skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a lot of "short vs long" going on in the comments here. That seems silly to me.

Code should be written so as to completely describe the program's functionality to human readers, and only incidentally to be interpreted by computers. We have a hard time remembering short names for a long time, and we have a hard time looking at long names over and over again in a row. Additionally, short names carry a higher likelihood of collisions (since the search space is smaller), but are easier to "hold onto" for short periods of reading.

Thus, our conventions for naming things should take into consideration the limitations of the human brain. The length of a variable's name should be proportional to the distance between its definition and its use, and inversely proportional to its frequency of use.

Global config setting that gets specified once and used in 4 places throughout the program? 10-20 characters is probably appropriate. Might wanna go with UPPER_SNAKE_CASE to make it stand out a bit more, even.

Iterator variable that you define in a 3-line for loop and then never see again outside of it? Call it "i".

Another way to look at this: The first time you meet someone, you learn their full name. When discussing them with someone else who knows them, you use just a single name. If they're standing right there, you don't bother using their name, but just make eye contact, and maybe a "Hey". Should be the same way with variables.
You have to figure out the cost of shipping them all back vs just recycling here. Seats are bulky and heavy. If the cars came in containers that were going back empty it would make sense, but they are coming on bulk car carriers so no free empties on the way back.
Basically, its just the Prisoners Dilema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma), with fairly large impact on outside sources based on the decision. It seems to look like:

TechCrunch Breaks Embargo: Good for them: Spike to traffic. Bad for competitors: lose lots of traffic, everyone already saw it. Bad for entity putting out embargo: it was there for a reason, whatever it was. (?) for users: Unknown how this plays out for the user. It depends largely on the quality of TechCrunch's reporting versus other sites'.

TechCrunch does not break Embargo, another site does: Bad for TechCrunch: they get the downplayed traffic, but will still get a good chunk of it due to their size. Good for site that broke embargo: They get the spike, and walk off with a huge traffic spike. Bad for the rest of the competitors: they're still in the same case as everyone else. (?) for users, still.

No one breaks embargo: Business as usual for TechCrunch: Apparently they have the largest tech readership. They keep that when it comes to new stuff. Business as usual for the other sites. They get the same traffic proportion as usual, possibly modified if anyone has a particularly interesting take on the product. Good for the user: they get all the views at once, and get to make their own decision.

As far as I can tell, no embargoes fits with the last one fairly well, except the coverage will be spotty and the user loses out, because only sites currently staffed at the time the product comes out will be able to post about it, and they'll be rushing out as many updates as possible to grab traffic.
I found the use of the euphemism "derriere" in a story of such visceral details to be quite jarring. Hilarious even.
Nice. Would be nice if it use MathML (or something like that) instead of images.
There may be a market for this. I know several people who run various types of folding just to be able to brag about the performance they get, and love to show off their stats. Getting paid for it would just be icing on the cake.

Of course, the pricing structure would be difficult, as would setting up the infrastructure for it. My (uniformed, by-the-seat-of-my-pants) best guess would be that subverting the current folding method of jobs would be the best way to do it. Accept jobs, send out to client computers, clients get paid based off of how many they complete. The problem arises from: sandboxing the jobs, to make sure they can't steal client info, and making it relatively easy to program jobs, while still allowing users to do various things to increase their performance (like using GPUs and the like).
We're just talking about LaTeX's math mode here. Are there any more concise and easier ways to type math on a normal keyboard and have it display in a pretty way?
Huh, they've got plenty of Asians and Jews already. What are they complaining about?

Looks at article

Oh, "underrepresented minority students." That's the code that colleges use to tell Chinese and Korean students that they don't get any affirmative action money. We didn't mean that kind of minority.

The sort of minority they want is the kind that is bad at math and science. After all, it'll be any day now that we figure out how to stop Blacks and Hispanics from under-performing in every intellectual field of endeavor. And then we'll have more of them than anyone else!
You can download it (but it is fairly difficult).

I downloaded a lot of videos which I successfully played with MPlayer.

If you want to I can look at how exactly I downloaded it (it was a long time ago though).
Strange timing. Yesterday I watched the documentary "Helvetica" (2007) which is all about typefaces:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0847817/
Throwing your own Windows 7 launch party
By total coincidence I watched that movie yesterday. I enjoyed it, though it's mostly just a bunch of people's opinion about Helvetica/modernism/post-modernism. Doesn't good much deeper than that in typeface design.

Can't remember where I heard about it (possibly MetaFilter, or here?).
+1 for "You know what isn't very awesome? The list that contains "know what you know" and "focus!" and "stay healthy"."
The only comments I ever find useful are the "unprofessional" ones - things like "WTF, FooCorp are complete dicks and didn't implement the Blah spec properly, so now we have to work around their shit here". Without those kinds of comments it can be hard to understand the motivation behind broken-looking code that is actually broken by necessity.
IWebSkel: The Ultimate Website Skeleton
Linux sound is broken IMO till it travels seamlessly over remote connections, just like a mouse and a screen do.

X handles Mouse and Keyboard and Screen I/O, and there is no reason sound should not be considered a basic I/O that should go too.

Just add another

Section "InputDevice"

or xorg.conf, and OutputDevice as well. Each Xserver will list the specs it can handle (frequency/bitrate/channels), and clients will either adjust themself to the capabilities of the server, or pick some master format and convert on the fly as needed.
Honestly, I don't like these business models of trying to force brands to interact with their own customers on someone elses terms. It instantly reminds me of the 37signals vs GetSatisfaction debacle, albeit with slightly more product disclosure this time.

Edit: Link to 37s blog post http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else
Government does a good job wasting resources. But fun to watch peoples ingenuity getting around restrictions. In Denmark until recently car importers used to transform Land Rover Discoveries (LR3 in the US) and other cars to auto campers (an RV in USA-language). You had to do some modifications for it to qualify as a "camper". Like the roof that needed to be able to be raised and it had a little kitchen. So they installed a token kitchen etc. The tax would be something like 60% instead of 180% (plus 25% VAT). And in Denmark you can still take the back seat out of most SUVs and station wagons for it to qualify as a van and get a discount on the tax. So a bunch of people drive around with cars without backseats. A waste of cars and resources.

I wonder what the true story of that chicken trade barrier is. Europe doesn't issue taxes or tariffs, because it's a continent, not a political entity. Turkey is transcontinental with most of it being in Asia.
I've worked for a child of a dysfunctional family. The company was run like a dysfunctional family.

On the whole, dysfunctional families are poor preparations for anything. That's why they are called dysfunctional.

The one thing I could maybe agree with -- in a dysfunctional family, sometimes the children learn to take on responsibility and budgeting at an earlier age. Maybe they learn to challenge authority. That may be an 'advantage' over some pampered brat, although a dubious one since it leaves less time and resources for studying or hacking or other growth opportunities. There are less damaging ways to learn responsibility.
If they wanted an exact knock-off they could do so perfectly legally -- the only defensible IP afforded to typefaces is the trademark on their names -- the set of shapes for use in typesetting cannot be copyrighted or otherwise protected.
That would work well for the press, but poorly for startups. Reason being: press is like raising money -- you have to get a lot of excitement to get the best coverage. Putting the news out on your blog fails on multiple points:

- No deadlines, so there's no urgency for the press to pick up your story (vs one that's more urgent). No urgency in practice means your story will not be written about.

- Cat's out of the bag. It's much less exciting to re-print news than to break it, and news that's exciting gets first priority.

- This makes it old news. Similar to the last point -- why cover it if it's already been covered?
South Africa built at least 6 deliverable nuclear weapons (bombing airplanes). If it was tested, no one knows. There were suggestions that SA tested in 1979 (Vela incident).

For what it is worth, South Africa had a fairly good rocket development. The Israeli Jericho rocket was actually a joint Israeli-South African project (the Jericho missiles were tested in SA btw). The RSA rockets would have been able to carry South African nuclear warheads. This (and the whole company Houteq) got dismantled in 1990 though.

South Africa had a different strategy with its nuclear weapons though. Its main purpose of its program was to force the USA to act if the RSA was threatened by the USSR.
"If you want to argue that tax-supported single-payer systems give you more freedom to quit your job and start a startup, fine, but nothing currently proposed in the US does that."

I think people have missed this point. It's not as if there's a single-payer proposal working its way through Congress, although I think there ought to be. Health insurance sucks; even people who have it are often reluctant to visit the doctor in case it impacts its future coverage although this may result in a loss of economic productivity. A single-payer system will not deliver the desired results to everyone all of the time, but at least it won't treat people as if past illness were somehow a breach of contract.

Certainly, singe-payer means everyone paying a bit more tax to subsidize the least healthy, and if taxes are high enough the risk-/reward ratio of individual private enterprise becomes uneconomic. But if the required tax increases are modest, the benefits for job mobility and general financial security (vs medically-related bankruptcy) will more than outweigh the cost.

Right now an individual's medical problem all too often becomes a financial and legal problem as well. It seems to me that decisions with legal and financial aspects which must be taken in order to obtain medical treatment are made under duress. I had to have emergency medical attention last year and I really wonder about the enforceability of contracts I signed while puking and under the influence of morphine. And I had a good experience overall (no complications, not huge unexpected bills, quick recovery). Given how Kafkaesque the situation is for a good outcome, I shudder to think what it must be like for someone with a deadly or chronic condition.
Actually, I've found TechCrunch's stories to be incredibly more factual than most in the traditional media -- the illusion of 100% factual reporting isn't the same, though, as they don't bullshit you about their process.
I wonder whether any of the FLIR imagers that are currently commercially available and reasonably portable are sensitive enough to make this work. Any links?
For the longest time, I couldn't run more than a couple of miles a day. I was always told that I had poor stamina. I trained for a year, and recently ran my first marathon and I'm now addicted. I can completely relate to what you say above - its so easy to just go on and on (because you seem to be able to) completely ignoring your body. I've had 14 hour days at work at the end of which I'm very tired, and yet would easily run 8 to 10 miles and feel extremely refreshed at the end of it, that I would go back to work.

Adrenaline kicks in as a result of high-intensity workouts, and it then becomes hard to tell your body to slow down and rest. The key is to know your body's limits and feed and rest it regularly.
MeFi, it was posted there a couple of days ago including the film link. My favorite comment from the the resulting thread was 'Impact or go home, font dorks', which I have been unable to get out of my head since.
Starbucks testing mobile payment market, starts with iPhone app
I love the title of the story - very intriguing and fitting.
How difficult is it to port something from Unix to BSD?
Netflix prize checksums don't match
still suspicious about the netflix prize. what's at stake is the legitimacy of programming contests run by corporations. can someone explain why the checksums don't match between the FAQ and the files released to uc irvine?

http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Netflix+Prize

http://www.netflixprize.com/faq

simple corrupt file or corrupt contest? i throw around the word 'corruption' not cavalierly, but because when there is a million dollars at stake, and the future legitimacy of large-scale programming contests, it's a little odd that netflix hasn't released the actual scores of the top two teams. nytimes, bbc and others report that the 'percentage improvements' were equal, but that's not what the rules say. the rules say it should be the best RMSE down to 0.0001 (if i recall). so my point is -- with so much on the line, why hasn't netflix released the final scores? and why don't the checksums match?

here's the other hacker news page where i got downvoted like a m-f-:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834632

again, i have no association with any team or any part of this programming contest. i just read 'the ensemble's blog post a month ago and thought it was cool how they raced to the deadline and appeared to win. and also, i think it's f-ing ridiculous if a corporation backed down on its rules.

hopefully they just uploaded the wrong file. but with that one checksum basically legitimizing the entire contest, you'd think they'd take it a little more seriously. just doesn't add up.

p.s. i'd contact netflix directly if they had an e-mail address available or something -- but i have no interest in registering for the forum. i'll delete this post as soon as someone explains why the checksums don't match. don't want to make a false accusation.
That's impressive. I did do a couple of small jobs for Kevin nearly a year and a half before digg, so I guess they can claim we were introduced through it. But there were so many new fees and restrictions on providers that it was just a nightmare to use by the time digg appeared, that I had moved on.
Isn't (worth reading) redundant given that you posted it?
still suspicious about the netflix prize. what's at stake is the legitimacy of programming contests run by corporations. can someone explain why the checksums don't match between the FAQ and the files released to uc irvine?

http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Netflix+Prize

http://www.netflixprize.com/faq

simple corrupt file or corrupt contest? i throw around the word 'corruption' not cavalierly, but because when there is a million dollars at stake and the future legitimacy of large-scale programming contests, it's a little odd that netflix hasn't released the actual scores of the top two teams. nytimes, bbc and others report that the 'percentage improvements' were equal, but that's not what the rules say. the rules say it should be the best RMSE down to 0.0001 (if i recall). so my point is -- with so much on the line, why hasn't netflix released the final scores? and why don't the checksums match?

here's the other hacker news page where i got downvoted like a m-f-:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834632

again, i have no association with any team or any part of this programming contest. i just read 'the ensemble's blog post a month ago and thought it was cool how they raced to the deadline and appeared to win. and also, i think it's f-ing ridiculous if a corporation backed down on its rules.

hopefully they just uploaded the wrong file. but with that one checksum basically legitimizing the entire contest, you'd think they'd take it a little more seriously. just doesn't add up.

p.s. will delete this post if the non-matching checksum is explained. again, i think it's great netflix created the contest.
It saddens me that "new media" appears to be singularly focused on who gets to break a story first and not who provides the most insight or value with their reporting.
Google: We're Buying Startups Again
Warrent Buffet's Favorite Suit
Applying patented algorithms to solve the halting problem..
From: http://runplaybook.com/ (End Zero Day Attacks)

I just though this page was hilarious and want to ask tptacek how many (if any) potential customers actually take this page seriously and ask you questions about halting all zero day attacks.

Text from the page: "Using sophisticated Bayesian anomaly models and a histographic security engine, Playbook analyzes line-speed 10G traffic in real time, applying patented algorithms to solve the halting problem and reconstruct the actual intent of packets on the wire. It then dispatches ninjas --- yes actual ninjas --- to remove threats before they threaten you. Playbook also does a great job of managing your firewall rules"
Aaggressive Aardvark
Though the in-joke is that Anonymous is a 'hive-mind' it really couldn't be further from the truth. It's just a large collection of people. Sometimes certain 'movements' gain a critical mass needed to manifest themselves, but that's about it.
Maple will take input like

y=int(x^2,x=0..100)

and turn it into pretty print. That seems more natural than LaTeX. LaTeX is for getting exactly what you want on paper, at the expense of ease of typing.
In some sense, good forums become "communities". And communities aren't really for sale. You can buy the domain name and administrative rights, but you can't buy the community, if that makes sense. If you don't have a fairly good idea of how you will win over the members of the community, you may be just wasting your time and money. Simply replacing whoever runs the place now is likely to fundamentally change the character of the community and may lose a lot of members in the process. I would encourage you to spend time there as a member and try to understand what the community is all about.

Communities often largely revolve around a few key personalities. Losing one of them can seriously damage traffic (as well as other aspects of the experience). It may be necessary if they are a huge fly in the ointment, but then the question becomes "what are you going to replace them with?"

Building community is more than just a numbers a game.

Good luck with this.
One of my security-conscious clients has just had electronic locks installed on two different R&D buildings.

Neither of them require a special digit after the code, or an enter key, and both of them have entry codes with repeating digits.
Not quite though. There have been claims of things like car-chases, P.I.s tailing people (and breaking into their houses). I've seen people claim that Scientology hired people to do things like lace someone's toothbrush with LSD so that when they appear in court (against Scientology) they are high and easy to attack/discredit. I'm not sure of the truth of all of these claims, but they are out there. It's a far cry from 'Anonymous' ordering a bunch of pizzas for someone (or using the USPS site to order hundreds of free shipping boxes to be delivered to someone's address).
A related article(not just Google,Yahoo also),
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Google-Yahoo-Going-Shopping-al...
The moral of the story is not to use shorter names, but to write better code.

Date start = ;
Date end = ;
Iterator i = new DayIterator(start, end);
while (i.hasNext()) {
doSomething(i.next());
}

Your Papa Bear example iterates over a cube in a 3d array. Your Mama Bear example is some seriously broken date iteration code (so you change lastDay from within doSomething?). The Baby Bear is equally broken 'time period' iteration code.

Writing self documenting code isn't about giving everything complete and proper names. It's about choosing comprehensible and trackable names. You introduce Mr. Joseph Harrison as such, but you may thereafter call him Joe.

BufferedInputStream bufferedInputStream = ... // bad, too formal
BufferedInputStream bis = ... // bad, too casual
BufferedInputStream stream = ... // ok
BufferedInputStream input = ... // good

The Baby Bear code's naming is a bit off too. Is it inclusive or exclusive? I would not be bothered if I saw:

for (y=firstY; y<=lastY; y++) {

The letter 'y' is obvious (yy/mm/dd), and its scope is small.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840171
Having taken a look, it's more the ultimate collection of icons stuffed into a directory tree.
On the contrary, my comment definitely didn't say anything about improving only the education of minorities and I definitely didn't say "just forget it." The article is about minorities, though, is it not? And I think, implicitly, the article points at the idea that we do have to address minority education (especially in the greater context of educating everybody) if we want more minority scientists and engineers. My own experience points in that direction and if we could talk to the folks in the article, I'm sure they'd say the same.

I mentioned how the article doesn't necessarily highlight anything new and that it's a problem everybody's facing. Sure, my comment mentioned minority education, but in no way was I insinuating that we only should care about just educating minorities now. That's a torrid oversimplification (and misrepresentation) of anything I said above.
I don't really understand what it is about Scientology that pisses people off that much. You seem to be able to rally people against it more easily then you can against skinheads.

What gives?
Microsoft Super Secret Tablet Project Revealed, Maybe.
http://adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=5577

Last update was a little under a year ago.
No DSL or Cable at home? Finally, an unlimited wireless solution
Watch Out Apple... Courier - Details of Microsft's Secret Tablet
And why use the words "steaming pile" (i.e. a pile of shit) when that's not what the article says. Very confusing.
Online High Schools Test Students' Social Skills
Alternatively, you could do the same thing with Arial and Helvetica. Show one to half of your visitors and the other to the rest then compare conversion results between the two sets.
I'm going to eat my words on this one.

They are prosecuting the guy who put on this particular trade. Was an employee of Perot systems, made ~9MM on the trade.
New Accounting Rules Mean Boost for Apple
I second you. But this is something needing years and great amount of money to be good enough for everyday use.

It may be a good start up project. But I'm not that determined to do this unfortunately.
They're an easy target and they are very weird. Watch some of the videos of dissenters interacting with them. It's bizarre.
Info here:

http://www.xenu.net/

"in respect and honour to all victims, and those who dare to stand up for them".
Intel Shows Moblin 2.1