| 1. | | Hacking ls -l (lemis.com) |
| 199 points by drp4929 on Oct 13, 2012 | 88 comments |
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| 2. | | Sun Goes Down. Up Comes A Mystery (npr.org) |
| 166 points by iProject on Oct 13, 2012 | 78 comments |
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| 3. | | 0x10c (Notch's new game) (0x10c.com) |
| 160 points by vasco on Oct 13, 2012 | 87 comments |
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| 4. | | More people should write (jsomers.net) |
| 150 points by jsomers on Oct 13, 2012 | 49 comments |
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| 5. | | Facebook “Promoted Posts” have primarily foreign “Likes”: Why? (fetzervalves.com) |
| 150 points by jaybna on Oct 13, 2012 | 57 comments |
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| 6. | | Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one (bbc.co.uk) |
| 142 points by drucken on Oct 13, 2012 | 17 comments |
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| 7. | | Guido van Rossum's Performance tips for Python (plus.google.com) |
| 137 points by gits1225 on Oct 13, 2012 | 65 comments |
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| 8. | | Suicide is Cheaper (geo-geek.blogspot.com.au) |
| 124 points by Abundnce10 on Oct 13, 2012 | 75 comments |
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| 9. | | Google Homepage Size Over Time (measuredmass.wordpress.com) |
| 126 points by ISL on Oct 13, 2012 | 53 comments |
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| 10. | | Solving the Multicore Dilemma (flowlang.net) |
| 102 points by tel on Oct 13, 2012 | 49 comments |
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| 11. | | How I Became One of the Most Successful Art Smugglers in the World (vice.com) |
| 101 points by robg on Oct 13, 2012 | 14 comments |
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| 12. | | Asshole Driven Development (scottberkun.com) |
| 102 points by sidcool on Oct 13, 2012 | 25 comments |
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| 13. | | The Three Pillars of Nokia's Strategy Have All Failed (communities-dominate.blogs.com) |
| 101 points by wazoox on Oct 13, 2012 | 84 comments |
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| 14. | | Helping you select a JS MV* framework (todomvc.com) |
| 97 points by wiradikusuma on Oct 13, 2012 | 38 comments |
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| 15. | | Git over FTP (github.com/resmo) |
| 94 points by vinaykola on Oct 13, 2012 | 39 comments |
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| 16. | | Symbian, a post-mortem (docs.google.com) |
| 89 points by sidcool on Oct 13, 2012 | 23 comments |
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| 17. | | The Marshmallow Test Revisited (washingtonpost.com) |
| 82 points by shazad on Oct 13, 2012 | 33 comments |
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| 18. | | PayPal Said to Cut as Many as 400 Jobs (bloomberg.com) |
| 85 points by pg on Oct 13, 2012 | 51 comments |
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| 20. | | AMD’s layoffs target engineering; Board incompetence dooms the company (semiaccurate.com) |
| 78 points by tankenmate on Oct 13, 2012 | 41 comments |
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| 21. | | When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution (stanford.edu) |
| 79 points by adrianhoward on Oct 13, 2012 | 35 comments |
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| 22. | | Show HN: GBA.js, a Game Boy Advance emulator written in JavaScript (jpfau.github.com) |
| 76 points by jpfau on Oct 13, 2012 | 25 comments |
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| 23. | | Reasons not to buy from Amazon (stallman.org) |
| 73 points by tchalla on Oct 13, 2012 | 77 comments |
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| 24. | | Cause and Effect Fallacy: The By-product Does Not Make The Product (jayliew.com) |
| 66 points by jayliew on Oct 13, 2012 | 9 comments |
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| 25. | | What The Swedish Pirate Party Wants With Patents, Trademarks, And Copyright (falkvinge.net) |
| 60 points by zoowar on Oct 13, 2012 | 34 comments |
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| 26. | | Why hasn't PyPy been merged into the Python trunk? (stackoverflow.com) |
| 60 points by ivoflipse on Oct 13, 2012 | 20 comments |
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| 27. | | In over my head. How can I work with more advanced programmers? (arstechnica.com) |
| 59 points by chinmoy on Oct 13, 2012 | 23 comments |
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| 28. | | Sleep on it, but only if it is difficult: Effects of sleep on problem solving (springerlink.com) |
| 59 points by bane on Oct 13, 2012 | 8 comments |
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| 29. | | What the Heck Is CSS Specificity? (designshack.net) |
| 55 points by codingthebeach on Oct 13, 2012 | 20 comments |
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| 30. | | Dancing Baby Video Battle Back in Court Tuesday (eff.org) |
| 55 points by pwg on Oct 13, 2012 | 27 comments |
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Rather, this is a pretty interesting look into what it actually entails to make what ought to be a very simple and straightforward change.
It turns out that these simple changes are hard! Not just in identifying the piece of code to modify, but that man pages are often incomplete or unclear. It also illustrates the complexities behind making software portable - in this case, using the nation-neutral place separator. It also reminds us that solving what is on the surface a simple problem lets one uncover all sorts of interesting and messy details underneath - including more problems to solve!
These are steps that he'd have to take no matter what the code or feature. This article is not "complexity for complexity's sake", it's illustrating the complexity of making changes to any piece of code - and that it is surprisingly difficult for something that one would think is very easy!