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CoffeeScript is really not *that* different than JavaScript. Just learn a couple new syntax rules for the same old things. Can you honestly glance over this and tell me it would be "difficult" for you to learn CoffeeScript after already knowing JavaScript?

It's frustrating. I work with jQuery/JavaScript daily. I want to contribute to the Chosen project (Chosen), but it's written in CoffeScript. I can't be bothered to learn coffee script to contribute. So I'm complaining on Slashdot instead.

Real time relativity is fairly complete and free, but limited to a moving observer in a static world

http://realtimerelativity.org/

Relspace is unfortunately commercial. It seems to be more intent on showing you what space looks like than educating on the concepts of SR, so accelerations are limited to extremely huge rather than insanely huge:

http://www.relspace.astahost.com/

My own (incomplete and probably still slightly incorrect) offering, based on html 5

http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/jsphys.html

If you would be interested in collaborating on something that shows some general relativistic effects at some point in the future, I'm all ears.

The end goal is an interactive textbook, so far it's just (somewhat buggy) simulations.

You're a month or so early for it to be useful (bugs galore, limited browser compatability (chrome and ff>4) and it's my first piece of programming over 50 lines or so), but feel free to keep an eye on it. Here's the preview:

http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/jsphys.html

If anyone else feels like popping in and taking a look/helping out you're most welcome. Even a critique/pointing out of mistakes at this stage is most appreciated.

On the subject of GR:

You'll need a heavy helping of calculus, including vector calculus. Decent linear algebra. Geometry and some understanding of tensors. There are a lot of books around that start from about that level.

Also there's some stanford lectures on youtube that may be useful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmf0bB38h0

A plain old spellchecker, like the one under discussion here, makes no attempt to guess what word was meant and assume a typo is a result of accidentally pressing keys near the intended ones..

Actually, no. It's not using either a plain spellchecker, or predictive text. It's just using a small fixed list of common errors.

This is using my Empythoned build, which is CPython compiled using Emscripten. The version up on the repository is a little outdated, and the one the PythonFiddle guys are using is even older, which is why a lot of the standard library doesn't work on theirs.

This is using my Empythoned build, which is CPython compiled using Emscripten. The version up on the repository is a little outdated, and the one the PythonFiddle guys are using is even older, which is why a lot of the standard library doesn't work on theirs.

Targeting Javascript is just a small portion of the Opa code, as you can see at the Opa repo.
Indeed, should the language you mention exist, it would be easy for Opa to target it.

The two-graphics-card scheme you're talking about was developed by nVidia; it is called "Optimus."

I know that atleast Intel offers a similar thing which integrated graphics and the option of switching between that and a separate one. And I have a system with two Radeon cards, so it's not only "Optimus" that does this.

There is an open source project to get this stuff to work with Linux/X11, called bumblebee. See here:

https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/

Aye, someone else also mentioned Bumblebee here. I don't know why I have totally missed Bumblebee when I Googled around. It looks interesting, but it has a flaw in that it is chipset specific: it doesn't even try to provide a general purpose solution. With atleast 3 different manufacturers offering these kinds of setups now a general purpose solution would seem like the proper long-term solution.

nVidia doesn't seem to have any plans to support it on Linux, with a open source driver or otherwise.

That is certainly extremely lame from them.

Personally I use bumblebee every time I want to clear my /usr, it works great! :)

Nvidia implementation is called optimus, and nvidia has already said "go fuck yourself" in response to "will you support this on linux".

Initial linux support is being carried out in the Bumblebee Project, bleeding edge branch is called Ironhide. I have no idea about the AMD version because I'm not affected by it.

Ha, captcha is "ashamed", as Nvidia should be for releasing this shit.

Nvidia implementation is called optimus, and nvidia has already said "go fuck yourself" in response to "will you support this on linux".

Initial linux support is being carried out in the Bumblebee Project, bleeding edge branch is called Ironhide. I have no idea about the AMD version because I'm not affected by it.

Ha, captcha is "ashamed", as Nvidia should be for releasing this shit.

The two-graphics-card scheme you're talking about was developed by nVidia; it is called "Optimus."

There is an open source project to get this stuff to work with Linux/X11, called bumblebee. See here:

https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/

If you want a more specific guide for using bumblebee with your specific laptop/distro combination, you may be able to find one if you look around. For example:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1763742

I can't vouche for bumblebee; I've never actually tried it myself. However, it seems to be exactly what you're looking for. Let's hope it's a solid project, as Optimus is becoming more and more popular and nVidia doesn't seem to have any plans to support it on Linux, with a open source driver or otherwise.

https://github.com/MostAwesomeDude
https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/MostAwesomeDude
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~csimpson/
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/csimpson/linux-2.6.git;a=summary

Your turn. Put up or shut up. >:3

Yeah, the Bamboo one is better IMHO cause it supports a web-cam strapped to the launcher so you can re-live the moment. https://github.com/crossroads/bamboo_punisher

I wonder if PHP has the same problem we do in Hadoop-land... the lack of enough qualified security people interested enough in a project to actually review code. For example, I'd love for someone with a clue to review Alfredo ( http://cloudera.github.com/alfredo/docs/latest/index.html ) before we build a dependency on it ( https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-7119 ) . But it seems as though getting the right people involved is extremely difficult. :(

You are right that Virgin would be unlikely to be permitted to output unencrypted HD content (where content is flagged to be protected) and with some companies no output may be permitted.

There were a couple of minor errors in your post regarding the fine details of the Freeview situation so I thought I would put an explanation on record:
1) the EPG is not encrypted only compressed (Huffman encoding).
2) there is no key but there are the Huffman tables which are a trade secret belonging to the BBC and they will only give them to you if sign the agreement to protect the content signalled as to be protected. You must not challenge the trade secret nature of the keys and the BBC also claims other rights over this data (IANAL but I there didn't seem to be any recognised intellectual property category (copyright [maybe at a stretch], patents, registered design, trade secret [I don't think this can be sustained when it has been published although perhaps the publisher can be in trouble) that they were claiming that made sense) and there are also other conditions. Products using the key must be Freeview HD certified so there is a massive range of additional requirements (recorders must be Freeview+HD certified which brings even more requirements).
3) Make a MythTV box, it can use the EPG and output the recordings in useful formats (DLNA direct to multiple TVs and PS3s). I think it would be difficult for the BBC to win actions against someone offering such a product commercially (although there would clearly be the need to license a number of patents particularly for the video codec etc.).
4) It's the same table as for Freesat which at least initially had different terms and conditions (it is actually somewhat stricter and more problematic for manufacturers than the Freeview certification which is part of the reason that you don't see more Freesat products).

Huffman table available here (and have been in the mythTV repository for a number of years) despite being trade secrets:
https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/blob/master/mythtv/libs/libmythtv/mpeg/freesat_tables.h

Firefox is getting close to the day where Google stops donating ... er advertising with them to the tune of millions a year (http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/) . At the end of that, they're going to be sitting in a version hole compared to their benefactor's product which is now a direct competitor. It seems to me, FF is doing whatever is necessary to make themselves look competitive when all of their opponents a) own the browser space on their own devices, b) own an OS or two that supports that browser natively and c) can get away with it because they all have monopolies in their own spaces but which all fall under a single general computing umbrella that makes them seem less like an overall monopoly.

Mozilla is in an extremely unenviable position of looking old and outdated because of any kind of real mobile support, behind in version numbers compared to ALL other browsers (ie9? Opera 11.5? Chrome 1.5 billion?). I remember when Firefox defiantly announced that they wouldn't support the iPhone when even Opera was able to make it work. Do I use Opera on my iPhone? No. Does it remind me that Opera is still relevant in the mobile space? Yes.

Mozilla is starting to remind me of an aging child star. This version thing is just them acting out to get attention. There's no reality shows for old browsers though, so they'd better start figuring out how to ingratiate their plugin developers or their only supporters are going to start writing Chromebug (Whaaaa? http://blog.getfirebug.com/category/chromebug/) and Ubiquity (Nahhh...hey! https://github.com/cosimo/ubiquity-chrome/)

It's not too late. Firefox could still release its own tablet (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/firefox-mobile-firefox-fennecomb-android-tablet-ipad,news-11489.html) - but they're going to have to do it before the money starts running out and that's going to require community support, plugin developers and everyone that they're alienating with these most recent moves.

You know, I first got started programming when I happened upon a left hand basic cartridge with an Atari 400 for $5 at a garage sale. It came with an attachable floppy disk drive that was DOA. Countless hours would be spent with a small black and white TV with me writing procedures. Should the power turn off, all that work was lost.

Despite growing up below the poverty line working on farms, I was able to go to college with enough grants based on need. This is where our paths diverge ... and I would not automatically assume that my four year degree at the University of Minnesota would make me a better programmer than yourself or anyone who taught themselves to code. But the important point of this is that when I interview (and I've held interviews for programmers to come onto my team many times) the interviewer is looking for you to prove that you will be a self motivated asset to the team. If you can put MIT or some prestigious school, they often lower their required threshold of proof. If you put U of MN there is still proof required -- after all there are some ~50k students at the U of MN and as such it would be entirely possible for some idiot to be herded through with the other cattle. So they just need to make sure I am not this idiot -- or at least not in the area they need me for. Now, when you have institution to back up your claim of skills, the proof requirement quickly becomes insurmountable.

So I will issue you a challenge and I will target the Ruby language and Rails framework. This probably isn't the best option for a job seeker (I think some Java with maybe Spring Framework would be better suited for a position) but this could result in proof. If you want reading material for any of these steps, I recommend the Pragmatic Programmer series on Ruby and Ruby on Rails (used it is quite cheap but here is a free alternative).

Step One: Learn Ruby. Ruby is a functional language that is very simple and easy to learn but difficult to completely master. The flexibility of the language seems to continually leave me with more and more options at my disposal. From mixins to domain specific languages, it just keeps on giving. I'm guessing with your background you're going to notice that some things in Ruby are slow. This is okay. As computers have gotten beefier, programmers have sacrificed performance and (to a large degree) memory in order to make code easier to maintain and write.

Step Two: Learn Rails. Rails is a very extensive framework that is again easy to learn. That tutorial should show you how to master concepts like quickly creating a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application for a blog or recipes (I forget). From here you have to use your imagination. Make something that is CRUD or some mutation of CRUD to demonstrate that you know how to utilize and extend this concept. You might use census data and experiment with new UI toys like Processing or HTML5's Canvas element. I think if you have access to some mildly interesting data that building a site you'd like to share would be a great idea (even if it is just in CRUD format). But get it to a state where you're proud of it.

Step Three: Github. Put your source on Github.

Step Four: Host your project on Heroku. You might buy a domain name if you're open to $12/year. I don't know how far you want to take this part. But get it so that people can access it.

Now once you've iterated over that a bunch

Agreed. I use two small applications ( http://github.com/kghose/chotha, http://github.com/kghose/jabda) and I moved them from Ruby On Rails to bottlepy and have felt much better since. bottlepy is exactly the thing I needed for a basically desktop application that uses a browser as an interface.

Agreed. I use two small applications ( http://github.com/kghose/chotha, http://github.com/kghose/jabda) and I moved them from Ruby On Rails to bottlepy and have felt much better since. bottlepy is exactly the thing I needed for a basically desktop application that uses a browser as an interface.

Is that anything like https://github.com/inferiorhumanorgans/android_device_lge_thunderc ?

I write with Scrivener so my entire tool chain isn't open source but I wrote XHTML2EPUB to create an EPUB from my project.

Instead of thinking about the toolchain per se it goes from MMD -> XHTML -> EPUB with working directory for tweaking the CSS and whatnot.

...and the inadequacy of Mac Ports...

A bit off topic, but since you bring it up, you might want to have a look at Homebrew, which bills itself as the "missing package manager for OS X". I just started using it myself, but so far, so good.

Fizzled out? Have you visited the diaspora github recently?

What you mean to say is that after a lot of hype, the hype fizzled out. The project is still chugging along fine.

with a script. Ex: bigpresh's perl script.

I'm actually working on that. It would be nice to have a Slashdot API.

On the other hand, Reddit is actually very easy to work with. They have a JSON URL of the comment thread available for every story.

Mainly Ogg Vorbis @ 160kbps. Some tracks are also available in 320kbps if you're a premium subscriber.

And no, you can't record the incoming music as it's streamed over an encrypted session or from the local cache, which is also encrypted. The key to decrypt the data is only availble online from their servers and not stored by the client software.

Some Swedish hackers reverse engineered Spotify's secret protocol in 2008 and created two open-source projects called despotify and openspotify (both BSD-licensed). Check it out if you're interested in the internals. Spotify has also published a number of papers regarding their use of P2P in distributing the music.

There's also an official, C based API called libspotify which was born as a direct result of the despotify project. You need to be a premium subscriber to develop with it however.

I haven't tried it, so I won't knock it. I will however, stand over there uncomfortably when others are discussing MLP .

That's how it starts with everyone. It's OK.

The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it, but the point of Remix Culture is that the listener/viewer is no longer sure as to what's corrupting what.

To that end, I've actually never seen more than a few seconds of the actual show, but who could resist Weird Al Yankovic doing 80s pop songs? Polkas on 45? 30 years later, someone drops a new meme on it, turns a parody into a parody of a parody, and suddenly it's funny all over again.

Just yesterday, Pinkie Pie herself showed up in the as an example of how not to do software testing on the GitHub Bumblebee thread on software testing, I think it's OK to admit it. I think the MLP viral fad is funny. I enjoy it. There, I've said it, and I feel better.

After the Presidential Press Conference announcing the long-overdue demise of OBL, watching the trailer for Serenity, the lead single and polka track off the new Weird Al album, Reggie Watts, Wu-Tang, or Rebecca Black (just kidding) sung by ponies, you won't care.

All links SFW graphics, a few naughty words, and thoroughly NSFS (Not Safe For Sanity).

I checked out the full repository of an open source project I have been tinkering with in both SVN and Git (libgdx). The SVN was MUCH larger than the Git repository on my hard drive (i think 33% more, but I can't remember).

Another example is Django. A Subversion checkout (only trunk, no branches or tags) uses 186 MByte on hard drive, a Git clone uses 87 MByte. That's really astonishing when considering that the git clone contains 6 years of history and 10600 commits.

All assets are in RCS as there are many code changes tied to art assets, they need to be in sync.

Perhaps git's submodule feature would be of service here. From the man page: 'Submodules allow foreign repositories to be embedded within a dedicated subdirectory of the source tree, always pointed at a particular commit.'

The last shipped game that I worked on had a minimum sync size of ~43GB. That did not include movies, design documents, style guides or multiple language support. That built the PC, XBox360 and PS3 SKUs. A full sync was well over 100GB which I never did as I didn't need that stuff.

I wonder whether something like bup (which is based on git) might be useful for managing the large datasets; given that bup stores data in git repos, you could probably even use it as the basis for a submodule (perhaps with the help of scripts to unload the data where desired).

However, I think the main point is that git is optimized for managing code history and that it's kind of silly to expect git or any other tool to handle both usage cases well. When it comes to managing code history alone, git probably provides better tools than what you espouse:

I want my multiple change lists and the ability to sync any file to any revision easily for testing. I want to be able to select someone else's change list and revert it locally without hassle. I just find that git gets in my way when I have shit to do and little time to do it.

You can do all of these things easily with git's `fetch', `log', `whatchanged', `diff', `merge', `show', `checkout', `reset', `stash', `revert', `rebase', etc.

If there's on thing you can do with git, it's slice and dice code and revision history in any which way you please. Frankly, I think you're frustrated because you don't know what you're talking about with regard to git; you've never bothered to learn what you assume is an inferior tool. In reality, the inferiority is your mindset.

Well that's really what GitHub is ... much like Facebook treats every "object" (status update, photo, event) as a commentable, likable object, so does GitHub for VCS objects such as commits.

It's quite funny to see a commit with a comment thread attached to it. I saw one that went viral and ended up with 88 comments including meme images.

You get up tomorrow and log into GMail. You can't get in. Your account is locked. Your mail, calendar, documents — all gone. What do you do now?

Remember that Google has no customer service, even for paying customers. If your account is locked for any reason, spurious or not, you're utterly fucked.

I keep a regular backup of my GMail. The official interface is IMAP, but GMail's IMAP implementation is really flaky (e.g. Thunderbird or mail.app won't suck everything down). The way to do this that actually works is with OfflineIMAP. It's command-line and geeky, but by crikey it works.

Using it on Ubuntu or Debian is absurdly simple:

• sudo apt-get install offlineimap
• Set up a ~/.offlineimaprc file cut'n'pasted from this one, with your own username and password.
• offlineimap

This will create a folder with all your mail in it, in mbox format (readable plain text). You will have duplicate messages in different folders. I'm just doing this to get an archive, so zipped the result.

GMail's IMAP interface is subtly broken, to the point where it can crash offlineimap. Just start it running again, repeat as often as necessary. (If you like, get a more current version.)

GMail is still the best email interface I've ever used, and I wish Thunderbird would just get the hint and clone it to the last detail. But this way I also have all my stuff myself, just because I can.

I haven't tried this on a Mac or Windows. Could someone do this and write up instructions?

For other Google services, you can get your data from Google Takeout. While your account's not locked.

you might assume that, but it isn't. The current implementation does not ask you to put a passphrase on the key by default, nor apparently even make this possible. To me that's the biggest flaw with it. I raised a bug on this: https://github.com/mozilla/browserid/issues/61 .

It's still one of those minor issues that is not "entirely ready" yet.

https://github.com/mozilla/browserid/issues/17

We're doing as much as we can to reduce those problems while Firefox is still single-process. For example, we recently started throttling timers in background tabs and added a sane web animation API. More and more internal APIs are asynchronous or interruptible. We've also reduced memory use quite a bit with Firefox 7; I think we use significantly less memory than Chrome in common cases now.

At the same time, we're also working on process separation. It looks like it will be ready to play with, perhaps even an option, in a few months. I don't think we'll enable it by default until we're comfortable with the tradeoff between memory use and responsiveness/stability.

And we're also working on a new programming language that could make it safe and sane to use "tasks" (likely mapping to threads) rather than processes, so we don't have to deal with that unhappy tradeoff :)

Python bindings for a Markdown library. Not very sexy at all.

I have one. I spent forever on it getting it right. Valid HTML4. Can scroll through lots of photos fast. Because I separated out the header and footer bits I've integrated it on a few websites I'm on. I have a hacked together fork that will output a valid KML file so I can view my photos from when I went to India on a map. In all it's pretty awesome IMHO. Maybe you missed out on the part where I said I used to have a Gallery setup.

But MOST people just don't get that. They want to share their photos with their friends. I'd constantly get "I forgot the URL" e-mails and other such inane questions. They couldn't tag each other. They couldn't comment without registering for an account (That or I'd have a billion spam bots) and this was too difficult for them. Some only recently started using the computer. The fact that they found Facebook is good. (And some only login once a week if that).

It's not rocket science to setup. But it's rocket science to some of these people to use. They're not by any means "dumb". 3 of my Aunts & Uncles are Doctors. Some have engineering degrees. They just don't use the internet like we do. If you don't think these people exist go volunteer at your local GeekSquad or for a Tech Support line.

I finally got an invite yesterday from a friend. It still needs a bit of tweaking but hands down the best social website since Facebook was nice and clean back in the day. The fact that it's rising this fast should make some people over at Facebook a bit worried. I'm going to finally start transitioning.

Back in the day Facebook was only .edu and thus didn't have the lowest common denominator on it. We used to make fun of people on MySpace for "ThEiR HoRiBLZ Grammer" and such. But if you start reading LameBook or Failbook this group of people is now over on Facebook. And as long as Google+ remains invite only, I can't see them ever getting over to Google+.

CSB:
Facebook royally screwed me when they did the automated bans of numerous apps. My app. User 1 (me).. Was caught up in it.

When my grandma died I was tasked with scanning in family photos. I needed a faster way to upload them so I wrote my app. I had thousands, if not tens of thousands of photos uploaded, sorted, tagged. Most of my large family isn't the most technological, and facebook was much easier than Gallery. Plus they could tag each other, comment on the photos "Oh this is when Dad took us to that beach and set the house on fire" etc. When the auto ban bot came through it was all gone. My appeal reply was boiler plated. "Sorry our bot says you're doing spamming." Unlike some people, I do still have all the photos. (It looks like there were numerous photo uploading apps that got caught up in the ban.)

Thankfully with my app it only took about 24 hours of my bandwidth to reupload them, but all of the additional value added metadata that was lost. (I am not retagging them). Any photo less than 2048x2048 doesn't count towards your 1GB Picasa (Google+ Photos?) quota. I've already started looking at the PHP Google API. I'm hoping to have all my photos up there soon. Anyone that wants to see any new photos I take, will follow me to Google+.
-

I'd love a Diaspora update, too, but in the last three months I've seen precisely zero activity there.

Diapsora development is active with daily commits https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/master.

What I would love is more info and feedback for those of us who are totally behind Diaspora, but can't code worth shit.

I'd love a Diaspora update, too, but in the last three months I've seen precisely zero activity there.

Diapsora development is active with daily commits https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/master.

Well, not exactly. I am not sure you want an account as it looks like it is in pretty heavy active development still, but there is a list of active pods (actually, three lists), and it only took me a few clicks to find one accepting new users.

Are you asking if there's really a C-to-JavaScript translator? If so, then yes:

https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki

https://github.com/andreasgal/pdf.js (It's BSD licensed, minus the credits clause).
Who's the asshole now?

If this was Canonical or Oracle, would it be newsworthy? As another poster mentioned, we're talking about possibly the most influential site on the Internet. Moreover, there's plenty of geek cred with FB. Look at what they're doing with Hadoop, some of their open source contributions, or their code deployment process.

Personally, I feel you on wasting space on non-technical articles. However, it's no different than reading what Bill Gates has to say about vaccines or reading about a Steve Jobs comic book.

Under Ubuntu, I'm using the integrated only, and offload to the real GPU using bumblebee, but the battery still drains too quickly.

if you didn't already had a look at this, you can check http://linux-hybrid-graphics.blogspot.com/
I downloaded the code, compiled and installed the module...got a increase of 5 hrs on Fedora 15.

Sorry, a stray comma got into that URL. It should be: https://github.com/deplinenoise/tundra

I've recently started using Tundra, a very light-weight and scalable (CPU core wise) build system, with very fast and reliable dependency analysis written in C, using pthreads/winthreads and taking advantage of SIMD instruction sets. It supports multiple build configurations and variants side-by-side, multiple disjoint build targets/deliverables, and has very DRY LUA-based DSL for project configuration. It doesn't hide CFLAG details, it gets out of the way and lets you precisely control what you're passing to the compiler for each tool chain you want to support. It's released under the GPLv3, was written by a DICE employee and is being used to build Battlefield 3.

I was able to get rid of ~25 CMakeLists.txt that made up thousands of lines of text and replaced it with a single ~350 line tundra build file, in building a 200,000+ LoC multi-platform project and combined with a very stripped down autoconf script for environment detection and config.h generation, was able to support all of my requirements. I had to hack and hack to get CMake to try to support what I needed.

https://github.com/deplinenoise/tundr,a
http://j.mp/emwZ9Z for the PDF presentation slides.

Disclaimer: I have no relations with the author of Tundra or EA/DICE.

I installed the server on Debian Squeeze. The instructions for Debian (here https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Installing-on-Debian) were pretty straight forward though I would have like just one 'sudo apt-get install ...' and had a few problems but nothing like compiling VLC for Android.

Not only that, but the scene has several layers that move in parallax as you move your mouse pointer.

github 404 page