skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't go as far as saying that I've cracked because I explained a joke. Something I called an eccentricity since I do realize it is a little out there. Besides that, I just came up with the "totalitarian government" thing, and I thought my explanatory comment was a more suitable place to extrapolate into the small story.

But, it is intrinsically me to worry too much. Sardonic fun.

I don't know why I've explained here... but in real life the almost-joke would stop the conversation before there was even a debate. Which is valuable to me because hearing people's inane remarks is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard.

I enjoy the company here.
It's not "old is bad," but "avoiding unnecessary confusion is good."
This is a great open source tool. Very useful.
A large number of service providers, including lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and consultants, have asked to attend the event. While I personally love my lawyer and accountant, we can’t allow every service provider in the world into the event or it will be 90% service providers. In order to resolve this issue, I’ve come up with a revolutionary concept: charge the service providers to attend the event. In fact, that is the business model of the Open Angel Forum: free for startups, free for angel investors and very expensive for service providers.

Makes sense to me.
My original point was that "These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world." is pretty silly. For one, 'real-time web' isn't hard, and secondly, there are people who have been doing it for years.

I hate this trend of coming up with fantastic buzz words and making people believe they're something new/hard/fantastic.
>>It seems a bit stupid that to see more copies you need to have a high volume to crack into a best selling list.

Why do you say it is stupid ?
Shouldn't a "best selling list" be created based on the definition of a "best selling list" ?

Btw rankings based on the standard "best seller" definition cannot be maniuplated the way that rankings based on "ratings" can be manipulated.

imo Apple's current ranking policy - ranking by best-seller-list and also ranking by most-revenue-earned (i.e. the top grossing list) - is good.
If you don't mind using ruby, you can use git remote branch

http://grb.rubyforge.org/

It has got many timesaving tricks.
Umm...actually, this just replaces the little AC -> USB adapters that many devices come with already. I'd rather have it integrated into the wall so I don't have to worry about losing it.

Of course, I still have to remember the cord. I think wireless data and power is the future.
Can raise you in the rank.
That has nothing to do with the semantics of passing parameters to functions.

def swap(a,b):
a,b = b,a

does not work.
We ran some numbers comparing Amazon's ebook pricing to BN, Sony and other retailers, and found that Amazon's prices were the lowest (or matched the lowest) for 74% of the 11K ebooks we looked at: http://inkmesh.com/blog/2009/11/30/amazon-barnes-and-noble-s.... So not only is Amazon losing money on ebooks, it is also competing mostly with itself in pushing ebook prices even lower.

Also worth mentioning - 92k of the 350k Kindle titles available on Amazon.com are priced above 9.99, so Amazon might not be losing as much money as the original study suggests.
Level 5 is when you either give up and quit, or get fired for rocking the boat and trying to raise standards (while implicitly making other people look bad because you do better work than them). Sometimes, those two events are temporally convergent.

And then you find a better job. So it works out.
With a physical book, since it (1) costs money to make the book, and (2) rapid iteration of content is difficult, there's a huge infrastructure (editors, agents, proofreaders) to select the "good" from the "bad".

With electronic publishing, you just let the crowd do the selection. And it costs virtually nothing to store each additional book.

I hope we move to a web-like world for e-books where an author can publish and charge for a book after eliminating the middleman.

Think about it: without the "Amazon tax", e-books would cost only 33% of what they do now (eliminating Amazon's cut).

Also the percentage-based commission makes no sense. It costs Amazon the same to store/tranfer a book that costs $100 and a book that costs $10. A $1/book "shipping fee" would be more reasonable.

The situation is ripe for an execution-oriented company like Google to move in and kick Amazon.
And before that Wurdle, which is a ridiculously popular puzzle title.
>"This "climatologists may be incentivised to spread FUD b/c it brings fame and more grant money" bit doesn't pass the smell test for me. If this is the true motivation of climatologists, then why aren't more of them going for the fame and think-tank money available to them by expressing dissent?"

Many people go into environmental science because they are environmentalists. You get the same results as when you send a group of Catholic priests to investigate the virgin birth.

Or, picking on my own biases, it is like sending a bunch of libertarian economists to estimate the utility of a government program.

Also, the billions that governments are spending on climate change policy and research easily dwarfs money on the other side. That's a bit of FUD spread by the alarmists that doesn't pass the smell test.

Trust, but verify.
My guess is that book publishers will get roaylly pissed if ebooks got too disruptive (too cheap or too much oryalty going to authors) and then would strong-arm writers into not doing any digital sales at all.

It's better to wait till more books are sold in electronic form than dead-tree form and then dictate your own conditions to publishers.

At least that's what I want to think, Bezos seems like a nice fellow so I feel like finding a good reason for him keeping 65%.
Wish this site used some silverlight sexiness for fast continuous zooming
Bloomberg Technology Embraces Baseball
The kindles might cost more and come with recurring subscription though.
It's MIT-licensed, which is great. I don't so much need a web interface to grep on my own servers, but would very much like to embed something like this into my product.

I can imagine it would be extremely useful to an ops team; my whole life is driven off my browser bookmark bar, and this presumably lets people bookmark server logs.

Under the hood, this is single-threaded EventMachine, using EventMachine::popen to relay output from processes to the client, and HTTP chunked encoding to push results to the browser. It's HTTP Basic Auth only, and it runs Actual Unix Commands, so make that password good.

Nicely done!
If your starting point is: Amazon exists and has a huge amount of customers, and a bunch of Kindles have been sold, sure the distribution cost is low. But that's not Bezos' starting point, is it?
Does it make sense to require bash as a dependency for a program that ignorantly hardcoded it in a two-line shell script in its test suite?

(I mean, I'd just patch it in the port, but it's annoying in the same way as people sending e-mail wrapped inside a Word file for no reason.)
Bluetile - a modern tiling window manager with a gentle learning curve
Because having an oracle that can verify if a partial password guess is correct makes it trivially bruteforce-able.
The UL is a certification program, They can't really tell you what you can/can't install in your own home. They can't even tell you what you can/can't sell to someone else. The issue is that most distributors won't buy/sell things w/o UL approval (for good reason). I'd most certainly guess that the creators have had them in their home for some time.

When I worked in commercial electronics, it was very typical for engineers to install development products in their home, long before UL approval.
You have a configuration space, and you have a set of behaviour you want to associate with different configurations. Inheritance bundles the behaviour into something (a class) and lets you combine and override as necessary. But multiple inheritance doesn't really make your life easier - you still need to work out the order of precedence, which ancestor (trait) takes effect, etc. All this is essential complexity buried behind an ontological classification scheme that wasn't really designed for it, adding in inessential complexity.

Using a tool adapted to the job really can make life easier though.
Cranky pants. :)

How would the dispatch table get corrupted? If the dispatch table is compiled down into an executable in exactly the same manner an if/else would be, then I can't think of a reasonable corruption vector that would corrupt a compiled-in dispatch table, but not a similarly compiled-in if/else block of code.

As for an off-by-one, that /never/ happens in an if-else block either, and as long as you do bounds checking, you might call the wrong function, but that's not a 'random pointer address'.

You have a very good point that this technique doesn't actually lessen program complexity. It does, however, help the fragmented business logic into tables that are more easily dealt with when the business end changes.

The 'error of some kind' is just as much an error as a missing 'else' in a long if/else if/else if block or a 'default' section in a switch.
For some context:

54 clients.each(function(c) {
55 if (c != client)
56 c.connection.send(client.name + ": " + data);
57 });

Line 55 is just there as a check to prevent echoing back the message to the client that sent it (as presumably the message they type will already be on their screen/terminal, if they are connected with netcat as the author suggests).
Wikipedia tends to be pretty poor on historical board games, as a lot of populist books have been written on the topic which focus more on entertainment rather than accuracy.

Here's an original source Fulke's period work on the topic:
http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/fulke.html

And here's a reconstruction filling in gaps in Fulke using other primary sources:
http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/game-recon-rhythbasics.html
Medical devices lag in iPod age
What a great blog!

I'm a n00b wrt SIMD, but is it really better to do unaligned loads instead of aligned loads + shift or shuffle?

According to latency tables on Core 2 loading 128 bits from memory to an SSE register

* movdqa: latency of 3cy, reciprocal latency 1cy
* movdqu: latency of 3-8cy, reciprocal latency 4cy

Also movdqu seems to have 9 µops vs. only 1 µops for movdqa. Wouldn't there be bad throughput on those chunks of 4 movdqu?

[All this only according to Intel Manuals and Agner's tables, aka no testing]

How do you guys test implementation performance?

Thanks!
Only if they store more than one combination of characters.
I think this is the central question though - are app store customers price sensitive at those levels? His calculations assume they are not, common "wisdom" assumes they are. Now I need to ask where is the data? The one app I have (not a game) that does any sales to speak of, but so low it probably is not statistically significant, suggest they may not be - at least going from .99 to 1.99.
1. you are pretending that all real time applications are equally hard, they arent, etherpad has a level of complexity beyond most things people do.

2. because people have been doing it for a long time means it isnt hard? there isnt any way to read that that makes any sense, brain surgeons have been around a while, its still pretty hard.

like most people who complain about buzzwords you are actually putting more emphasis on the 'buzzwords' than the actual point.
Except, historically that's absolutely wrong. Since the advent of printing, the Bible has been the most widely published book in the world because the masses, as they are, have historically been religious people.
Huh? He comes right out and says that you need to be .99 to break the top 50. The problem is, being .99 isn't enough to get you in the top 50, and at that price point, you're betting the farm to get there.
Yet another way to generate pretty pictures using math.
Well, I'm not 100% sure he's referring to the Kindle here. Amazon Also operates CreateSpace where you can send them your text/ music/ movie plus cover artwork and have them turn it into a book/ CD/ DVD, which can be sold either through Amazon.com or your CreateSpace 'e-store' - not very customisable and crap looking, but you do keep a larger share of the revenue. If intended for sale, copies are then produced on demand, as they are ordered.

I have used the service a few times for short runs of things that needed a professional look but only a small number of copies, and the quality is good. There's an adjustable pricing scale whereby the printing/duplication cost is fixed and then Amazon takes their large percentage based on the profit above that, so it's less good value than having your copies pre-printed and selling them yourself (eg CDs if you are in a band), but being able to offload all your fulfillment and distribution to a retailer with very high brand integrity (ie that so many people trust with their payment info) is worth it in my view. If you have a niche market and know how to reach it, it may be a better deal than trying to interest a publishing company.

Incidentally, it's also a handy thing for cheap specialist printing, eg documentation or a pile of disparate research material that you'd like to have in book form but may not need that many copies of, for which a regular printing company would charge a ton in setup costs.
I think it's the perfect time for authors to organize and to do something to push the future book platform to their direction.

If they organize they would have a huge marketing clout , and combine that with some company that works with some business model that they like , and offers distribution etc... could make a very powerfull offer.
movdqu is 2 issue cycles, not 4. What he may be alluding is to the huge cost for loading across a cacheline, which is ~14 issue cycles (equivalent to an L1 cache miss). This doesn't apply to loads which are exactly split across a cacheline, i.e. 8 bytes on each side of the cacheline. You should be able to use this information to figure out how unaligned loads are implemented on all Intel chips.

It may be worthwhile for Core 2 to do a bunch of aligned loads and palignr them together, but I didn't feel like testing, as it would certainly have been slower on my i7. Patches welcome ;)
We're aware of the problem and sorry about the annoyance. It's a targeted attack, so normal solutions to prevent this aren't going to work. We'll figure it out, though.

edit: the spam listings should be gone within the hour.
I'm getting very different results when I run these tests. At prime time 7 pm to 9 pm pacific time on weekdays is different than sundays at noon.
I remember printing that. Thanks for the blast from the past! :)
What about cases where you basically want the user to specify the condition at runtime, with what amounts to a Turing-complete language for writing those conditions? In the Tivo example, pretend you wanted users to be able to go up to the device and say "only record shows where one of the lexicographical permutations of the length in minutes is a prime number." The only way to avoid it is not to avoid it: to create a user-extension language with its own compiler, and a VM embedded into the program.
Troubled £12bn NHS IT system to be scaled back
You don't have to earn all your revenue just on purchases of the application.

It is also possible to sell virtual goods from within your (cheap or even free) application:

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/11/30/ngmocos-free-to-...
Basics of using Twitter’s API
E.g. if I have a homebrew energy system that doesn't touch a grid, am I free to attach anything I want including such USB outlets?

It needs to meet the building codes if you ever plan to sell your house or collect from your insurance policy if it burns down.
The first thought I had on seeing the rectangular board is that this would make a fine iPhone application. Thanks for the interesting find.
Xmonad + bluetile = making tiling windowing accessible to new users
You're probably right. Maybe I'll take a break from commenting on HN.

I find the recent trends in the industry to be extremely depressing.
The actual recipe for scrapple (simmer a cleaned pigs head in broth, pick the meat off, return it to the (now) stock, and cook down) is pretty close to the recipe for Testa, italian "head cheese" (leave out the corn or graham or whatever, and let it set up in its own gelatin).

A staple of charcuterie boards at upscale restaurants. If I had a good source of pig heads, I'd definitely make one; it's really good. The meat from the pig head is really nice, and nothing at all like offal, which grosses me out.
Arthur Prior
Like CD? BluRay? DVD? Patents don't stop things from being implemented. Sounds like propaganda to me.
I'd like to know how their collections are sorted. I think the hard problem in all this is, given a vast data set, find the parameters that give the optimal organizational scheme. But all the pretty transitions are a nice touch :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis
As you noted, most captchas are crackable. This is the reason we have decided not to implement one. It's common thought that captchas reduce spam -- which they do -- but they do so by reducing total signups (human and robot).

Personally, I'd rather deal with spam in craftier ways than prevent legitimate people from signing up.
Reno Airport has these - though, I found using the Apple AC->USB dongle worked a bit better at charging my iPhone for some reason - seemed to level up more quickly.
Your percentages are WAY off.

Bookstores get 40% off, distributors such as Ingram or Baker and Taylor get 60%. So distributors have to run all aspects of billing and order fulfillment and shipment in return for 20% .

Anything over that you have to buy non-returnable or do via special sales (book clubs for instance get more of a discount but buy non-returnable and minimum order size 5000 or 10K books at a time) usually direct from the publisher.

10% of the cover price does NOT go to the author, unless he is a bigshot (famous/celebrity) or has a surefire franchise (Stephen King level).

Usually, assuming the publisher is fair, the author gets a percentage of the NET amount the publisher gets. Royalties are easy to calculate these days thanks to software for publishers that keeps track of that. Example: $19.95 retail, publisher gets $12.00, author at 10% gets $1.20 (not $2.00 ). Sometimes foreign language rights are handled differently, sometimes they are the same.

Amazon is making the argument that ebook pricing is highly elastic - that if ebooks on LISP programming were 1/10th the price, I would buy 10 times as many of them.

Yet books and ebooks have to compete for time and attention against TV, Internet surfing, movies, and my need to sleep; which no doubt explains publishers' wariness.
How Many Disabled Web Users Are There?
For a single process bit of typeable entropy from our OpenBSD friends, try:

openssl -rand base64 12

On your favorite Unix.
Thanks for starting this thread.

I am a Coop CS student from Quebec Canada looking for a Summer internship around Toronto or Ottawa.
I suspect that the outlet will give you more power than that anyway - the amperage limits restrict what devices should expect to get, not what hubs may provide them with.
...will find lots of evidence for miscegenation, etc. (To which I say, sure, but what of it?)

Thank you for the explanation. I'd love to know more about my DNA, specially if it says that I have a lot of far relatives around the world, I can't understand that's a problem.
your insights are really helpful. the situation i'm concerned about is quite convoluted (for me). no one without a work-permit has worked _within_ the us, but compensation for a software product was paid directly to the individual. this involved that individual signing a W8BEN. maybe it makes sense for me to contact a lawyer at this point. thanks again,

*edit: i don't know if anyone else is reading this thread, but references for a trustworthy lawyer who can discuss a specific situation via email would be welcome.
thanks. if that's your page you may want to fix a small error - a "3" in the example on geomteric proportions should be "2".
Digital publication is going to kill the B&M industry, at least as it exists now, anyway.

The purpose served by the publishers, for the author, was to invest in a young, talented author's career. Publishing houses knew that they were losing money, but the purpose of doing so was to build a relationship so that, once the author had built a reputation and was a money-winner, the investment would pay off.

Now, advances are at McDonalds rates and publicity budgets are nonexistent. The only thing they have to offer is distribution, and that can be handled electronically.
People always apply the laws of supply and demand oblivious to other factors. They say "well if we just lower the price, more people will buy these books".

That isn't necessarily true because people can only devote so much time to reading. Much of the investment a person makes in a book isn't money (at least not directly) it's time.

It's entirely possible that the price of books is set by other factors, such as competing books. People may largely decide they want a book, then shop around, and buy one. Which one they buy may have to do with pricing, in fact that may be the key factor in pricing (if I'm on the fence about two books, I'll go with the one that costs lest).

So you can't simply assume that "if the price is lowered enough publishers may earn less per unit, but could ultimately earn more in overall revenue and profit through a greater number of sales." It's quite probably untrue.

I'd actually argue that if you want to sell more books, you should make them shorter. Fewer pages will get the reader through it faster. I'm sure this will only work to a point, as nobody wants to pick up a "book" that feels more like a "pamphlet" but perhaps digital media (where all of your ebooks weigh the same as the Kindle you read them on) will change that too.
Definitely it needs other grammars. I wish to see Python as well whose grammar is advertised as very light. Also C++ (templates), and Perl (for a contrast with Python).
Wow, gorgeous! The structures in this image look like Hilbert curves: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/roots/polynomialroots05expi02....
Rational ignorance. The bash warnings about non-POSIX features have a reputation for being unreliable, so if I've only tested with bash (because I don't care enough to set up chroot) I shouldn't claim it works with any other shell.
It says he used Mathematica, which uses arbitrary-precision arithmetic.
Differentiating Worthiness and Sexiness for Product's Sake
I recommend the happy hacking keyboard professional 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard
If you click on a thumbnail, then on the "click here for this matrix" link, you get a bunch of additional information.
Oddly, no perl lovers have bashed other languages in this thread, and it would be great if someone could point out that at least one of the things I said were perl, python, ruby, or PHP idioms isn't actually an idiom. So maybe you should stay on the sidelines, since the coach hasn't called you into the game.

I do see that PHP is underrepresented in my list, and I just ran across one of PHP's most confusing idioms the other day. The LHS of list expansion assignment requiring the keyword list(), which looks like a function call. I can't count how many experienced programmers have asked me how this assignment to a function call works, which proves this is an idiom. And the opposite is a perl idiom: some functions in perl can operate as lvalues, like substr.
It Seems I have a Podcast Now
I remember seeing USB ports on cheap computers in '98 and you can still get normal to mini adapters like http://electronics.become.com/6ft-usbamini-b-device-usba-to-... that fit in those slots.

I don't believe the power spec has changed in that time.
In the StateMonad I can write a swap function in Haskell.
Pseudo-Phantoms
If you like this kind of game..