority, there is no opportunity for the clerk to pocket the fees and there is no chance that "a little extra" on top of the fees would go unnoticed.
Comments also at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687191
Comments also at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687770
But they do have a choice, thanks to the aforementioned app. I have it, yet I'm still using only half my screen for Safari, despite no other apps being open. I like not being forced into this maxed-or-not mentality; on Windows, it was too easy to make every app take up the whole screen, and tab over. On the Mac, I've never gotten into that mindset, which I love.
How many "exclusive resorts" can you stay in until all the ultra-master-upgrade-penthouse suites look the same?

Hell, in Las Vegas alone I have no problem imagining there're a few dozen unique ultrasupersuites in existence. That's enough for a lifetime's worth of rich, excessive vacations, assuming the goal isn't to try out a suite a week or some shit.
A bad experience with a toy pyramid as a kid?

On a more serious note I agree that it is not aesthetically pleasing. I put this down to it not being rendered in a manner that lets us see how the shape works (e.g. lighting, shading etc.) so it just seems artificial making it hard to see what 's going on. I've never seen one of these in 3D before either but in 2D I didn't find it that appealing either because of the way it reduces in size as it repeats fractically - it seems messy.
Beautiful Texture Collection, High Resolution,Clouds, Grunge Grass and Floral.
Or in "the parlance of our times"[1] "The things you own end up owning you"[2]

--

[1] The Big Lebowski

[2] Fight Club
The initial description on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_Recovery_Systems reminded of what my uncle - an amateur aerobatics pilot - says:

A good landing is one you can walk away from.

A great landing is when they can use the aircraft again.
Clojure. It's fantastic. http://clojure.org/
C++ = you can never stop learning darn thing, it is still growing.
How to Thrive in 2009, Leading Your Company
Most of them will never log in again, or will do it once or twice.
There's quite a good "layman's" explanation of the problem, including some of its history, in Keith Devlin's book "The Millennium Problems." The problem description starts on page 112.

In that book he also refers to the official Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) book that gives a summary, and then the problem in detail. He also references a short film that gives a similar outline summary. The film can apparently be found at http://www.claymath.org

I'm sure there are dozens of descriptions of the "Does P=NP?" question on the 'net. Which ones have you read? What was unsatisfactory about them? Name three, tell me what you didn't like, and I'll try to find another for you, or write one myself.

Note: I'm not an expert, but if my knowledge is different from yours, perhaps I can help. I have proved directly that graph 3-vertex coloring is in NPC. An outline of the proof is actually here on HN if you'd care to go find it.

You still haven't answered my original questions, though.
You've mis-spelled "separate".

I'll try it when I'm at a browser for which it works.
Since this is open-source, is there a fork for PC/Linux yet? I am not the slightest bit interested in the iphone, but having this on a USB stick would be handy.
Objective-C and the iPhone API. This is probably the first language I learn just in the process of doing something specific (writing apps for iPhone), and not because I really need to learn it for enhance my programming skills. Still it is an interesting language even if designing it today from scratch could lead to something pretty different...
It's because it's ugly; the lines are not anti-aliased there is no sense of depth (the farther parts of the pyramid are not darkened)
Hate to be nitpicky, but for something to be peer-to-peer, I'd imagine peers have to be talking to peers... no such thing on Seti@Home :-/
Poll: How many generations removed from immigration are you?
Today there was another article about immigration in the US, H1-Bs, immigrants as the driving force for innovation, etc., etc. This has been standard fare in programmer discussions, it seems, for a few years now. Well, I figure that HN represents a fairly diverse sample of the upper echelon of programming and idea generation, so why not put the question to the test?

Here's how it works: Take the shortest path from you to one of your ancestors that was "off the boat", so to speak. For example, my mother was born overseas, so I'd be 1 generation removed. If you are, yourself, an immigrant, then you'd be 0 generations removed.

I'm curious to see how this turns out...
Thanks for pointing out the spelling error. Sounds like you had some browser issues with the site.
+1. It's just getting faster and faster as it becomes the focus of the browser wars, and it's not a bad language, really.
I use an old browser (Konqueror 3.0.3 on KDE 3.0.3) on an old OS (SuSE 8.1) better suited for plain text than fancy web. It's fine on web 1.0.

Actually your site seems mostly to work. It does seem slow. That might just be my browser taking a long time to work out what to do with what you've sent.

Not sure I'd use the service. Like most people, I guess, I've already got systems that scratch the itch, and I'm reluctant to put important stuff in someone else's control. I would think that not-yet-established people would have fewer reservations.

If I think of more comments, I'll let you know.

EDIT: The reason for putting some items top right and others on the left is unclear to me. I'm not sure which to look in first when I want to do something, but I'm not sure what. Probably with practice I'd know whether to click "here" or "there", but it's a long way to move the mouse between them. It's a small, picky, subjective design issue.
Information Leakage from Keypads
It's likely that you're the only one able to answer that question (if you don't see any psychoanalyst).
A fine example of how history compresses, sanitizes and romanticizes the past. Why in my day, "prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders."

Now good sir, do get off my lawn!
The problem with developers is that they do not read anymore... especially when the compiler gives you a hint...
A few months ago I had to spend four days with my eyes closed. I was surprised to discover that I could tell where my coffee was just by holding out my hands and tracking the heat source. I also tended to stop suddenly when walking around, feeling that something was wrong, and then finding that there was indeed an object out of place and in the way. Sometimes these were quite small - mug-sized (although not mugs).

Feynman had more to say about training the senses. You can read about it in his semi-autobiographical books.
Enough that I don't know.

I honestly can't name a relative that was definitely descended from an immigrant. I do have an approximate idea of my overall immigrant make-up though.
$16 million gain after a $2.1 million charity donation & interesting comment
The hair.

Jamie's man pelt reduced friction, just like a shark's scales. http://bit.ly/18f6ba In syrup, this effect was amplified.
I'm not in the USA - does that mean you don't care? My family is still entirely in my country of origin, and they are at least four generations there. I am the first in my family to move to another country, hence I am an immigrant. I run two companies, employ 25 people, and don't have a visa.

To avoid spoiling your USA-centric poll I haven't ticked an option.
I already accidentally spoiled it. I voted for three generations, but I'm Canadian.
Studies show that beyond making enough to covers the basics (shelter, food, etc) more money has declining marginal returns.

In fact, in the longest (and on-going) study about what makes us happy (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200906/happiness), when the experimenter is asked “What have you learned from the Grant Study men,” his response is "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

White's point (from the Forbes article) is that $40M can't make the questioner happy, because happiness doesn't come from money.
It makes me laugh, all these movies like Bourne Identity or the James Bond franchise or TV shows like X-files or Spooks where governments and intelligence agencies are made out to be a powerful and capable (if sometimes malevolent) entity. The reality is that any (Western) intelligence agency couldn't spy their way out of a wet paper bag.

And this is hardly the first highly public breach... MI6 staffers are notorious for leaving unencrypted laptops on trains or in taxis. But as an ordinary UK citizen, under the New Liebour government, I'm relieved that they're so completely incompetent.
you're saying that you're more incompetent than the government when it comes to using money for the common good. I find this claim hard to believe no matter how inept you are.
For an interesting take on microbilling in combination with web access have a look at Ted Nelsons work.
this is discrimination. stop making me feel bad with your richness of experience hate speech!
Ticked two - Dad came from Ireland to Australia, I was born in Australia but am now living in the UK, not sure if I'll stay here though...
Firefox 3.5 new HTML5 features should be combined carefully
What happens if you decide to pack all the new HTML5 stuff that Firefox 3.5 supports above and beyond older versions onto a single page? Here's a list of of just some of what's on the page:
1. Webfont
2. Text Shadow
3. Box Shadow
4. Border Image
5. Transparent Background Gradients
6. Ogg Audio

And that's before you start doing anything, like hovering over things or resize the browser, which includes:
1. Styling list numbers
2. aPNG inside text
3. SVG filters inside and behind text
4. CSS Transformations tilting whole paragraphs
5. Media queries that change the text-size and background when the width of the browser is thinner than the height
6. A Clicked link becoming an iframe of that link

The result of all this? Something akin to the old days of blink tags, animated GIFs and bgsound perhaps, not to mention half of it isn't even visible in any other browsers. I guess I can be glad that View -> Page Style -> No Style still gives an old fashioned black & white text page... now get off my lawn!
I'm stuck at #27 too.

2 7, 27

@puzzlehints

Twenty Seven: Take the first one each time. They'll get you the distance.

This is not the hint. Seriously stop checking.
Ooh... scary biscuits! Al-qaeda could poke him. This is just the Tories trying to sound tech-savvy by noting that his missus hadn't changed her privacy settings. So what? I haven't changed my privacy settings. Was it top-secret or classified information? No.
Aye, I'd be the same as RiderOfGiraffes. The "How many generations from immigration" thing won't make any sense for large numbers of HN readers, who are from the UK/IE/Continental Europe. If anything, the question here would be how many generations has it been since large parts of your family emigrated
I voted for two generations, but I'm British.
Reading through the comments, the guys sort of sounds like a douche. Stating things like "women don't contribute to anything of lasting cultural value." Well OF COURSE they didn't. It wasn't until 1920 that women were allowed to vote (at least in the USA), and it hasn't been until recently that women have made headway in holding political/powerful positions. If you take a look at that era, you'll find that racism and sexism abounded, and I'll bet they also believed that the Muslims were 'savages' because they didn't believe in the 'one true god.' Sounds like a perfect and enlightened civilization to me...

The comments section is just bunch of "I was born in the wrong era" morons circle jerking their "my era can beat up your era" ideas. And almost everything that they talk about is subjective... like taste in music. The author admits his likes to jam to the 1920's Radio Network while coding, only to decry all the newer music as garbage.
Haskell's let... in... construct I use heavily now, I don't miss multi-line lambdas now.
When people refer to European civilization, they are usually including USA/Canada in there as they are part of the 'Western World.' It would probably do people well to specify 'European Civilization' or 'European-based Civilization' I guess.
Actually this kind of reasoning was the primary reason I turned away from Mac.

It's pretty obvious that you don't have a choice and that Apple, right or wrong, has mandated that you don't need to have your windows in fullscreen mode. Instead of openly discussing the shortcomings of the OS you come up with this sort of reasoning: I really don't like being forced into maxing my windows, much better not to have the choice. You don't need it. Besides if you really want it it's easy - you just go to site xyz and download the app that makes it possible. To me that just a semi-circular argument, and not a very good solution to a problem that I'm sure a lot of people have.

There are many examples like this, and the reasoning is always the same: You don't need that, it's much better to do it the Mac way. We know much better than you what you want....

Sorry to be harsh, and it's not picking at you Zimbabwe, it's picking at the Mac cult.
0 - moved to NJ from London when I was 7. Before that, I think we had been in England for 5-6 generations (longer in some branches).
How To Take Ritalin Correctly
Nice reply. I agree with you. If you don't know what other things than work you could spend your time on, you either lack imagination, are passionately attracted to your kind of work or are socially inept. Life is just an endless playground of possibillities - a gigantic video game where the objective is to have a good time.

"Having a good time" can mean different things for different people. It could mean getting to know interesting people, mastering one of three hundred million practical skills (one of which is making money), having sex, doing dangerous things (dangerous is fun, incidentally: skydiving, river kayaking), overcoming personal barriers, learning stuff you haven't learned before, taking a second degree, discovering something no one else knows etc etc etc. If you wanted me to detail the list, I could go on forever.

I'm not telling anyone how to live their lives, but if you are bored and don't see any options, you have issues. You're missing out. Get a grip and try something new. Life is supposed to be rewarding.
A bare-bone skinny browser with lots of configuration options, programmatic interface, extendable in Unix fashion.

At first I was wondering why another browser? Maybe I could use embedded into a device, or as interface to users in a restricted environment.

Are others (FF, Epiphany, Safari) such open, extendable, embeddable?
Guardian Datablog - journalists publishing raw data as Google Spreadsheets
It's not really an attempt to ostracize oneself from the general public by referring to them with degrading inhuman terms.

It's just a handy word to refer to stuff that's not online.
We've been running this for several months now. Some of the datasets published are the result of in-depth research by our journalists and researchers - for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/table/2009/jun/09/eu... required calling 50 individual councils to obtain the local break-down results of the European elections (which are only officially published as aggregate totals).

You can see a full list of available datasets here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/data-store

We actively encourage people to use the data for their own mashups and visualisations. Some of the stuff people have done can be seen in the Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1115946@N24/
Most of my clan seem to have come over either in the 17th century (the last name was imported then), or were German engineers who immigrated in the 19th century. But it varies so much its hard to say exactly. I am very much a euromut. I wish I'd looked into it more while more of the earlier generations were still alive.

My grandfather on my father's side descended from a line of engineers through North Carolina (and was much smarter than me). My mother's side were mostly farmers until a couple generations ago.

Overall, its such a mix that it would be impossible to pin down what nations and tribes I am composed of, short of DNA analysis - which I have thought of doing - at https://www.23andme.com/ $400 is a bit out of my price range at the moment, though. Check out their UI, though - its amazing, and could be the future of more advanced interfaces in biotech. I look forward to doing this analysis some day though, and I'm excited what kind of variety I don't know about I'll find.

It would be fun to follow up such an analysis with a round the world trip to get in touch with the cultural roots of one's DNA :)
When the author submitted his previous article I replied here at HN with the Clay Shirky link and a thought experiment. I like how the new article contains the Clay Shirky link and a thought experiment but doesn't mention Hacker News, or the discussion we had here, at all.

Anyway, I predict failure. Let me know when there's stock I can sell short.
Don't know the exact number of generations. The family on my mothers side immigrated to Denmark from Holland in the 17th century
Neither Am I, but my grandmother was German. The poll doesn't have to be as USA-centric as you make it :-)

On a sidenote, At her funeral a few years ago I found out that in 1908, at the age of 11, she was put on a train from Germany to Denmark with noone to pick her up at the other end. Her German family was in extreme poverty and gave her a one way ticket to another country, hoping that someone would pick her up and care for her when she arrived in Denmark.

Noone did, so for the first few years she took care of herself, and was eventually adopted by a farming family where she got work. She grew up, had lots of kids, was a great mother and granny and was always there for people in hardship. Guess she knew what real hardship was.

Stoic as she was she never told anyone aboout it, and it was only revealed at her funeral. She lived to be 93.

Tough lady.
"The things you own end up owning you"

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Ideas for Rails Rumble 2009
∞ generations (I don't live in the United States of America)
Not entirely sure how you deem this poll to be US-centric. It's the result of a discussion on immigration relating to innovation in the US, sure, but I understand the poll to be more of a look at whether that applies to the Hacker News community.

My point is, vote! It's an interesting poll.
I love Kangaroo Court and definitively Internet Pie
All of the above. I use a Windows Vista laptop for most work, A Mac Mini hooked up to the TV for Movies, Music, Photos and syncing my iPhone, a Windows XP VM with Adobe Lightroom for touching up photos, a Linux box upstairs for Music, file serving and number crunching, various Linux VMWare images for development in Django, Perl, Ruby etc., an OpenBSD PC as a Firewall and IDS and an Amiga 1200T for Email (YAM) and Usenet (NewsCoaster).
Zappos great customer service
Germanic people have been living here (The Netherlands) since 250 BC. God only knows whether I'm a direct descendant from those settlers. My sister once did some geneanological research for a high school project, so I can definitely account for 6 generations, but it may well be a 100.
Arrington writing about how great Arrington's blog is.

We all know how successful Cuil is today after being mentioned on almost every major newspaper/magazine/blog in the world.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/cuil.com/