Hacker News Reader

bodskion In London 'Guardians' live in empty office buildings

"There are some hitches. No parties are allowed. She needs permission to go on vacation. There is a hole in the kitchen ceiling. She had to paint over a swath of graffiti. The four-week notice to move out can come any time."

So, apart from the vacation part, pretty much the same as renting privately in the UK then.

bodskion A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall

Be careful, the UK's total external debt has exceeded 10 trillion[0]. We have huge financial sector debt here and are worse exposed to financial shock from the banking system than almost all countries globally.

Agreed that getting out of the USD hegemony is inevitable. As to whether it will be an orderly transition, I'd say that is far from assured, especially in the UK.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_d...

bodskion Apple's A7 is Made By Samsung

I wouldn't be too sure! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Engineering

bodskion Cello: Higher level programming in C

Wow, thanks! A headless Eclipse 'server' and command protocol! I can't believe I've not come across that project before.

bodskion Cello: Higher level programming in C

MPS sounds more like some kind of equivalent to Xtext, i.e. for ease of producing and and hosting DSLs. Tools like Xtext and MPS actually tie you in to their host environments (Eclipse and IntelliJ respectively).

What I took GP to mean, and indeed what Yegge's Grok appears to aim for, is the need for a universal modelling framework 'standard' for languages, tools and runtimes. Some kind of equivalent to LLVM but in the 'other direction' for modelling language semantics instead of code. Once a tool (e.g. editor) implements that standard it is able to 'plug in' to any tooling that also implements the standard. Potentially eliminating huge amounts of duplicated effort for tool makers etc.

bodskion Cello: Higher level programming in C

Turning up blanks here trying to find any kind of project site for it, looks to be internal for now.

I've long wanted to see something like an Eclipse daemon offering tool support to external editors etc. Ensime [1] does something along these lines, getting Scala' compiler functionality into Emacs using the Swank protocol from Slime [2].

[1]https://github.com/aemoncannon/ensime

[2]http://aemoncannon.github.io/ensime/#tth_sEcC

bodskion Cello: Higher level programming in C

Steve Yegge at Google is/was involved in a project called 'Grok' which sounds pretty similar to that. I really hope it catches on also.

http://bsumm.net/2012/08/11/steve-yegge-and-grok.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4371267

bodskion Alternative Internet

Tonika, linked to in the OP list, is created by one of the creators of Kademlia. (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/5ttt.org/)

bodskion XOR Linked List

P2P simulation, just what I am getting into right now. Interested to know if you... have made/intend to make, any code available.

bodskion Judge Alsup asks Oracle/Google to brief API issue in light of new EU ruling

Phew...

...and for once common sense seems to have been enacted. Props to Alsup and the EU court for this :-)

The spirit of Borland still lives:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int....

bodskion SpaceX test firing the Falcon 9

Countdown has resumed (~12 minutes)

bodskion Oracle v. Google: "the value of this case keeps getting smaller and smaller"

To me Mueller has an obvious bias against Google and Android and many in the FOSS community have called him out for behaving like a shill.

This post has more on the story and Mueller has not denied it's veracity:

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-is-patent-expertblogger-f...

"He says that he and Microsoft have worked together more than once, but that because of a confidentiality agreement with the company, he can’t elaborate on the details of that relationship."

Mueller buries his bias and sensationalism amongst otherwise insightful analysis. He also offers no opportunity for rebuttal on his blog (comments are always disabled).

bodskion Set of 5 non-trasitive dice shows some remarkable properties (video)

If you watch the video further, James explains that there is in fact a second 'chain' of victory, which is memorised using the colours in alphabetical order.

bodskion Task Dispatch and Nonblocking IO in Scala

Follow up thoughts from Miles Sabin, expert group member for JSR-51 (Java Nio):

https://plus.google.com/117117878292459457922/posts/hX2AZup1...

bodskion The LMAX Architecture - 100K TPS at Less than 1ms Latency

Cliff Click makes a good post [1] discussing the LMAX/Disruptor architecture and how it can give large performance gains in specific circumstances (such as those generally encountered by LMAX). In particular, Disruptor works best when there is a one-to-one ratio of disruptor threads and cpu cores. Great to see Cliff rolling up his sleeves and looking into this stuff from LMAX.

Additionally Cliff points out that there really needs to be some kind of standard CPU/Socket affinity API for VMs so that the relevant threads can share L3/L2 cache and reduce bus saturation. The Managed Runtime Initiative [2] is an interesting early effort to address this and other VM common concerns.

Edit: Looks like memory latency (not bus saturation) is the big issue if producer and consumer threads end up on different CPU sockets, hence Cliff's call for an explicit CPU/socket affinity API.

[1] http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2011-09-23-a-pair-of-s... (scroll down to Disruptor section)

[2] http://www.managedruntime.org/

bodskion MS going after ChromeOS on patents too

Microsoft seems to be getting more and more barefaced about this as time goes on.

Only the other day patent 'analyst' Florian Mueller disclosed funding from Microsoft to write a report on FRAND licensing. He then subsequently admitted that he and Microsoft "...have worked together more than once, but that because of a confidentiality agreement with the company, he can’t elaborate on the details of that relationship..." [1].

Microsoft never really changed their spots, they just switched tactics.

[1] http://paidcontent.org/article/419-is-patent-expertblogger-f...

bodskion Cringely predicts the second coming of Java

I agree that the JVM memory usage is a problem, but also because we are running out of memory bandwidth on modern architectures for many use cases.

While switching to immutable state and using things like STM can help in many ways in order to program all these cores that we are getting thrown at us, we pay with the memory bandwidth costs. Doing this stuff on the JVM surely makes the problem worse.

As VMs as well as multi-core and functional style become more popular I can't help feeling we need typical memory bandwidth of new systems to grow a bit faster.

bodskion Android and the false promises of openness

The OP states further down that the issue they have is with the carrier:

"I have to agree that my carrier is more to blame than Google or Android. After all, the facebook app isn't in the android source tree. It was introduced and locked in by my carrier.

My grippe is more about Android being touted left and right as a the first Open mobile platform while when it reaches the end user it's been locked by the carrier.

But indeed, my diatribe should have been more targeted to my carrier."

bodskion A reboot of PHP: keep the philosophy, improve the syntax with the jvm

Interesting, this is by Rémi Forax who is involved in the Asm Java bytecode manipulation library[1] as well as hacking on all kinds of other Java related stuff.

He's got a blog post here with some initial performance tests:

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/forax/archive/2011/09/04/hotspo...

Looks really fast when using type annotation (edit: faster than Java?!). Interestingly he is using the upcoming -hsx Hotspot server flag which makes a big difference in speed.

[1] http://asm.ow2.org/

bodskion Make a Dodecahedron from Post-it Notes

This is absolutely the kind of thing I come to HN for (amongst technical discussions, interesting new projects etc). I have seen some of the singingbanana guy's videos before somewhere, full of enthusiasm and good explanations, he'd make a great teacher.

Possibly this is falling victim to overzealous flagging as people go through the list.

Keep on posting Colin, I often find the stuff you post here on HN to be interesting to me.

bodskion The Teacher

I've never been inspired to do programming from a video more than when watching Sussman doing the HP SICP lectures with Hal Abelson. You can feel him barely contain his enthusiasm for the subject. Truly infectious and all you need to get a boost in order to plough into the next chapter of SICP :-)

I'd love to see Gerry Sussman's talk from Strangeloop this year, does anyone know if a video is likely to be available at some point?

bodskion Scala use is less good than Java use for at least half of all Java projects

I agree, the only 'rebuttal' to fogus comment seems to be saying that he is tone deaf and bad at communicating with no explanation of why. The flagging of his comments seems to be other politics at work with no explanation of what they are.

bodskion JVM Language Summit 2011 Videos

Anyone else find Scala representation conspicuous by its absence at the JVM lang summit this year?

From what I can see there's been no talk relating to Scala and the challenges it has overcome and/or faces regarding its use of the JVM. Maybe, for now it has all been said and Scala is happily ploughing forward.

I read recently a quote from Martin Odersky [1] claiming that the virtual extensions methods (aka public defender methods) proposed by Brian Goetz et al comes tantalisingly close (but not quite) to allowing Scala to drop some of its class bloat from its libraries and runtime. It'd be great to see some Scala guys doing some talks on this kind of thing. Perhaps they're all busy covering the other conferences right now.

Similarly I don't see any representatives in the Project lambda mailing list speaking up for Scala's interests with regards to the changes to the JVM that need to be decided for Java 8. I'd hate to see comments and suggestions being made towards accommodating Scala but being rejected since its too late in the game w.r.t. Java 8. From what I can see opportunities to affect the JVM's evolution don't happen often.

I'm sure Martin et al are doing what they feel is necessary, it would be nice to be able follow the progress somewhere though!

[1] http://www.infoq.com/interviews/martin-odersky-scala-future

bodskion $25 PC priced like a textbook, works with old analog TVs

Regarding the GPU (BCM2763?):

Can you share any more details on the user space situation? Will there be Xorg/Mesa/Gallium support? Will you be relying on Broadcom's driver team for updates, if any, or do you guys have driver source under NDA with which you can support the GPU in future?

This seems to be the biggest concern for many who are looking at the platform. Just trying to gauge what kind of useful lifespan this board will have with regards to keeping an up to date Linux distro running on it. There's going to be a lot of flux and ABI changes ahead in the Linux graphics stack. Some more GPU details on your Wiki would be great if you have them available.

bodskion Scala 2.9.1 final - faster compilation and many other improvements

Aye, 64-bit hotspot with implicit -server switch, but going on your astonishment I took a look and it seems the 0.5s time is only achieved with fsc running from previous runs of the REPL. So from cold, i.e. no fsc running it takes about 3 seconds. 2.9.0-1 was taking 7-8 seconds to get the REPL prompt regardless of whether fsc was running already, so this is still like night and day for me :-)

Amongst other things it looks like Paul Phillips (a.k.a extempore) has done a lot of optimisation work. This looks like a pretty important one:

https://codereview.scala-lang.org/fisheye/changelog/scala-sv...

bodskion Scala 2.9.1 final - faster compilation and many other improvements

scala interpreter/REPL is starting up in about 0.5 seconds now compared to 7-8 seconds with 2.9.0.1 on my system using Sun JDK 64-bit.

System scripting in Scala suddenly got a lot more appealing :-)

bodskion Apple deals massive patent blow to HTC, Android in serious trouble

"a processing unit coupled to the input device, the output device, and the memory for controlling the execution of the program routines."

That sounds like you have just described pretty much any user facing computer ever built. Can you explain how this narrows the claims of the patent in any significant way?

bodskion 53 VCs from 40 firms send letter opposing PROTECT IP

  if (freedom.outlawed())
      assert !outlaw == !free

bodskion You should learn to type (properly)

Switch layout to Dvorak maybe? It will give you a fresh start and allow you to type fast with less finger travel and less pain, not necessarily any faster though.

Also will infuriate your co-workers and family members when they come to borrow your machine!

bodskion A Look Inside the Process of One of the World’s Most Efficient Studiers

"... well, probably never look at them. It's the act of writing the summary that's useful."

Very true. I'd say that writing out by hand works best, as opposed to typing it though.