skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Almost every single car in Australia (besides exotic/rarer european imports) has it on the right. From personal experience, my father had a ferrari which had it on the left, my brother had a Smart car which had it on the left, but everything else I've driven (20+ cars) had it on the right (all right hand drive cars).
The idea was to make it impossible to reply quickly to deeply-nested threads in order to let the flames settle (the assumption being that deeply-nested threads are generally just flame wars). It appears it was only made less convenient.
Conclusion, if you're developing for the Android platform you may want to use protocol buffers, otherwise use JSON.

We have four variables that might influence performance:

a) the algorithm used in the library's implementation

b) the programming language/runtime used

c) the operating system

d) whether json or pb is used

Now your conclusion implies that only c and d matter. That doesn't make sense to me.
Yeah, makes sense. Contenture already offers some enhancements for paying users as well. They're not as advanced as you propose but they go in the right direction.

Your idea is very good but I guess it needs one or two years to become a product or service, by then Contenture will have evolved into something similar I guess.
Yes, there is a need. It brightened my Monday morning! If you think this guy is cantankerous now, wait until he's 60.

I think this is a valid role for Microsoft to play; to be a place to drag the deadwood into the future.
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Neat! Do they switch the place of the pedals as well ?

'Normally' (depending on your definition of 'normal') it is clutch on the left, brakes in the middle and accelerator on the right foot.

Funny how they would do that different than even in the UK, where all cars I've seen had their indicator stalks on the left.

It seems to be more of a regional thing than anything else.

Makes me wonder what Japan is like... (they also drive on the left).
Lego have some truly awesome things. If you haven't tried it already, check out the Lego Digital designer (Free download from lego.com). You can use it to build models on a PC, then with one click see how much it'd cost, and order it. They auto generate instructions of how to build it! Brilliant.

Also the console games are really good - Lego Batman/Lego indiana jones/Lego starwars.

I think every single kid should have Lego. It teaches you so many things and is just great fun.
When I first moved to the US I had this sudden fear that I was going to be unable to drive a US manual car because I figured that since the steering wheel was on the opposite side of the car, that the pedals would have been reversed.

Thank goodness they are exactly the same, but I do wonder how that piece of standardization came about.
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There have been a lot of thoughtful threads here that offer pros, cons, and the variety of personal experiences. In particular: note that the impact on someone with ADHD (maybe Paul E was one such?) are likely to be different that for a non-ADHD person.

searchyc.com seems to be down right now but a google on ritalin at HN will give you a lot of starting points:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=ritalin&as_e...
Are you just keeping this patches in a public tree so others can get to them, with every intention of handing them to the Erlang project, but keeping them separate and available should the Erlang project not choose to use them (and of course they can't release a patch "tomorrow")?

I ask because if that's the case and you say so, it should clear up the criticism seen in this discussion. I'm not sure the community at large has internalized what github means for that sort of thing; the days where you had to take your patch to the project and that was both your first and essentially last resort are gone. There's nothing wrong with the workflow I outlined above.
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>> "For a complete comparison it would have been nice to include XML as well."

Might have needed a logarithmic scale to include it ;)
Do you have any refs for the TI83 being mandatory in US high schools? A quick google search puts your post at the top and nothing too relevant anywhere else. I graduated from a public HS less than ten years ago, and I used the far superior HP-48G throughout the entire thing :) I never took math classes from my HS, but I do remember my friends who were taking HS courses having an assortment of TI81 - TI89 calcs.
Wow what forum of people there! If the roof fell down in that building, ... :)
Ha! Goes to show that regulations don't mean much. I'm sure millions of credit cards are stored in ec2.
I really like that all the applications and windows, with the exception of the browser, don't demand your entire screen to be useful.
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Delicious.com has lost value to publishers. Why promote it on your blog at all?
When I was younger, my main motivation for acquiring a new set was almost never to build whatever was in it (in fact, I probably only built a few of the hundreds I received); they contained pieces or modules I wanted for ongoing projects.

Legos are pretty much the most efficient toy out there.
Yes, there is an intention to push these patches to Erlang project, I was just saying that it might be hard.
If the commands don't have to be executed sequentially, then you don't have to issue them sequentially.

A modern processor will look at the incoming instructions and execute whatever it can without creating a hazard, this is called out of order execution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution
"But bloggers certainly are not the key to saving traditional journalism."

I disagree. It will be far easier to convert bloggers than newspaper owners. And if newspaper owners see that bloggers are making more money than they are, they will eventually join as well.

The problem with starting with newspapers is that you'd need a critical mass, and that's very hard when you have 1,000+ players who each have a six-month sales cycle.

With bloggers, on the other hand, there are only a few key players and because each outfit is only a handful of people the sales cycle is only a few days at most. Unless I'm missing something, trying to sell to newspapers would be an enormous mistake.
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My family and university friends are spread all over the place. I have found the so-called pointless babble of twitter and facebook has played an important part in staying in touch. Most of the time you don't have anything exciting to communicate, but a message that is effectively 'X' is alive can help keep relationships going.
I don't think that's true. Hackers need to know CSS too and I am always very surprised at how little most programmers know abotu CSS.

I thought this smashing post was one of the better explanations of CSS selectors that I've seen.
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I usually complain about the ever decreasing quality of the HN frontage, but today practically every single link is great! I don't know what changed today, but I love it.
Our new fridge works this way on the bottom, for the freezer. It's a 'pull out' freezer. http://www.kenmore.com/shc/s/dap_10154_12604_DAP_Large+Capac...
This brings back memories: http://beos4all.ifrance.com/eng/beos/page-beos.htm

Am I crazy for thinking that in the long run this will be a serious competitor on the desktop? Maybe I'm just a naive dreamer.
I wrote a similar real service for IP-enabled high-end coffee makers. Every cup brewed generated a key/value "ping" with brew time, dose, desired and actual temp, and other cup metadata. These went to a Rails web service which actually did expose REST target endpoints (though they weren't on the coffee maker itself, and one couldn't send a brew instruction).

A version of this even tweeted every cup for a while, and that HTTP client was actually implemented on a microcontroller inside the coffee maker.
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Have you sent this to the erlang list? I just checked for both yrashk and alterline, and I'm not getting any threads for those queries. The OTP team is generally really good about merging bugfixes, from what I've seen on the list.
A new direction for Reia (Ruby-like language built on Erlang)
In the New Data Center, It’s Roofs Off and Taxes Down
Here we have the classic case of a trade-off between energy efficiency and pain in the ass.

Personally, I'll happily pay an extra $2/month in electricity bills not to have to pick the milk up off the floor every single morning.
"The reason most people want to program for the web is that they’re not smart enough to do anything else."

One thing he doesn't understand about the web is the dangerous power of blogging. With one sentence you can permanently brand yourself as an idiot to tens of thousands of people.
I'm not so sure about this. In high school, I spent the first two years doing everything using a TI-83+ (Algebra II and Pre-Calc). However, when my TI-83 stopped working (and got a TI-89), I stopped using a calculator almost all together. For both years of Calculus, I did all the work by hand, turning to the calculator only at the end when I needed a final result (and usually tried to do that in my head/with pen and paper anyway).

I would say the that helped me immensely with understanding not only understanding the material, but being able to work it out faster. I'm now able to roughly estimate (within a decimal point or two) most basic math problems in only slightly longer than it does for most students to do it on a calculator. In fact, I tend to work problems out significantly faster than most students who simply punch everything into a calculator and get the results from there, if only because I understand the problem better from working it out by hand and know better how to approach it. Being able to estimate square roots in my head has been vastly beneficial, and would be a skill well worth knowing.
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Ask HN: Why is concurrent programming so hard ?
This is one of those things that keep coming up over and over again, compared to 'regular' programming programming concurrent (massively parallel) systems is hard.

Lots harder than the simple relation between the number of threads of execution and a single thread should make you suspect.

Unless your problem is one that is easily parallelized you are left with limited alternatives.

Usually this is put down to either architectural issues (von Neumann vs alternatives), sometimes to the difficulties of locking and such, most times to how easy a program can be parallelized.

But even the latter is an effort on the part of the programmer, rarely of the environment the program is written in (though there are some interesting developments in that area).

I have this weird theory that it has to do with something completely different:

Our brains are not wired to have 'multiple parallel threads' of consciousness.

So we have a hard time envisioning in our sequentially wired brains what is going on in a parallel program, which means we feel much more 'at home' in a sequential environment.

It takes a good bit of training to get around that limitation and even then it is not easy.

So we tend to 'break up' our programs into sequential pieces of code, each running in parallel with the rest, and the spots where they meet, like trains using a railroad track, have to be scheduled to make things execute in the proper sequence.

This makes me wonder if we are truly capable of devising a method of parallel execution that will feel 'natural'.

Even in the real world, when we 'concentrate' we single out a thread from all the possible inputs and go step-by-step to analyze that one single process.

What are your thoughts on this ?
I think you may have missed the point.

Under normal circumstances, one should not brake and turn. But neither should cage drivers turn left in front of you. Or merge into your lane. Or run yellow lights. This stuff happens on the road, and this why so many riders get hurt.

To think that the normal sequence of events is the only one worth designing for is naive.

The post was about how to consider the human context when designing, and used the bike as an example. Any design decision that could delay a rider's reaction time to the primary brake is a bad idea, regardless of how familiar you are with your bike or how adaptable you may be.
Or, at least, it would if anyone used the Nspire. I've never heard of a school using them - everyone has standardized on the 83 / 84.
I was browsing some Lego sets recently. Man, are they expensive. And, on Amazon at least, it's a little difficult to even find the standard brick sets. There are just so many themed sets.
I think the passive aggressive solutions exist because most people have terrible communication skills. It seems like it all comes from the assumption that if you actually disagree with someone or want them to behave a different way around you, you must be a huge asshole that no one will respect. If we communicate indirectly, we get to claim the higher moral ground because we were merely "passive" while the other person OBVIOUSLY didn't get our EXTREMELY OBVIOUS indirect message and therefore must be not only an asshole but an idiot.

Now the other guy is the rude idiot. Problem solved!
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I wrote this comment for the blog but I am unsure that it posted correctly there:

BMW Motorrad is similar to Apple in many ways:

* Both were early players in their respective markets. Moreso than many other manufacturers, they have a lot of history to draw from.

* Both are known for their design and sense of style. A BMW motorcycle, like an Apple device, is almost instantly recognizable once you know the visual cues of each.

* Both are premium products at premium prices, designed against disposability. A BMW motorcycle and an Apple computer will typically outlast 2-3 of the average competitor's products, while costing about 1.5x as much.

* Both have absolutely rabid followings, winning the kind of fanaticism you can only produce by decades of selling beautiful products that perform beautifully.

The BMW turn signals map closely to the Apple 1-button mouse. Is it the most functional design? Nah. But the customers barely care. The design is functional enough, and it conjures the brand very effectively.

Here, both BMW and Apple "missed" the waves of standardization to user controls; their controls were always good enough from the start, however, and since the users didn't make a stink about it, both highly successful manufacturers left well enough alone.

Looking from our vantage point in the present, sure, someone moving to a BMW or Apple interface will notice a few differences (or, in your words, it will be "inconsistent with virtually every other"). But when you look at it from the point in time at which these interfaces were designed, both were groundbreaking and best-of-breed. Macs had a mouse when their closest competitors would draw some text like "C:>" and drool at you. BMW had foot-shift and hand-clutch when their closest competitors had suicide-shift and clutch pedals. It took another 40 or 50 years for motorcycles to agree upon right-hand throttle, even.

Personally, I don't buy the left-brain/right-brain argument you put forth, and I consider the danger pretty low because turn signals get the absolutely lowest priority when I am riding and need to react to emerging situations (that's pretty-talk for "when the dude in the F-150 aims at me suddenly"). I ride a Honda and I am pleased with the left-thumb directional controls, but I bet I could get used to a BMW pretty quickly.... and any donations to test this theory are gratefully accepted. But in any case, I think you need to see some more of the history behind the controls before you can use them as a UI teaching tool.
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I strongly disagree. Can you define "useful content" in the context of journalism? Is it content that makes advertisers pay in order to put their ads next to it? That's not journalism! Even if it was, the online ad revenue wouldn't be enough to pay real investigative journalism.

Also you wrote "if you're not producing things people want, or if you're spending too much money to do it, you lose and someone else will take your place". That's right. But it should be our task to prevent that. A radical consolidation on the news market until just a few papers are left is not an option. This market is different to the one for chocolate or cars. This is about a vital variety of opinions and views.

A consolidation of opinions is not what we want. Trust me, I am German, it happened here some 80 years ago...
> So we tend to 'break up' our programs into sequential pieces of code, each running in parallel with the rest, and the spots where they meet, like trains using a railroad track, have to be scheduled to make things execute in the proper sequence.

Dead on. We've been working on single threads for SO long and then just adapted that onto multi-threaded architecture now that we have to scale outwards.

I spent the last year of university writing a research project (final year project) trying to come up with a viable form of concurrent programming that didnt just look like a fancy way to multi thread.

But no luck :D

The best I can think of is to create some rock solid standard and an underlying architecture. With the idea being you can write your basic code and the compiler, vm, interpreter does the parallel work for you. But that's basically the same thing and not really solving the problem :)
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Sure, but there is no proof that the design of the bike really is worse, just his personal preference.

When designing websites there is a good case to be made for sticking to the familiar (unless you want to make a point) but to use motor cycle design (especially BMW, one of the most renowned bike brands on the planet with a lot more design credit than the author) as an example is poorly chosen.

The whole idea is that you have the thumb of your right hand pretty much in that spot anyway, so no reaction time is lost, rather the opposite, you don't have to make that awkward reset motion with your left hand in order to switch off the blinkers after having made a right hand turn.

This is more convenient, not less convenient.
Braintree (a payment processor I use and highly recommend) has a number of resources (videos, articles, etc.) at their blog (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog). Look on the left-hand side for the PCI-specific resources, or use the search bar on the right for their blog archives.
http://shop.lego.com

You can even purchase individual bricks (Although obviously that'll cost more than buying a set).

If you have a local Lego Shop though I'd go. They have a 'wall' where you can fill a bucket with whatever pieces you want.
I have the exact opposite reaction to graphing calculators. I used them to ace my SAT IIs back in the day simply because I understood all the functions of my calculator than every other non-hacker in the room. I even used to program small BASIC games on it when I was bored in class. There still isn't a good device to program on that is inconspicuous in the classroom.
I think it's rather not that our brains are inherently that way, it's just that we've (stereotypically) thought that way all our lives.

It's like learning formulas for 2D geometry and then trying to extrapolate to 3D formulas, such as the sum of all the sides of a square vs a cube. If we learned about generalized formulas in n-D, we could easily apply to any dimension at all. But it's harder to think so abstractly in the beginning.

Same thing here, now you're trying to think of algorithms that work with n threads instead of just one.
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I doubt the author of the post ever rode a bike, much less a BMW.

Any biker worth their salt could ride either model and with little preference at that. My last bike (in a long dark past) was a Honda, with the left hand thumb arrangement, I can easily see why the BMW arrangement might be a little bit more convenient but so little that it really doesn't matter.

And if you're busy with your signals while doing emergency evasive maneuvers I hope you have your health insurance paid up.
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Hilarious iPhone app, joke or no?
It's probably more accurate to think of concurrent programming as what's going on in the brains of multiple people, instead of looking at it as how one person's brain would handle parallel threads.

Whenever you need access to information you don't have available, there's a barrier before you can continue that task: maybe you have to go look for somebody, or send a message and wait for a response, or buy a book.

While these dependencies exist, you have some options. You could decide to work on something else; you could stop everything; or you could speculate on what the answer is likely to be, proceed as if that is the correct course, and expect to backtrack if you're wrong. To learn from the experience and not waste as much time in the future, you can remember key facts.

Like any dependency graph, it can explode as more points are involved. If you have many people (or tasks), there's a greater risk that many of them will essentially be unproductive while waiting directly or indirectly for something else. The challenge is to keep everybody in tune and to give them enough to work on so that they're never really wasting time.
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I think it could work a bit like 99designs. Someone posts a request for an expert on something ("I like to get advice on climbing the everest and offer 100 dollars for it") and different experts "bid" on that offer by posting their cv or something else to proof they're experts.
hen and egg problem non the less.
A good doctor will help you optimize your focus and creativity without you needing to self-medicate or do anything illegal. I'd spend some time setting up an appointment- he/she may find that you suffer from ADD/ADHD and prescribe something- maybe not. If you decide to do something (IMO stupid) illegal, you'll want to know that doctor's phone # and have at least one appointment behind you so that you can call if you screw yourself up. (Doctors are confidential - for your life's sake, talk to a doctor regardless).
A program that use both mutable state and concurrency is nondeterministic: when run twice with the same input, it might produce completely different results (based on the order in which concurrent parts execute).

This is one reason that languages good for concurrency tend toward functional programming or other more-declarative paradigms. By eliminating observable state mutation, you can write concurrent programs that are still guaranteed to be deterministic.
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Check out this New Yorker article on "neuro-enhancing" drugs: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_...

It has some info on Adderal (an amphetamine) and other drugs used to increase mental performance.
I agree with most of what you're saying here, particularly the historical roots of the design and the post does acknowledge the importance of the interface the BMW Motorrad brand.

But I think you make a false assumption about the potential order of operations - I'm not worried about signaling a lane change when I'm in the middle of an emergency, I'm worried about the emergency occurring when I'm in the middle of signaling a lane change. :-)
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Jakob Nielsen: Customization of UIs and Products
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