skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
«The first true object-oriented language. But it seems to me Smalltalk is pretty much a forgotten language.»

Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast?

I could give so many URLs to illustrate how Smalltalk has a stable and growing community, with so many open projects and people making a living out of it, teaching it in universities and using it for research, but I think these two links sum it all up:

http://forum.world.st/
http://smalltalkjobs.wordpress.com/
It looks $ugly, $code is read more $often than its $written. This $ everywhere hurts the eyes.

Its syntax is bad and inconsistent, before 5.4 you couldnt have a function return an array and call it and access array contents like this funcName()['blah']. What the.

PHP only has one data type for structures, array, which in various ways pretends to be every data type, stack, queue, tree, hashmap, list, fuck it all, lets just call it array everywhere!

Anyway, everything else is implicitly converted as well, strings, integers, fuck it all, lets ouput 0 or 1 who cares.

PHP is basically not a language, its a clusterfuck of copy-pasted code everywhere, I bet its runtime, Zend, is as a copypaste of various C-libraries cobbled together.

I feel sorry for all the PHP lovers, must be stubborn ones, just like VisualBasic people 10 years ago when it was dying. PHP-lovers have the same argument now as VisualBasic did 10-15 years ago.

EDIT: Where and when I would use PHP. Never. There is always a better alternative. This talk about how easy it is to host, blah blah, then you never had to compile php and set its config flags and include dumb oci8 modules, pear or pecl files or whatever, or see it fail and no logs anywhere but you have to have system-level access to some ini files. Ugh... I think people have just learned to live with that crap, and the more sane languages and web frameworks like Flask or Grails are much easier.
> Let's consider the article is true and words were being deleted as he wrote them. How ridiculous is that?

Some surveillers do that type of thing because they not only want the target to know they're being watched but also to make it appear the surveillers have far more control than they really do. They'll intricately set up a single incident like that, and leave the target thinking it's just an easily pulled of run-of-the-mill prank. The target then paranoidly thinks the next 10 or 100 coincidences are also part of the surveillance. Chances are that that particular incident was just a stuck key or something, but the chances are also that there was some similar incident weeks or months before caused by a surveiller that made the writer paranoid.

The most difficult situations are when there's more than one surveiller out there, which is quite common if you're worth surveilling. It can take years to disentangle roughly what's going on, and in the meantime if you say something plenty of people will call you names from a psychiatry textbook.
The country wise breakdown is fantastic, roughly indicates the startup culture present in the countries
Sure, you can prove that, then verify your language complies over the whole range, then add validation that your values never go over the range provided and no input outside of the range can be accepted and then figure out a way to guarantee none of that will change in the future.

(even controlling inputs/outputs is not enough, since internally they sometimes split the values into 40%/60% for transfers)

Or you just stick to ints (or whatever type has unlimited integer range in a given language). Simple solution here is safer than the clever one. Especially if you're sometimes confused about the types and write `round(mt_rand($amount 0.4, $amount 0.6))` even though mt_rand returns ints.
It's entirely possible for BTC to be in the blockchain but sent to an unspendable address, i.e. "lost forever"
From my research, it's growing too, which I find awesome. I'm a fan of Pharo and Seaside :)
I skimmed over the map to find some interesting data:

* Averages are close to $200 per backer

* USA has $175 avg per backer, but makes 2/3 of that $1B

* The middle east (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Koeweit, ..) spends $400 up to almost $800 per backer

* Antartica has 11 backers @ $337/backer :-) 4th place, after the middle east, After that, Norway ($280), Belgium ($250)

Would be interesting to plot this data against the number of citizens, so you can get a view of the participation rate of a country. (The US would top that probably at around 1%)

Edit for readability
Thanks for letting me know. ;)

There is an issue for the torrc that is open on github, but it hasn't been applied yet. You might want to test it and see if it works for you.

https://github.com/grugq/PORTALofPi/issues/16
I can only comment about MS office as I use it everyday at my office.

I can not think how Google's spreadsheet can replace Excel.

I have some thousands of rows on a single sheet and a spotty internet connection. If Google introduces a native, offline app, then i might switch.
And it is still shit and will continue to be shit because it has massive technical debt and is fundamentally flawed. Why throw good money after bad?
Don't the actual usage stats still paint a different picture, be it web views from iOS vs Android or Android app engagement and usage?
Congrats to all of us!
> Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast?

Because it doesn't have curly braces. Entirely unfair, but it seems like if you want to sneak in an innovative language it needs to be a wolf in sheep's clothes. (IE: it need to vaguely resemble C)
There are millions of shit apps for reference...

However there's this big one that comes with them all called a browser. It does all sorts.

The only apps that have an advantage over this app are the ones that have at least partially disconnected model i.e email, offline navigation, authoring or creative stuff and to a degree games.

Then again I'd rather have a real keyboard to write emails, a smaller device for my offline navigation and a bigger screen for authoring and creative stuff.

So basically, it's a browsing, email and games machine. And a crap one at that.

For reference I own a laptop and a smartphone. The mid ground seems pointless to me. Tablets are relegated to children's entertainment and they'd rather use the Xbox for that to be fair as Minecraft is better with real controls and it doesn't spam the hell out of you by trying to install apps via adtrack.king.com every two minutes.
GNewSense is a fully-free Linux distro
why didn't Discourse beat Facebook? Why didn't App.net beat Twitter? Why didn't Linux beat Windows on desktops?

I've never heard of Discourse.

App.net didn't beat Twitter because of network effects. And it costs more.

Windows has a very open ecosystem. It's not open source.

Arguably the parent has missed the difference between open source and open ecosystem. The iPad has a moderately open ecosystem too - though less open than Android (which in some ways is less open than Windows since it has a centralised distribution method).
Now that it has been shown the NSA to offensive attacks to discredit anti-government forces, could any of this mess be attributed to PSYOPS to discredit the whole cryptocurrencies?
White Fang by Jack London is excellent. Also the original Jungle Book stories by Rudyard Kipling are beautiful as well, if a little colonial in places. My favourite when I was little was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Both are in the public domain so can be downloaded for free from various places, including iBooks.
Saying that Apple is good at "gaining widespread adoption" is kind of like saying that J. K. Rowling is good at "being read".
So they use Apple more for webbrowsing and they don't use Android because their are no good apps on it?

Weird... The browsing experience is very good on Android.

But then again, my mom uses an Android tablet all the time and my aunt doesn't use her iPad.

Whats your conclusion about that? :-)
They aren't. TextSecure is an updated version of OTR. It is provides a means of securing content between two individuals, but it doesn't do anything to protect against traffic analysis or metadata analysis (it can't, really, since the trade off is security for speed and IM requires speed).

Pond is a sort of email replacement. I prefer it for security reasons. It protects against traffic analysis.
Perhaps price blogs based on:
- Number of views
- Number of Images needed per month/week
Html component complexity pt1: an introduction
On a similar note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_cat
Red Hat .. somewhat kicking and screaming, but we've shipped the OCaml compiler, libraries and programs written in OCaml since RHEL 6 (note that Red Hat does not support the OCaml compiler, although there are customers that use it).

Edit: The chances are if you used a program that started with virt- on any Linux distro, then 50/50 OCaml was involved in the making of that program. It was either written in OCaml or used OCaml to generate large amounts of C boilerplate.

OCaml binaries look a lot like C binaries, so it's hard to tell from the binary. And it turns out that functional languages with pattern matching on data are extremely good for generating all that C boilerplate, like crap you need to write for FFIs or dealing with remote parameter marshalling.
Yeah dude it's totally because we haven't tried them. It's not because they're 'intelligent' pieces of shit with virtually no control or anything.
Many aviation, flight planning and aviation navigation maps are much better on iOS and there is much better choice for iOS. The same for many magazines.
Any chance for electronic formats other than PDF? The lack of real reflow in PDF means it is pretty useless on smaller devices. Epub or mobi are equally useful, anything besides just PDF really...
Exactly. Parameterization is #1 priority. Second you could also move the statement string itself to a separate resource (disk file), which helps for maintainability.

so... the statement above refactored to slightly better pseudo-code:

$limit = getLimitParameter();
$sqlString = SqlResourceLoader::Load("BitCoinNodeSelect.sql");
$statement = $db->prepare($sqlString);
$statement->bindValue(1, $limit, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$statement->execute();

..or the query with the SQL along with parameter parsing logic could be contained in a separate class altogether.
Making a reddit + Twitter bot
Node.js arrives for the JVM
You'd need to know if it's really 60% and not, say, 59%; and you can't know that until the assets are actually liquidated - you can estimate the value of your stuff/buildings/whatever, but you'll know for sure only when they are actually sold.
I think you'll be surprised at how quickly this type of thing is evolving. Google is putting an immense effort into solving this problem. I don't see self-drive cars as a solution for rural areas, but I do see a massive demand for cars in a city, replacing taxis and car clubs.

I can even see it being a sort of a 'mini-bus service', for example, noting that you and 4 others are doing a pickup in an area and doing a school drop off, offering to split the cost of the journey.

The point is that individual car ownership doesn't really 'work' in a city too well.

Getting to the point where this is socially acceptable shouldn't take too long. The reduction in cost base and the fact you can sit in the car and work/play should make it very attractive.
Why Russia no longer fears the West
Show HN: bloom, a wool blanket inspired by origami
Can I have one? Really curious to try it out: mail [at] munimkazia.com
I laughed at the hard absurdity even though I read your comment beforehand.
So what you have here is:

* People who know how to properly right code, don't mess with bitcoin because they understand the involved complexity and high risk of error since money is at stake

* People who don't give a damn about the complexity and are prone to risk, but lack the technical skill to support their ventures (MtGox was 50% of the time not scaling well enough. The website was slow even when not under DDOS).

What MtGox shows, IMHO, is that there's a market out there for serious, professional-grade bitcoin exchangers.
Blackphone is available for pre-order
>> So the millions of people buying Android tablets just throw their money away and never use them? Seems a bit of a stretch.

I didn't say that at all. From my personal experience it seems they get less value from them. They are certainly useful devices but I think the extra money an iPad costs provides more value than the added expense.

>> Why doesn't your family member return the tablet if it's useless?

He's trying to sell it.
See there you go. There's absolutely nothing in these 5 bug fixes of note, but I should be tempted to have a look at the language because of them? This story is just a shameless hackvertisement for Go.

> instead of assuming voting rings or bots.

I've several times in the past seen new stories critical of Go on reddit go from 1 to -20 in less than a minute. This stopped about when uriel died so I just assumed it was him, but maybe it's still going on HN. How do you explain this post being on the front page?
This comment is a bit dismissive. Can you really claim that for iPod, iPhone and iPad?

MP3 players were already pretty mainstream when the iPod came around and it didn't really add much. And the iPad was merely an iteration on the iPhone.

But every rule has an exception. I'll grant that Apple definitely redefined what a smartphone was with the iPhone.
But hey, unregulated trading / currency, amirite? Freedom!1one! Fuk da bankz11!1
Python and Ruby are great for building an MVP, and they'll take you a long way, but they're probably unsuitable for a high-stakes codebase like a financial system. When bugs are absolutely unacceptable, you need all the help you can get from static analysis.

And (don't crucify me HN) I think dynamic typing rapidly loses its allure as your codebase grows large and "enterprise." The advantages in rapid prototyping and easy changes start to be overshadowed by the increasing burden added by unexpected side effects any time you change something. In Java, if I change an interface then I can find every client of that interface with one click and make sure each one is not broken by the change. The same is not true of JavaScript code; changing the valid inputs of a function can break things scattered around the code, and you won't notice unless you use a particular feature 3 times in a row on a waning gibbous moon.
A platform wins because of bandwagon effect. This is why Windows won on the desktop, Facebook won and now Android has won. Releasing an open system at the right time (as Google did) can cause major bandwagon effect, but is a contributing factor and not a true necessity.

I think if Google sold Android like Microsoft does Windows it still would have won (albeit somewhat more slowly). Apple always limits its bandwagon effect by limiting the availability of its platform to a rather small collection of devices. There's simply much more, and much cheaper choice of Android devices than there is with iOS. That defines what platforms wins, not the source code license or the details of their application policy.
I usually hear 'ore' from people who learned their Japanese by watching shonen anime. Even outside of a business meeting, in normal conversation, it would be offensive to most people I think.
The stats I'm referring to are ones the Apple always mention at events. Although there are many more Android phones sold than iPhones when you look at browser usage share iPhone is higher than Android. Their point seems to be that a lot of Android phones are used solely as phones and not as smartphones.
Dude banks rip you off twice.. the second is when your government fucking bails them out.
Apple fans and Android fans should both grow up and just enjoy their purchases, if they are happy with them.
The share buttons at the bottom don't work.
Very easy. The price for bitcoins will be very low at that MtGox 2.0 exchange and many people will take the risk and buy themselves cheap coins.
If you don't agree with this, consider signing the ag-gag petition - http://ag-gag.org/
There's a difference though, the last time Gox was hacked, people assumed the loss was coming out of Gox's wallet... now its clear the loss is coming out of everyones (until proven othewise)
He probably meant Diaspora.
Finally some good news from the UK.

I'm not sure if they did it in good faith or are just underestimating bitcoin after the recent issues however i welcome the change.

Maybe we can finally start paying for virtual goods in virtual currency and not have to worry about our card details getting stolen.
Some good points there.

Back before formalised sheet music we had a better timing resolution apparently. Lots of music was lost in the adoption. Some folk players I know tend to avoid formalising anything and just playing entirely by ear with no sense of timing at all. Always sounds good.

Personally my timing is awful. Whether or not that sounds better or not is up to the listener to decide :)
A group of hackers that compromised Gox to find out "what went wrong" and compromised tens of thousands of people's passports and home addresses at the same times. Leaked the personal contacts and names of all the Gox employees, and generally put many people's lives genuinely at risk.

Clowns.
What do you mean by harmonized? Some countries have different VAT for different items, some have flat(ter) VATs, the amounts differ as well.
Regarding the Go vs. D argument and Google beeing behind Go, Facebook seems to be using D http://www.drdobbs.com/mobile/facebook-adopts-d-language/240...
He was making millions of dollars from trading fees and would have continued to do so for the foreseeable future. Why would he steal his own funds. It just defies any reasonable explanation.
I could make an argument for the exact opposite.

If a new language has curly braces is instantly reviled and deemed as "not innovative" by part of the community.
It didn't scale well at all actually, several "ddos" problems were more likely just the exchange crumbling under its own weight, particularly around the november gold rush period.
Cool. This was always going to happen. It's also unlikely to have a noticeable effect on Apple, who are still selling loads of iPads.

Maybe it'll encourage better tablet apps for Android, which is still obviously lagging in this area.
How to Build Up Your Brand Awareness
Excuse me for asking, how saving the SQL query in a file helps maintainability?

Storing the query in a file means an additional IO call, right? Isn't the better approach to wrap the sql statement in a function if it's about to be reused?

I'm not arguing, I'd like to know the point and learn why saving that into a file helps maintenance.
Try emacs with ternjs (http://ternjs.net/)
Ok, so just parametrized queries, not the actual lack of SQL in the source code. That makes a bit more sense.
Old news. This has been going on in Florida for years with no adverse effects. It also goes on in divorce mediations so there is ample precedent.
+1 for this - Pharo is my platform of choice for developing hobby projects and I'm really pleased with it. And it moves really fast, with 3.0 release scheduled this month (IIRC) and with very exciting features planned for 4.0 too.

I checked out some other Smalltalks, including the GNU and VisualWorks ones, but Pharo comes as the cleanest all-in-one Smalltalk starter kit.

On a related note, I recently started playing with Io, which is very interesting too. It's smaller than Pharo and not image based, which makes it better suited for scripting (although it's possible to run Pharo in headless mode), has easily modifiable syntax and is pure object oriented with prototypal inheritance. If you like Smalltalk give Io a shot, chances are you'll like it too.
Libapi is a cross platform high performance io library written in C
I explain it being it on the front page due to lots of people being interested in Go.

The same way I explain posts related to startups, open source, patent law, Bitcoin (MtGox being the current star), the NSA etc.

People are interested in different things, and HN is full of an incredibly disparate range of people. No need to assume foul play for this story, unless you'd also like to assume the same for the other categories listed above.
Like putting salt in the wound .
Credibility shot. Abort mission
check the waybackmachine ?
Node.js MVC Frameworks for Developers
This is one of those very many quintessentially British imperial traditions that I adore

Unrelated to the above but relevant to the parent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Olav

Edit: ok this takes the cake, especially temporary demotion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Windsor_(goat)
It used to freak people out, others would flash their headlights at you if you had them on in the daytime. Now all new cars automatically put sidelights on during daytime anyway, I think its a (pretty sensible) EU regulation.
> First of all, a disclaimer: unless you’ve developed in 30+ languages, and suffered the code of others in all (or most) of them, you can’t really be objective. So yes, I’m biased. Like most of the people writing about this topic. Actually, I believe that this topic becomes absurd as soon as you are well-versed in many languages.

I fully agree with this sentiment and I wish more people either already had 30+ languages experience or at least realized that most of what they say now will sound stupid to them once they got this experience.
Well, if the Russian hackers got to the server, I bet there has been many before them. I'm pretty sure someone just messed with their database, and added funds to their account. Maybe added fiat, and bought BTC (users could withdraw BTC without identity verification?) because for some reason they couldn't add BTC directly (this would explain increased fiat in the system).
If this is 32-bit PHP, any amount above 21 bitcoins will overflow the integer range (2^31) and will be converted to float. That's bad.

If this is 64-bit PHP, any realistic bitcoin amount multiplied by 100000000 would still be within the integer range (2^63 - 1) and can be passed around without any loss of precision ...

... unless $info['balance'] has anything below the decimal point. As soon as you're dealing with fractional bitcoins, the amount will be converted to a float before it is multiplied by 100000000 and then back to an integer. So even in 64-bit PHP, the code can't avoid passing bitcoins around as a floating point number.

Realistically it is extremely unlikely in 64-bit PHP that the loss of precision caused by this single line of code (and the subsequent casting back into float) will ever round up to a satoshi. The (int)round() just makes sure that you get an integer rather than a double-precision float, because PHP loves to turn your values into other types behind your back. Nonetheless, if the program keeps casting numbers between int and float all over the place, eventually it may begin to lose a satoshi here and there. At the scale of Mt Gox, the errors will definitely add up. That's why you should never touch a float with a ten foot pole if you're dealing with money.

The correct way to handle monetary amounts in PHP is to use the bcmath extension, which enables arbitrary precision.
> NEVER ask a police officer for his/her badge number. Look for it and try to memorize if you want, but don't let them know you're trying to learn it.

A perfect use for google-glass.
I love how F# is among the "unreasonable languages". Why? Because it's "Microsoft trying to be cool", "many of us have learned to keep away from Microsoft the hard way" and "we have enough company-sponsored languages already". That's it.
Humans fail regularly even when the situation is not especially complex! e.g., not paying attention and rear-ending someone at lights on a straight, dry road during the day.
I think i would use such a service. I would be interested to hear what new innovation your friend is bringing to the table.

Putting on my freelance / business hat I could see business would be interested in such an idea but only if (A) the price was right (B) your product resolved an issue other products have.