skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Betteridge's Law strikes again.

No, null-terminated strings are fine. Rants against null-terminated string are a good way to spot nutjobs.

Null-terminated strings have virtues, such as being recursively defined: the tail of a string is a string. So strchr could be written like this (let's drop the const for simplicity):

char *strchr(char *s, int ch)
{
if (*s == ch)
return s;

if (*s == 0)
return NULL;

return strchr(s + 1, ch);
}

It's easy to break a string with delimiters into the individual pieces in place, just by writing nulls over the separating characters, and keeping a vector of pointers to the pieces. This can't be done with some other string representations like length + data.

When one null terminated string is a suffix of another (and ideally both are treated as immutable), then they can share storage.

char *excon = "excon", *con = excon + 2;

Catenating null terminating strings is efficient if you keep a tail pointer. A repeated strcat-like operation will be O(N*N) of course, so don't do that in some critical inner loop, with a large amount of text.

Length + data strings have various disadvantages. For one thing, how wide should be the length? Two bytes? Four? Eight? If you make it two bytes today and store binary data somewhere, it will be incompatible with tomorrow's four byte length. And then there is endiannness. A binary file with strings produced on one machine will have byte swapped lengths on another. Null terminated strings can be blasted over a serial line or network, or written to disks, as they are; they are already marshaled and ready to go! (Though I must hastily acknowledge that this isn't true of wide character null term'd strings, of course.)

Dynamic strings (management record plus pointer to data) are heavyweight representations that will show their weaknesses at virtual machine boundaries. You cannot pass them between address spaces or share them without marshaling to some flat form and back.

Also, regarding another point in the article, MS-DOS did not invent the backslash as a path separator instead of the slash. This is a common misconception. MS-DOS supports both forward and backslash as separators! And so does Windows (every version between then and now). Early versions of COMMAND.COM had a variable whereby you could set this as a preference: whether you want to display and input path separators as slash or as backslash. This was later removed.

Today, when you have trouble with forward slashes in Windows, this is due to the application you are using (including, sadly that application known as the Windows Explorer, and its "Shell API"). The underlying kernel handles the slashes just fine.
A few months ago I had the idea of creating a project to scrape Silk Road. The idea was to parse all listings, determine the quantity, divide by the price, and then average it through the entire site. The end result would be an average price for weed/lsd/mdma,etc. Sort of like the Winkdex, except for drugs prices. Shortly after I got it running, Silk Road 1.0 got shut down. Then the darknet market "scene" became really fragmented into like 10 different sites. Writing scraping code is tedious, so I abandoned the project. The code is here: https://github.com/priestc/weedprices
How physical exercise protects the brain from stress-induced depression
Hello,

Thank you for your comment.

I have currently a test case with a 140 000 images index. The search time is less than 2 seconds on 3.00GHz Core2 Duo CPU with 4 GB of RAM. The accuracy is then, for me, satisfying . Pastec is still being developed and there are many possible improvements to reduce this time.

It is however difficult to compare Pastec with the competition as most image recognition APIs are not free for large databases.
PIA18430: Mysterious Changing Feature in Ligeia Mare
No, better not. I should probably take it back really and put it in a little box marked 'Do not Disturb Any Further'.
Regardless, you would lose the automatic guarantee that the same bit is zero for pointers, which is the whole motivation for doing this (more efficient GC).

Pointers are guaranteed to have LSB of zero because of data is typically aligned to the machine word size rather than individual bytes. In this case, that is enforced (or at worst everything must be 16-bit aligned).

It's a pretty clever idea really.
It's a great article - makes me wonder how long the shockwave of the impact that killed the dinosaurs must have been echoing across the globe, or the one that created the moon (well, that one was before earth had an atmosphere, but it probably was strong enough to make the entire planet vibrate for quite a while).
This is similar to "fatvals" in SpiderMonkey (Firefox's JS engine).

IIRC SpiderMonkey stores doubles -- the fundamental numeric data type in JS -- as "unboxed" values, using this article's terminology. I'm not sure if there's good documentation about this out there, but it's an interesting hack, and much more complicated than just setting the bottom bit of the value.
But a buyer from the US is far less likely to order from the Netherlands since international mail goes through customs and there's no 4th amendment protection on them at all.
Not the GP, but bools and characters don't need 62 bits for the value. They can share an identifier, and you can tell them apart by the 3rd bit, for example.
But postal carriers have to have a box to put the mail in. How do they do the lookup? Does the distribution center do it, printing it on the letter?
Professional sportspeople usually have agents to look after their salary negotiations, transfer prospects and endorsements though...
Farewell discovering more shocking (but well-researched) truth on Wikipedia, keep up the good job believing in a cover-up of 50 M deaths from a 200 M population :)
The Origin of the 8-Hour Work Day and Why We Should Rethink It
A while ago, I made a search app using Google Custom Search: https://itunes.apple.com/app/in-app-search/id908073064

The URX App Search API certainly looks a lot more promising than Google for this purpose. It's good to see the documentation is public now and I'm sure it won't be long before a large number of apps are using this API.

One question about the app index: It doesn't specify the availability of apps in different operating systems. I have come across a number of apps whose sites have deep link information only for Android or iOS.

Also, it's interesting that IMDb isn't in the list, considering it is one of the most widely cited examples of app deep linking and its complete site index is easily downloaded and you can follow the links to it via /robots.txt.
> One of the things that really impresses me about Facebook lately is how often the first "suggested article" link under a bogus story is another story debunking it

I feel like Facebook should improve their related links system to inform a poster about them _before_ they post.
Homebrew has patched Bash for all 3 recently announced vulnerabilities, yes. The vulnerable bash will still be lurking on your system though, in /bin/bash and /bin/sh.
Nice! I’m sure Japan and South Korea would be awesome early deployment targets since nearly everywhere has such blazing fast internet to use as a backbone.
>One major question is - is the cost savings of hiring a worker in Texas with less experience at a 30% savings worth it if you're losing a few years of knowledge of internal workings and products?

Maybe not. But even though the new employee might not be as productive there is a very real increase in EBITDA from a decrease in expenses. Greater EBITDA leads to greater valuation. Then all you have to do is show consistent mid single digit percentage revenue growth a few years in a row and convince the public markets/equity analysts the whole thing won't fall apart anytime soon and you can cash out in an IPO.

For most PE firms it seems that it's really about hacking the financials. If comparable firms are selling at 15 times EBITDA, and your EBITDA grows from $200M to $250M over several years due to reorg savings and consistent revenue growth, you can rationalize that the company is worth $3.75B ($250M*15) now instead of $3B ($200M x 15).

Very interesting stuff. If anyone reading this works at a PE firm and is willing to let a finance geek pick their brain please give me a shout at my e-mail in my profile.
I think the obvious big difference between microorganisms like polio or smallpox and insects like mosquitoes is that the microorganisms aren't really part of the food chain, they don't have predator species that rely on them for a food source. Mosquitoes, on the other hand, are food for many other species, birds, bats, other insects, and completely removing them from the environment, removes that food source from those other species. It's possible that the predator species would expand their use of other food sources (possibly, outcompeting other species for those sources), or that they'd continue on in reduced numbers. Or it's possible that removing mosquitoes starts a domino effect, where former predator species go extinct (and their predators do the same or switch food sources), or enter into more intensive competition for other food sources, resulting in competing species either going extinct, finding new food sources (there's the domino effect again), or reducing population numbers.

We've done it with other animals (passenger pigeon) without the world ending, but I smell unintended consequences... Something as ubiquitous as the mosquito is hooked into the ecosystem in a lot of ways.
Also, NYU Applied Math is really solid. Until reading this I thought it was their flagship department.
>
I want to first off say that while on paper US Zip codes are more precise than UK Post Codes, the reality is often very different. The majority of people write their zip code without the "+4" which only gives you a city block, or roughly the same precision as a UK Post Code.

Just checking but a UK post code is roughly 17 delivery addresses. Sometimes more, but not hugely so. There are 22 million delivery addresses and 1.8 million postcodes.

How many addresses are covered by the 5 and 5+4 zip codes?
I wasn't aware of that. Unfortunately Android apps have no such restriction [0] and don't require any special permissions [0]. That iOS 7 change is likely along the same vein as Apple's addition of MAC randomisation: trying to disrupt such tracking.

I'd wish Google to follow suit, but let's be frank: Tracking people is Google's bread and butter. They're more likely to sell MAC addresses to advertisers than they are to randomise or otherwise restrict access to them.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6064510/how-to-get-ip-ad...
I think it depends more on the federal government officially deferring to state drug laws (unlikely) or taking action to de-schedule marijuana specifically (slightly less unlikely).

Right now the only people who can grow cannabis openly and "legally" with any degree of safety are the states themselves, which kind of puts a damper on market competition.
I just started using this and I'm already a complete convert! I've been using google keep, any.do, and google calendar to keep track of slightly different things since no one app fit all my needs. But moo.do actually seems flexible enough to handle everything I use those 3 apps for!

I've only been using it for a couple hours but I've already transferred everything I have from my other apps to it and I'm already fluent in using all the shortcuts. I also really like the flexibility you get from being able to add any number of panes emacs-style. I'm able to have a normal pane open focused on work stuff, a timeline pane open filtered for @today, and another normal pane open to capture random thoughts and to-dos I want to jot down. It's already made me insanely productive.

One nitpick I have is that I wish that searching on certain dates would also pick up equivalent references to that date. For example, I've entered some tasks as @wednesday but other tasks as @october1. It would be awesome if I were able to search on @wednesday and also pick up the tasks tagged @october1. Also having recurring tasks would be awesome too.
While the cartoon is cute, it's wrong. I don't remain logged into services I'm not using. If I'm not doing banking right now, I'm not logged into my bank account. I don't have my browser remember my password, either, so I have to enter it every time I go to their website. I can also locally encrypt data on my drive if I feel it would benefit me. I realize many people are lazy about these things, but I like having the option to not be. (I also don't use many of those services because they are big security risks.)
Nature lost species all the time throughout history, and the world survived. I'd say, there are so many variables that the ecosystem can surely adapt to the loss of any particular species.
This was submitted 4 days ago [1], and then was deleted. Anyone know what was up with that?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8368186
RenderComponentToString() – Render a component to its initial HTML
One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention is infrasound[1], which is sound so low that it can potentially damage the human body. Some of the newer non-lethal weapons the US military use for crowd control include a directional infrasound "gun" that basically vibrates your inner organs fast enough to make everyone super nauseous.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound
Octo-ber: A CHIP-8 Game Jam
Will data culled from here be used in Bing Predicts?

( http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2014/06/11/how-does-bing-pre... )
This is an odd, random thing to be on the front page. Did any event in particular happen to make this come up?
How not to do tech support or ‘When Evernote acts like Comcast’
I don't dream in code, but sometimes I think in code. I find myself converting non-tech issues into syntax, and analyzing it for potential 'bug fixes' until I snap out of it and realize how weird that is.
I've been interested in the ITP program [0] for awhile and would be curious to hear any graduates' responses to this article...

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisch_School_of_the_Arts#Intera...
Root, ClockworkMod-based Recovery Now Available for Sony Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact
Sure, but you then end up with two entirely divergent software ecosystems.

As it stands two people, one of whom uses Linux/LibreOffice/GIMP and another who uses Windows/MS Office/Photoshop are able (bar some possible formatting issues) to share data and collaborate together because they can share files via dropbox or USB dongles.

Once Photoshop and Office move entirely to the cloud there will no longer necessarily be "files" to share.
Adventure time – Sweet dreams
Wouldn't Bayesian filter be better suited? There must be a reason Spam Filter use them instead of Neural Networks.
Eskimo – Node Boilerplate Framework for Rapid MVPs
note: the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact are still unavailable in many markets and they haven’t made their way to U.S. carriers
Yes it was a total and utter failure as I recall: ipredict.msnbc.com

http://web.archive.org/web/20080820025756/http://ipredict.ms...
I deleted it shortly after submitting it, because the demo crashed and we didn't want to waste such a great opportunity on HN on a failed demo.

I know it's not perfect... But heh. Hope it's ok.
I understand prediction markets are illegal in some countries, but ipredict.co.nz is very popular here and is often covered in mainstream media.
No vacation time, no overtime pay, unreasonable working hours, and so on.
I know that Randall is focussing on the stored credentials aspect, but the wider picture remains true - local credentials don't matter at all for an average user, because everything that matters is stored and operated remotely.
I suspect this will start hitting problems when users discover that lots of sites break in unexpected or mysterious ways when run in "Super Private Mode" or whatever they call it. Tor is blocked or treated suspiciously by a LOT of different sites. It's not at all a free upgrade.
مناسك الحج بث مباشر 2014 مشاهدة الحجاج على جبل عرفات بالفيديو يوتيوب 1435
Yii 2.0 RC is released
OS X Bash Update 1.0
Throw Away the Password to Your AWS Account
Interesting, when I was at GoDaddy (Website Builder), it seems Facebook had implemented not only a per token limit, but application limits as well that we hit pretty easily. Does Instagram not have the same kind of limits?

For those curious, IIRC it took a while to get our account's limits raised, and we had to implement some request caching to stay under the limits as much as possible. All around, it was interesting.
Fix has been released: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1769
A few comments discuss the complete eradication of all mosquitoes, and the impact that would have. It is worth noting that only a few of the various mosquito species are vectors for most of the diseases we tend to care about, and as such the complete eradication of all mosquitoes is not necessary.

You can eradicate just those species in order to remove the disease vectors, and replace them at the same time with a different mosquito that has a similar ecological role.

Of course we don't actually know if disease-vector mosquitoes play a different role than non-disease-vector mosquitoes, but the premise need not be the removal of all mosquitoes.
Isn't this just a cellular mesh network? How does it compare to wifi mesh networking as far as range, security and usefulness? I'd like to see more of these decentralized alternatives to monopoly infrastructure providers, I'm just not sure how feasible they are.
This was downvoted but I feel this is an important counter-argument (open source vs closed systems), even if not articulated well.
Wait, the sound caused the grass to catch fire?!
Anyone have a zsh completion file for t?
_up we evaluated thoroughly perceptron which are somewhat close to Bayesian networks. Basically a perceptron is a one layer NN and is therefore quite similar to a bayesian network in the fact that it encodes a linear regression.

That being said... studying bayesian networks more thoroughly might raise better results indeed. Don't know though if Gmail is using bayesian networks or deep learning?
Could you tell me what sort of problems you were experiencing? I'm more than happy to take bug reports at hpn-ssh@psc.edu.
Dealers use moisture barrier bags that are heat sealed now as apparently dogs can detect vacuum sealed bags though unclear if it's outside contamination, like somebody putting together a package in a room full of weed shavings or smoke.
Unlimited Vacation Time Makes Sense in a Post Clock-Punch Economy
Sarcasm in any form is harmful to discourse and ruins communities.

I bristle whenever I see someone responding to a popular opinion on Reddit with a sarcastic "But... but...!" anti-comment.
There are limited mosquito species that carry malaria, and only the females bite humans. Those insects have specific wing-beat frequencies and a limited range of sizes. So it's possible to build "photonic fences" - sets of detectors to detect those specific mosquitos and then shoot them with a laser.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser

If you make these cheap enough amd deploy them widely enough you'd cut down on the problem populations.
Can't we kill off mosquitoes and then release ones who can't drink blood? I guess they'll still reproduce, albeit slower.
Be careful; most of NVidia's consumer cards only support single-precision FP at anything close to "full" speed - the 980 I believe runs at 1/32 speed.
Wonderful news. I am particularly looking forward to having torified connection in a browser with some continuity and customization.
The bundles are stripped of customizations and I find it inconvenient to bring along bookmarks and chosen extensions manually at every upgrade of the bundle.

I realize it's often for good reason that the bundles are minimalistic, but I see no fundamental reason why I should have to relinquish bookmarks and personal settings to stay anonymous, and it would be great if this could spur a greater drive to make it clear what extensions are safe or new browser architecture that would make it safe to use add-ons in general with Tor.
Argentina Photo Gallery: Walking the Black River Valley
When you really stop to think about it, the amount of things in our lives that depend on the weather are overwhelming.
explanation by 'Ryan' on the linked page:

Wait - are you concluding that completely randomized access is the same speed as sequential for very large cases? That would be very surprising!!

What's the range of rand()? If it's 32k that would mean you're just shuffling the first 32k items and doing basically sequential reads for most items in the large case, and the per-item avg would become very close to the sequential case. This matches your data very well.
Nope they don't... at least not for now :)
A little research turns up an estimate of 115 million households in the US, divided into not quite 42000 5-digit zip codes. That's about 2750 households per zip code.

Of course this doesn't account for business addresses or multi-unit buildings, but 2-3000 addresses seems to be a reasonable estimate.
Spyware executive arrested, allegedly marketed mobile app for “stalkers”
I am the author. Honestly, I initially released them without any sort of license - entirely free from any sort of license restriction. People don't seem to understand that so I said they have a BSD license on them. Personally, the license is kind of a moot point (in my view) as the once you patch OpenSSH with them the code is subsumed by the license used by OpenSSH. The only but that might be up in the air is the aes-ctr cipher. In any case I'm trying to find the cycles to include the license and then incorporate it into all of the bits and then build new packages for sourceforge. In the mean time, take my word (as the author) regarding the license. It's free and open. Just keep the attribution. Send me mail at hpn-ssh@psc.edu for identity confirmation if you like.
Now you just need a prototyping service which has this standard library in stock, ready to be loaded into a pick and place machine.

It's amusing to see the world of transistors reduced to one general purpose transistor, and one FET, each in N and P polarity.
System Requirements
OS X Mavericks v10.9.5 or later

so, they're not updating older machines? My partner still runs Snow Leopard 10.6.8!
There are plenty of brilliant Nobel prize laureates who make elementary mistakes on a regular basis. Tyler Cowen and Milton Friedman to name two. So it's not inconceivable that Krugman made a basic mistake here. (He didn't in this case, but not because he's too smart to make mistakes.)
That is very interesting stuff - any books you recommend on the subject?
How Big Data Is Changing Medicine
I would liken Yelp to be closer to organized crime than Uber. Yelp subtly shakes down businesses as part of their revenue through the "People love us on Yelp" program to earn the sticker on their business and because of the perception Yelp creates that paying customers will show up higher on the search results page and with a higher Yelp rating.

It has been documented that Yelp actively solicits sponsorship fees that not only help earn these stickers but also subsequently serve to boost business rankings and ratings.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/11/business/fi-lazarus1...

[2] http://consumerist.com/2014/09/04/appeals-court-yelps-ad-tea... <-read the details on what the court defined as "hard bargaining" vs "extortion"

[3] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-clie...
Infrasound is about a specific frequency range of sound which isn't audible but still carries energy (which is why it can be dangerous).

This article was about a wideband sound that was so loud that it defies comparison. Loudness is related to the amplitude, or "height" of the wave, not frequency.