skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Words aren't language; an example of a "natural" languages invented today can be found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language. Many creoles follow the same pattern of spontaneous development. This is a distinct difference from the inventedness of Esperanto or Lojban.

Artificial languages don't spread because they don't solve anyone's problem; they solve everyone's problem.
I don't think I get it.

Maybe I'm unique, but I would never apply for a job if I didn't know where I was applying. I want to know a lot about the company before I even consider taking the time to apply for the job. Why waste my time only to find out my supposed dream job is actually located somewhere I'd never want to move or with a company that I'd never want to work for?

The blog post about this service talks a lot about how important finding the right "fit" between employee and employer is ... but if the applicants never even know what or where or who they're applying to, doesn't that just add an extra step in trying to determine if there is a fit?

I understand the idea of making it easier to tweet out job links and spread job listing virally. Not a bad idea. But not sure I understand how this many any more sense than just using bit.ly to link to a traditional, full job listing somewhere else.
Then you aren't making much point at all. He's not arguing to be let off, he's arguing to be tried in the UK instead of being extradited to the US. Which means he is going to "deal with the consequences", so your comment says ... nothing at all.

What it does do, though, is post the subtext "I wasn't shocked because I'm awesome, and he's a big girl's blouse who needs to grow up into a real man like me", like any generic internet tough guy post. i.e. a rant about how weak and pathetic you think other people are (compared to you). Basically.
I've owned my trusty Nokia N95 (8gb) since late '07 - before the original iPhone came out, and it's been funny to watch the evolution of comments on HN... It's like a bunch of people bought into the iPhone hype and have slowly come to realize they're left with a subpar phone that provides poor service. Not to mention the iPhone has actually gotten better since it's initial release, so that tells you even more.

And here I am, still taking 5 megapixel pictures and quality VGA video with my 2-year-old N95-8gb, something the iPhone still can't do. Sure, it's a bit thicker, but I get 3G, crystal-clear reception with AT&T, and get my Google Voice.

All one has to do is browse GSMArena or PhoneScoop to realize how far behind the iPhone is to the majority of phone manufacturers. Apple does UI extremely well, but they've largely proven that they're really just the next Motorola RAZR... A cutsey little fashion phone that breaks often, performs poorly, and hardly gives the end-user what they're really looking for.

Just looking at phones like the Samsung i8910 (which does 720p HD video) helps one realize how far behind Apple is on the phone-tech curve:

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8910_omnia_hd-review-380.ph...
do you like the demo? What would you improve?
How American cooking became a spectator sport, and what we lost along the way.
Ah, btw, source code is Python + Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), so easy to write, extend and still performs quite well.

Runs on most linux systems with x11 platforms, we're testing mostly on TI OMAP2420 (Nokia N810) and Freescale iMX series (27, 31, 35).

Open source contact: #canola @ irc.freenode.net, http://canola.garage.maemo.org/ as we're not trying to fragment community, but grow it :-) We're mentors of GSoC as well.
Well in China everyone use a 0.25 dollar ligher instead of a shredder to destroy documents.
Before some Greek dudes put nice-sounding musical scales on a mathematical basis (octaves and other music theory concepts), music was either re-creating sounds from nature or stylized talking. It took a lot of experimentation and observation to find a musical system that consistently "resonated" with human emotion.
A Cottage of Straw, Handmade in Texas
Incredible pedagogical demonstration. Rapid learning via call-response, game-like interaction. Beautiful thing... web apps could gain some inspiration from this for UI teaching as well.
That is a mystery. It doesn't really make any sense either way does it?
The 10 worst gadgets so far
good riddance, maybe their users will jump to Google Talk or other standards-based services.

This should serve as a cautionary tale to any company who relies on licensing proprietary technology in spite of emergent open standards.
Apple: The World's Most Discreetly Feminine Brand?
Javascript is the web's assembly language. PHP is the web's BASIC, down to its distribution method. BASIC was typed down from magazines and tutorials, PHP is google, cut and pasted.
Engineers are artists too. Reply to Merlin Mann on "engineering block"
>> They painstakingly satisfied an obligation to share information with the public and protect companies and individuals who they saw as having done nothing wrong

I'm not here to debate the ethics of releasing the documents; my question is, if there was nothing of interest (i.e. newsworthy) in the documents what was their obligation to post it?

I mean if I dig through your trash and post your credit card bills that list what you buy at the grocery store even though it may be of general interest to see what someone purchases at the store, there is no obligation to post it since it isn't news.
I think the title (and advocacy group) is presenting the issue provocatively but taxes affect startups - it certainly creates incentives or disincentives for them. Entrepreneurship is at the heart of income mobility. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/17772299/Anatomy-of-an-Entrepreneu...). With increased calls for the wealthy and companies to pay increased taxes this is an issue that directly affects startups.
I think even more interestingly, if he had simply repeated the attempt a few times I think the audience would have self-corrected.
What are the other languages that you prefer Java over?
Panasonic Plasma HDTV Reviews: The Panasonic TC-P42X1.
Where is the open source contact? IRC/mailing list/forum or something, I think this is really cool and want to get involved.
Double Drop: Funding for VCs, Startups Skids
Why is the Jython website so ugly?
Yes you are. You don't have to think about the servers, the cloud abstracts it away. Here's an analogy. High level languages make memory management obsolete. You could then ask, "because programs are made up of something other than memory and instructions?", and you'd definitely be missing something.
Then a virtual machine would be the obvious choice.
Yet again, Ballmer is either mad about something or saying something inflammatory. Why not just save yourself the frustration of arguing and ignore him altogether?
A good compromise would be if you could specify an object as being "replacable" and then it would have the extra layer of indirection (the table) to make it fast. That way you don't pay a penalty when you're not using that feature and/or don't have to walk the heap. It would also be better for security in that you'd have to explicitly state which objects were allowed to be replaced. You have to think about needing that feature in advance though.
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=734229
Hacker High: Stories of Teenage Hackers Getting into the System
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=734469
This is true, but I don't choose to use cobol for new projects. In the same way I don't choose to buy dedicated servers any longer.
Summary: The infidels are falling at the gates of our operating system.
Ook is a better language than Java.
The Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals
Silicon Prairie News Interview Whistletree
SPN sits down with Whistletree.com, a local startup offering some interesting free conference call, webinar and Twitter integrated features.
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=731998
Cable fault cuts off West Africa net connection
now that's just mean.
One example is COBOL which was (and is still being) largely replaced by Java in the business application market and rightly so. Even if you don't like Java, you have to agree that it's a great replacement for COBOL.
Twitter is what TinyURL has been waiting -- literally -- years for. And they get their feet swept by a shorter domain and a couple extra features. Crazy.
Language wise C# was than Java from day 1, but the C# toolset and build model are why I prefer C# over Java.

I have never had to spend ages trying track down a "class not found" error in C#. Nor have I had to deal with version clashes between libraries. And I might be biased because I develop mainly on Windows, but I think Visual Studio is a better IDE than Netbeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ or JDeveloper.
The optimality of move-to-front (under what precise meaning of "optimality" I couldn't tell you) for organizing a list is a fairly well-known result in computer science. Knuth mentions it in TAOCP, vol 3. It's a wonder it took this long for someone to apply this result to real life.
Microsoft paint Apple as expensive, elitist and irrelevant. Apple paint Microsoft as unfashionable, unoriginal, and unreliable.

This has been going on for years, this isn't news. Who cares?
Double Down, But Only On The Right Hand
This is a nit, but Panic's not a startup. They're just a top-notch Mac development shop who's been around forever.
Knocking down a shed with an air cannon
I think that's an interesting point - should articles be flagged based on source?

In most cases, the answer is no. But for a source that has proven time and again to produce content that makes you feel stupider after reading/viewing it, then I think a flag based on source is justifiable. I'm not saying whether Tech Crunch fits this category, but I'm sure we can all think of some sources that do.
If you own a device that relies on a shared resource you should expect there to be rules to ensure the resource is shared safely and fairly among all who use it. In the case of a cellular network, the resource must also generate enough revenue to maintain it's own operation, so users shouldn't be surprised when limits are placed on activities that compromise this revenue-generating ability.

I'm not saying that what AT&T and Apple are doing is right; I don't think anyone knows enough to say for sure, but I think allot of people complaining about it should take a wider look.
Java being more widely deployed has to worry about source and binary compatibilities between all the supported versions and thus for them, changing the bytecode would have been a painful decision.

As opposed to that C# did not have to worry about these things due to their limited deploy base and could freely change the language and/or the VM without worrying about backward compatibility.

That does not mean java is a better language than C# - its just that when Sun woke up and started adding features to the language, it was not easy.
The initiator
Such is disruption. TinyURL hasn't changed in years unfortunately. Total lack of innovation after they lucked into that first swipe of goodness.
EBook design and motion graphics
I was up in Detroit recently and it was jarring to see all GM, Chrysler and Ford cars on the road compared to my home state. I guess it is not surprising, but the lack of Honda/Toyota/Nissan/Mazda/BMW/Mercedes cars up there might be part of the reason why the big 3 don't get it.
The Cash For Clunkers program may have spent a 3 month budget in a week
I can’t help but shake the thought that even if the $1 billion budget is running on fumes at the moment (ok, I lied!) it will not have the necessary quality impact to offset the taxpayers’ investments.
There's a huge amount of "food fear" going on in this country (USA).

What exactly is nutritionally wrong with white flour, sugar and meat (unless you're vegetarian)? In any case, I probably have 3-4 different kinds of flour in my pantry right now, plus wheat germ flakes. And the bread I'll be eating tomorrow will be home made sourdough. I'm neither fat nor malnourished.

What's a "real" cereal? This morning my 8 year-old son asked to make his own breakfast. He had Malt-O-Meal (a local Minnesota mill) raisin bran. Is that "real?" Generic corn flakes and oatmeal are probably the cheapest cereals on the market. Are they real? If you like granola so much, buy the oatmeal, honey & nuts and make it yourself. It's simple and infinitely cheaper!

To the earlier comment about organic vs. "pesticide ridden crap." Newsflash! Organic farming also uses pesticides, just different ones. That said, my veggies (pesticide free and fertilized with our chicken & horse manure compost) are no more nutritious than the (non-organic) ones in the grocery store. The difference is that the freshness makes them taste better and improves the texture.
Unless light and matter consist of the same fundamental building blocks. During nuclear tests they've found that a tiny amount of matter actually disappears (which may SOUND like it violates the Law of Conservation of Matter), but it's actually believed that that tiny amount of matter was converted into an enormous amount of electromagnetic energy (hence e=mc^2) (i.e. light, for all intents and purposes).

If that's true, then this experiment is probably just reversing the process. The light is converted into a tiny amount of matter that's barely detectable (that 'fingerprint' - possibly just a tiny amount of matter that's slightly different from the matter around it), and can be converted back into energy easily.

Personally, my theory is that once we get down to more and more subatomic particles, we're going to start seeing that it has more and more properties in common with electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation itself consists of a magnetic 'part' and an electro 'part', and if you coiled enough of it together millions and millions of times in a certain state, maybe you'd have an atomic particle that contained a phenomenal amount of energy, and a tiny amount of mass.
Summary: yes, unless it is too shredded.

Also, water is wet.
A thing that I have wondered about: Although Java and C# are similar languages with very similar libraries and features, Java has migrated towards being used for server side and middleware programming. C# however has not gone in this direction even on Windows platforms. What is the reason? Wouldn't it be easy to write the equivalent of Tomcat, JBoss, EJB's etc. in pure C#?

It is surprising that some of the apache projects have .NET equivalents (lucene, log4j, ant) but some others dont........
I wouldn't describe it as painful myself. But, I would agree with sentiment. Having spent 3+yrs working with Java and then moving to C# (2yrs+ dev) has been a pleasant experience. C# is great language with features like delegates, Indexers, Pointers and Unsafe Code (executed in an unsafe context) and constraints on type parameters.

In contrast, I hate the msdn documentation for C# and still have a soft spot for java documentation.And yes, C# v Java is not the same as JVM v CLR
That's exactly why you haven't left the iPhone yet.

It's still the best phone for you. Sure, you're looking around, you'd be a fool not to.

But, as you've said, you're waiting for something better.

Apple has created a great phone and they're definitely going to try and stay on top.

By all means switch to the better phone when it comes out -- that's the best way to keep Apple and everyone else on their toes.
It would be really nice if the article started with the note "Bridget Brennan is CEO of Female Factor and author of the new book, "Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World's Most Powerful Consumers" (Crown Business). " instead of putting it in the end.
I belive that was the original reasoning, and thus led to the Java generics behaving a little weirdly.

Then other decisions forced them to change the bytecode anyway, but they never fixed generics.
Start selling online with the Google Checkout store gadget
It's refreshing to see a company looking for a more creative way to generate revenue than simply slapping advertising on as an afterthought.

The idea of using this data to build a news site is brilliant, and adds to the usefulness and quality of the service instead of detracting from it or adding complexity. Bravo.
A List of Probiotics Benefits
I just heard this story yesterday: Several years ago, a friend of mine was going to see a Bobby McFerrin show at Ohio University. The day of the show, the student newspaper wrote an article warning everyone that if McFerrin heard a lot of shout outs requesting Don't Worry Be Happy, that he was very likely to storm off the stage and not return.

Which if you think about it, Don't Worry Be Happy would have to be the most ironic possible song to cause a person to storm off.

I guess the audience kept mum on the requests, because my friend says it was one of the best shows he's ever been to. And he's been to a lot.

Note: coming from me, this is just heresay. I can't actually testify to Bobby McFerrin's hatred of Don't Worry Be Happy.
I know nothing of abstract algebra. In fact I don't even know what it is :). I do however view mathematicians in the same way I see the programming languages crowd: they like to play with these ideas and extend them for their own sake. The solve these puzzles and show that this principle is true, or that group of formulae can be generalized like so. It's up to the rest of us to notice when a particular problem fits some solution they have provided. Another part of this is: math is like alpha, and computer programming is blub, at least according to the math guys.
Exactly. Ballmer obviously hasn't been on a college campus in the past few years. I personally saw the percentage of Mac laptops go from ~5% to ~40% from 2005 to 2008 in my classes. The ratio goes even higher if you go to any scientific/technical conference.
While I see where you are coming from, I think that Jython's page is more "usable" than JRuby's.

More whitespace, better use of colors, easier on the eyes, navigation that is located in a convenient and proper place, and many more things. Sure, it doesn't look as 2.0 as JRuby's page, but it's definitely easier to navigate and easier on the eyes.

NOTE: I'm seeing this from a 1920x1200 perspective, so maybe it looks a bit different from your display.

That being said, if the website is that bad in your opinion, why don't you contribute in that respect?
Microsoft missed revenue estimates by a billion dollars in the fourth quarter. I guess that's a rounding error for them too.
C# is awesome because in a situation where you are using C#, there's a good chance you could use F# instead.
As long as stand out means - that they don't follow the grid system (not saying they have to); but are also poor in usability and ... last but not least - so far outside the box they look like they tried too hard...

No thanks, I'll take a working commerce site of a trendy one every day.
I hacked my son. He was four at the time. My wife sent me off one Saturday purportedly for a "father/son" bonding expedition to buy her Christmas present.

Well, I had seen what my mother-in-law did to kids: set them on her lap and pumped them so dry they squeaked for a week. I figured daughter == mother...

So, little Jeremy and I went shopping. All the way to the store I told Jeremy to not tell Mom what we bought (the hook ;-). At the store, I picked up a CD/alarm clock for Mom's present. Of course, Jeremy couldn't read, so he really didn't know what it was. I asked him if he thought Mom would like a thingamajig, and he thought it was a fine idea (baiting the hook ;-).

All the way home, I emphasized to little Jeremy that he was not to tell Mom that we bought her a thingamajig (setting the hook ;-).

When we got home, I disappeared into another room, but stayed within earshot. Sure enough, Mom got little Jeremy on her lap and started pumping him. He resisted valiantly, but he was only four and cracked after a couple of minutes. "It was a thingamajig!" he said.

CAUGHT! :-D
All of the fawning over the cloud really irritates me. I use S3 and EC2 and love them both. However, I also still use local storage and non-EC2 servers.

Everything has its place, and the cloud has definitely not replaced the server for me, nor do I see that happening any time in the near future. Especially if you're just starting out, dealing with getting set up in a cloud environment is a headache you just don't need.
Oh yeah, Jython's page is also a Wiki. Did you see the wiki for JRuby?

http://kenai.com/projects/jruby/pages/Home

Horrendous.
In waste-energy plants they use special equipment to burn phone books.
Microsoft Renames Windows Mobile to Windows Phone
Its not that, they check to see if the cable is an octopus cable, the problem is that just apple make those right now.
I only upvoted this because of the irony that was a link on HN to a Metafilter link to Reddit.
A very interesting backgrounder on the Demarais empire. Lengthy but worth the read.

I wonder whether Putnam has/is/will be acquiring top talent made particularly available by current circumstances. Definitely worth keeping in mind.

And interesting to read about the Demarais' move into financials (including insurance in the term), but with a much more long-term management approach and while apparently eschewing the worst forms of leverage.
Google Talk is not standards-based at all. It is a proprietary extension to XMMP.

Edit: I was wrong. Thanks, riffic! They have documented everything -- http://code.google.com/apis/talk/talk_developers_home.html
My physics is a little rusty, so please forgive me if I'm wrong. I think the law you're referring to is the Law of Conservation of Mass. As energy has mass and subatomic particles have mass, you can convert back and forth between them all day (good luck with that), and never violate it. In particular, Einstein's E=mc^2 is applicable here.

It was a surprise to me to find that the term 'matter' is actually poorly defined. At least according to Wikipedia.
"A little knowledge can be far more dangerous then no knowledge. ... Not being computer literate is almost as bad as being just plain illiterate."

Need examples before I can know whether I agree or strenuously disagree.
Very good points grellas.
Particularly on the 'inexperiened entrepreneurs not able to pre-negotiate terms'. I think this may often come down to the essential 'not knowing what you don't know'.
I responded to Ricks blog that i use a boilerplate document and go through line by line to figure out what the important talking points are. Then you can at least get those pinned down before the lawyers come in.
Because I have better things to do

Yes, like proclaiming your love for Apple, then making a large, dramatic gesture of protesting something they do, writing a blog post about it, and raking in the page views as your dramatic gesture goes viral?

It's all a circus show.

I'm not saying the complaints against Apple are baseless, but how much of this article do you think is Arrington taking a principled stand, and how much is it Arrington seeing an opportunity for TechCrunch and taking it?
http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0166.html
Evolution's Third Replicator
I wish I still had the link, but there were actually old mechanical arcade games decades ago that were exactly like this.
AT&T is just one carrier of many and yet, as far as I can tell, the Google Voice app has been denied approval from all the iTunes app stores, not just the one for the US.

A few possibilities come to mind:

- Apple doesn't have the ability to allow different apps into stores for different regions.
- iPhone carriers in other countries also threw their toys out of the pram about GV.
- AT&T (and the US market) is so big that it defines the rules for the whole world.
Its crazy what age kids are learning this stuff. I think hacking is the new age Prank Call